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he's put in an acceptable shift by RTE's lights.
Perhaps the most important difference between the wages earned by John O'Shea and Pat Kenny is that Manchester United pay the Waterford man the money they do because if they didn't, he would move to another club which would. The reason RTE wages piss people off is because they seem to have no connection with commercial reality.
If RTE simply refused to meet Pat Kenny's absurd financial demands, nobody else would. Foreign stations are not queuing up to poach RTE's prima donnas. RTE paid them big money for the same reason that our TDs overpaid themselves, because that's the way the racket worked. The proof of this is that the state broadcaster have just cut Kenny's wages by a third. And what did he do? Nothing. They could half them again and he'd have to lump it. He'd still be overpaid.
RTE presenters are a series of clones. Replace one of them with another and it makes little difference to the viewing figures. People watch the station out of habit and expect little from it. They save their passion, their dreams and their admiration for sport and music, family and nature. Does it matter what Pat Kenny says? I think it does because inherent in his silly statement is the assumption that what he and Marian Finucane do is of great importance and renders the work of John O'Shea and sportsmen like him trivial by comparison.
In reality, the opposite is the case. Pat Kenny, self-important, self-pitying and self-indulgent, is a perfect exemplar of the attitude which has landed us in the current national mess. He is Official Ireland at its very worst. John O'Shea is a lad from Waterford who has made the big time solely by virtue of his natural talent and hard work.
Sport matters. Five minutes of Ireland's performance in Paris was worth all the hours of The Front Line put together. The best television on RTE this year was provided by hurlers and Gaelic footballers who get paid nothing at all, while pulling bigger audiences than Mr €960,956 a year. Now that's a real injustice. Meanwhile, Pat whinges on about not being appreciated.
Entertaining the nation, my arse.
[email protected]
Sunday IndependentArsenal fullback Hector Bellerin says it was the role of Cesc Fabregas that helped convince him to swap Barcelona for the north London club.
Bellerin, 20, left Barcelona's La Masia academy in 2011 to join the Gunners as a 16-year-old, an identical move Fabregas, now of Chelsea, made in 2003.
Following a season where the Spanish full-back has cemented his place in Arsene Wenger's first team plans, after almost leaving the club on loan at the beginning of the 2014-15 season, Bellerin has explained it was the rise of the ex-Arsenal captain that paved the way for his move to England.
"Cesc was a big inspiration," Bellerin told Arsenal Fan TV. "To see someone who made the same move and success, for me it was very important to see that happen.
"It was an important move for me, moving away from my family and friends and my city.
"But to see someone has succeeded as I said was really important and he showed that if you work hard, if you want it enough, you will always have a chance."
Bellerin made 20 Premier League appearances for the Gunners in the 2014-15 season, filling the void left by Mathieu Debuchy who suffered two serious injuries in his first season with the club following his arrival from Newcastle United.
The Spain Under-21 international recognises holding onto his first team role will be more difficult next season with Calum Chambers and possibly Carl Jenkinson, who spent last season on loan at West Ham United, also in contention, but is relishing the challenge ahead.
I just want to keep playing like the way I have been playing this year," he told FourFourTwo. "I know it is going to be really hard because Debuchy's back and I don't know whether Carl [Jenkinson] is going to be back so it is definitely going to be challenge.
"But, as I say, at the beginning of last season I thought my season was going to be totally different to what it was so when you ask me how I think it is going to be, I simply don't know. All I will do is work hard and try to cement my place in the starting XI."Open less than a year, Asian Rim has closed its downtown Huntsville location.
The Birmingham-based Thai, sushi and Pan-Asian infused restaurant shut its doors Friday at Twickenham Place, a multi-story office tower at Twickenham Square across from Huntsville Hospital and Homewood Suites by Hilton.
It is not yet known what led to the sudden closure. AL.com has contacted Asian Rim General Partner Roy Hockman for more details and will update this story as information is available.
Asian Rim opened on 720 Gallatin St. in December 2014 in a 5,500-square-foot space near FirstBank. The eatery, voted Birmingham's best new restaurant of 2012 by BirminghamRestaurants.com, held an official ribbon cutting in July.
It was the second restaurant to launch at Twickenham Square, a $100 million live-work-play project also home to Publix, Taco Mama, Cajun Steamer Bar & Grill, Mei Wei, Artisan at Twickenham Square and other businesses.That's not a debt disaster — THIS is a debt disaster: Joe and Tony’s big con
Alan Austin presents another exclusive report the mainstream media will not touch — Australia’s rapidly escalating borrowings since Abbott and Hockey came to office promising to end ‘Labor’s debt disaster’.
Read also Alan Austin's recent previous outstanding expose on the Abbott / Hockey debt blowout:
Only 1 media outlet reports AUS debt blow out of 13.7% & interest payments up 30% in first 10 months of Abbott Govt http://t.co/fEC3ZNlsE3 — Michael Danby MP (@MichaelDanbyMP) September 29, 2014
AUSTRALIA’S DEBT since Joe Hockey took charge of the nation’s finances has increased dramatically.
The rate of expansion shows no signs of slowing.
Monthly finance figures for July and August were quietly released yesterday — late on Friday night, several weeks late, after seemingly being sat on by Cormann for at least a week*.
They show the Abbott Government has achieved precisely the opposite of its solemn pre-election undertaking to bring about
‘… a reduction of $30 billion in net debt.’
In July and August alone – two months for which it is impossible for PM Tony Abbott to blame Labor for any mismanagement – the debt expanded from $202.46 to $217.55 billion.
That’s more than $15 billion, a rate of increase above 3.6% per month. If continued, that rate would double the debt at the last election by next July.
But let’s start at the beginning — with Labor’s borrowings, which the Coalition screamed from the rooftops was ‘skyrocketing’ and promised countless times to reduce.
Back when monthly reports from the Finance Minister were presented every month and on time, the final report prepared for the Rudd Government period, for 31 August 2013, showed the forecast end of year net debt for 2013-14 at $178.10 billion.
We can take that as the level for which Labor must accept responsibility. It sounds pretty high, but is only a small percentage of the nation’s gross income – just 11.3% of GDP – and extremely low when compared with other developed countries.
(Source: Gerg Jericho via abc.net.au)
As explained here two weeks ago, the next monthly report, September 2013 ‒ prepared after Hockey had become treasurer and Mathias Cormann finance minister ‒ also showed projected year-end debt steady at $178.10 billion. As did October’s and November’s.
In December, however, after Hockey and Cormann had abandoned Labor’s budget measures by cutting taxes and spending recklessly on ministerial travel, royal commissions, a Reserve Bank advance and other needless fripperies, the debt projection rose suddenly to $191.52 billion.
The monthly reports in January, February, March and April 2014 maintained this year-end projection. Then, in May, it jumped again to $197.85 billion.
That report, released four months ago, was the last until last night.
Two weeks ago the Final Budget Outcome revealed the actual debt level reached by 30 June 2014. This was $202.46 billion, more than $24 billion – or 13.7% – higher than forecast had the previous Government continued in power.
The data released yesterday shows that in July, debt increased from $202.46 billion to $208.15 billion. It jumped again in August to $217.55 billion. So the total increase above the level Labor left last year is now $39.45 billion ($217.55 less $178.10) — up an extraordinary 22.1%.
That is a rate of 3.66% per month just since June — or an annual compound rate of 54%.
The monthly figures released last night also reveal the targeted level of debt Abbott, Hockey and Mathias have set themselves for the end of the current financial year.
Is this in line with ‘a reduction of $30 billion’ as promised before the last election? Or a smaller reduction? Or larger?
In fact, it is a huge increase. The target is set at $226,388 — a boost in borrowings for the year of $23.9 billion, or 11.8%.
And of that projected $23.9 billion increase, they have already borrowed more than $15 billion — in just the first two months.
Last night’s release also shows the projected total interest bill for the full year 2013-14 at $14.7 billion [Note 3, page 6].
That is up from the final for the previous year of $10.8 billion.
Still ringing in our ears are the words of Mr Abbott at an education conference last year:
“We’re currently paying interest on it [Government debt] at the rate of over $7 billion a year — that’s almost as much as the national government’s entire higher education budget. We’re racking up some $140 million a week in interest payments alone...”
That was then — way back in 2013.
Now, 13 months after Abbott gained office, the interest bill is $283 million a week.
Are there any signs this situation is likely to turn around in the near future?
No. None whatsoever.
Revenue from wages is below expectations and commodity prices are falling — both of which will reduce tax revenue.
The Government has failed to get its budget through the Senate and remains unable – fortunately for the nation’s disadvantaged – to cut the outlays on pensions and benefits it wants to slash.
Seats held by Abbott, Hockey, Turnbull and Bishop least affected by budget, new analysis shows http://t.co/YSmuWzrmLz #auspol — Federal Politics (@PoliticsFairfax) October 10, 2014
On the expenditure side, there seems no inclination to rein in the wasteful spending of the last 13 months and every indication of cost blow-outs on security, border protection and war.
Hence all pre-election commitments to ‘balance the books, live within our means and return the budget to surplus as quickly as possible’ are now clearly evident for what they were all along — tawdry lies. Lies, regrettably, that Australia’s craven, captured mass media could be relied upon to amplify.
They were baseless slanders against the previous administration made merely to discredit, destroy and replace it.
If there is no debt or deficit crisis now – and there isn’t – then there was certainly no calamity a year ago when Labor’s projected debt was $39 billion below the level today.
The facts are clear and ‒ unlike the Government and our mainstream media ‒ the figures don’t lie.
* The media release from the Finance Department is dated 3 October, however the one from Cormann's office is dated 10 October 2014 — the date the information became public.
You can follow Alan Austin on Twitter @AlanTheAmazing.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
Abbott Govt Goes to War demanding Poorest Taxpayers cover Costs, and telling Soldiers they must be Paid Less! http://t.co/D2CABdWrwK #auspol — grace pettigrew (@broomstick33) October 10, 2014
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Buy John Graham originals, including the above, from IA's online store.3
Spend time with your stepchild and teach him or her ways to become a responsible adult.
Show the child you're willing to help out in housework. It is important for children to understand that keeping a household is a family job, a shared household responsibility, and not just the mother's. Don't be old-fashioned, even if the child's real father is.
If you fish, golf, or do other hobby activities, where it is appropriate, take your stepchild along. Not only does this give the child a chance to see what you enjoy, but it gives his or her mother a break. On the other hand, never force the child to do what you've asked––if he or she shows a disinclination toward fishing or rewiring the house, don't force it. Given time and your enthusiasm, the child might come around to trying it. But if he or she is never interested, then that's just a reflection of his or her interests, not a reflection on you. Pushing the child to do things he or she hates just to try to prove you're buddies will backfire. Instead, keep looking for common ground until you do find an activity the child would like to share with you.Amr Nabil/Associated Press
CAIRO — As protesters were gathering in Tahrir Square again one evening earlier this week, my roommate and I hosted a dinner party not faraway. It was the second anniversary of Khaled Saeed’s murder at the hands of Egypt’s corrupt police, one of the catalysts of the Jan. 25, 2011 uprising. While journalists and NGO workers were eating in our living room, demonstrators were contesting recent election results and last week’s verdict against former President Hosni Mubarak and other top officials in his regime.
That night two years ago when Saeed died, this situation would have been simply unimaginable. Protesters couldn’t have demonstrated against the government without getting beaten and detained, and journalists wouldn’t have missed a massive demonstration for a meal of cold peanut noodles.
That it happened Wednesday is a sign of just how much Egypt’s revolutionaries have achieved and how far they still have to go. Some 16 months since Mubarak’s ouster, Egypt’s disparate opposition — hardcore activists, liberal politicians, some Islamists — is still relying on the same old tactic of cramming bodies into Tahrir Square without presenting a unified list of concrete demands. This has gotten a little old. Now that new political parties are forming and elections are being held, raw rage seems almost passé.
Egypt’s opposition has spent a lot of time and energy committing fratricide. Constant disagreement over what to do has meant that the protests achieve little more than shutting down the city’s central traffic circle and antagonizing many ordinary people hankering for stability.
The opposition has made the same mistake in the political process. In the parliamentary elections this winter, liberal candidates splintered into competing lists and ran against each other, helping the Islamists serve themselves to Parliament. The Muslim Brotherhood won nearly half the seats, and ultratraditionalist Salafis, who were neophyte politicians, managed to sweep 25 percent, thanks to their effective networks in the countryside.
The opposition did it again with the first round of the presidential election last month. Candidates campaigning on revolutionary credentials ended up splitting the vote: two of them garnered a total of around 40 percent of the ballots but neither got enough to move on to the second round. The runoff on June 16-17 will feature two members of Egypt’s old guard: Ahmed Shafik, Mubarak’s last prime minister, and Mohammed Morsi, an uncharismatic candidate from the Muslim Brotherhood.
And now the opposition is splintering yet again. Those defeated in the first round — the leftist Hamdeen Sabahi, the independent Islamist Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh and the human rights lawyer Khaled Ali — are refusing to endorse either of the runoff candidates and disputing the integrity of the elections. They look like sore losers.
Meanwhile, some activists are calling for an all-out boycott. Different groups have approached Morsi with demands; for example, in exchange for their backing some are asking him not to name politicians from the Brotherhood to his cabinet. Others have come to both Morsi and Shafik simultaneously with pledge documents.
Still, those in Tahrir Square feel buoyed by the 40 percent of voters who endorsed the revolutionary candidates. “The results of the first round show desire for a third way, even if it’s not united,” Sally Sami, a human rights activist and one of the founders of the liberal Social Democratic Party told me last week.
Can the opposition unite behind the renewed vigor of protesters so that by the next anniversary of Saeed’s death, it will have begun to build the Egypt his murder galvanized it to demand?Command Modern Air Naval Operations : Lua Repository #4 Random Traffic
Every so often you meet a script that’s beautiful. My first script moment was when I saw the differential equation for a moon shot rocket as it loses fuel, gravity drops, velocity rises, and… well you get the idea. The below script, courtesy of Apache85, is a script like that. This wonderful bit of poetic code generates random merchant traffic within a set area and assigns it to a mission. I’ll get into more of it after the break, but if you want to bring biologics, fishing boats, aircraft, or whatever to your scenarios, check it out!
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--Merchant generation script (default settings create 8-16 merchant ships in the China Sea assigned to a ferry mission named 'VLADIVOSTOK' on a side named 'Merchant'
math.randomseed ( os.time ( ) )
merch_num = math.random ( 20, 30 ) --change 8 or 16 to your specified minimum and maximum number of merchants
for i = 1, merch_num do
redo_count = 0
:: redo ::
local lat_var = math.random ( 1, ( 10 ^ 13 ) )
local lon_var = math.random ( 1, ( 10 ^ 13 ) )
v_lat = math.random ( 0, 2 ) + ( lat_var / ( 10 ^ 13 ) ) --change 27 and 32 to your specified minimum and maximum latitude values; it's important that the first number is smaller than the second.
v_lon = math.random ( 102, 104 ) + ( lon_var / ( 10 ^ 13 ) ) --change 119 and 127 to your specified minimum and maximum longitude values; it's important that the first number is smaller than the second.
elevation = World_GetElevation ( { latitude = v_lat, longitude = v_lon } )
if elevation > ; - 10 then --Checks to see if the water is deep enough, adjust as you please
redo_count = redo_count + 1
if redo_count > ; 50 then
print ( 'A ship was not able to find a suitable spot for placement. Re-check latitude and longitude settings' )
break --this cuts the loop if there are no suitable positions found after 50 tries, prevents infinite loop/game freeze
else
goto redo --retries the placement if the water is too shallow
end
end
DBIDTABLE = { 775, 2027, 2029, 2028, 2030, 774, 2026, 2031, 2775, 2023, 773, 2774, 1001, 1374, 2773, 2776, 1006, 222, 1599, 2034, 1002, 1317, 144, 339, 275, 145, 2022, 259 } --list of DBIDs
DBID = DBIDTABLE [ math.random ( 1, # DBIDTABLE ) ]
local new_merch = ScenEdit_AddUnit ( { side = 'Merchant', type = 'Ship', name = 'Merchant #'.. i, dbid = DBID, latitude = v_lat, longitude = v_lon } )
local fuel = new_merch. fuel
fuel [ 3001 ]. current = fuel [ 3001 ]. max * math.random ( 600, 800 ) / 1000
new_merch. fuel = fuel
ScenEdit_AssignUnitToMission ( new_merch. name, 'VLADIVOSTOK' )
print ( new_merch. name..'with dbid '.. DBID..'was created in water with a depth of '.. elevation..'m' )
end
There’s a lot going on here, so we’ll look at the bare essentials. First the really really important bits. You need a side called Merchant and a mission called Vladivostok. You can alter the above script to fit your side and mission names, but you need those two things.
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merch_num = math.random ( 20, 30 ) --change to your specified minimum and maximum number of merchants
In this line you define the upper and lower limit of how many ships you’d like placed.
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v_lat = math.random ( 0, 2 ) + ( lat_var / ( 10 ^ 13 ) ) --change 27 and 32 to your specified minimum and maximum latitude values; it's important that the first number is smaller than the second.
v_lon = math.random ( 102, 104 ) + ( lon_var / ( 10 ^ 13 ) ) --change 119 and 127 to your specified minimum and maximum longitude values; it's important that the first number is smaller than the second.
This spot requires a bit of planning. Find the area where you’d like to place the ships and record the boundaries of the latitude and longitude, but just the whole number. In our case 0 and 2 and 102 and 104. My area happens to be around the Strait of Malacca. This is our zone for ship placement. The line above this sets our variance for the rest of the lat-lon.
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if elevation > ; - 10 then --Checks to see if the water is deep enough, adjust as you please
This one is really cool. What if it tries to place a ship on land? It get’s a redo! This exits the current loop and tries all over again. If it hits too many failures, say you tried to place a fleet in Siberia, then it’ll give you a nifty error.
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DBIDTABLE = { 775, 2027, 2029, 2028, 2030, 774, 2026, 2031, 2775, 2023, 773, 2774, 1001, 1374, 2773, 2776, 1006, 222, 1599, 2034, 1002, 1317, 144, 339, 275, 145, 2022, 259 } --list of DBIDs
This is a list of database entry ID’s that the list will pull from. If you wanted random fishing boats you could change up the list. Or maybe change this entirely and have it be biologics like whales?
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local new_merch = ScenEdit_AddUnit ( { side = 'Merchant', type = 'Ship', name = 'Merchant #'.. i, dbid = DBID, latitude = v_lat, longitude = v_lon } )
This script adds our new vessel and assigns it a numerical name. This is useful if we want to iterate later and assign things to it (like the boundary zone from the previous tutorial).
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ScenEdit_AssignUnitToMission ( new_merch. name, 'VLADIVOSTOK' )
And finally we assign that unit to the mission VLADIVOSTOK. This is where you’d change the name for something completely different depending on your mission.
When I used this script I created a few different missions. One for moving west, one for moving east, and one for moving to port. Then I ran the same script three times. Now I’ve got a mish-mash of civilian freighter traffic moving all through my area of operations.
So give it a try, add some civilian traffic, add some weather, make it feel real.RDU Airport, N.C. – As a follow-up to two public workshops held earlier in June, the Raleigh-Durham Airport Authority will hold a public workshop to present the final four development alternatives and present airport land use concepts.
The public workshop will be held at the Airport Authority Administrative Offices (1000 Trade Dr., Morrisville, NC 27560, Room 100) on Tuesday, June 28 at 6 p.m. This is the 7th public workshop RDU has held since Vision 2040 kicked off in mid-2015.
Master plan consultants Ricondo & Associates Inc. will share four conceptual airport development layouts that feature improvements to runways and taxiways, terminals, parking, roadways, ground transportation, general aviation and other support facilities. The four alternatives were developed with assistance from public feedback received at meetings earlier this month.
Consultants will also share potential land use concepts and discuss what the airport is able to do with its land under federal law.
The public is invited to provide feedback at the meeting, which will be considered as the preferred alternative is determined. Feedback can be shared either in-person at the meetings, or on the master plan website at vision2040.rdu.com. Presentations and renderings from the workshop will be posted online after the June 28 meeting.
RDU’s master plan, to be finalized by the end of 2016, will spell out how the airport will meet expected demand and improve facilities, over the next 25 years. The plan will also include funding and implementation plans.
Read more about RDU’s Vision2040 Master Plan.The quarterfinals are done and there were two absolutely classic World Juniors games, including Denmark giving Russia all they could handle and Canada getting eliminated in the quarterfinals for the first time since 1998. Here are 10 standouts from the quarterfinal round of the 2016 World Juniors.
Ivan Provorov, Team Russia
The Flyers 1st round draft pick is an absolute beast. He’s been one of Russia’s most reliable players at both ends of the ice throughout the tournament so far. Saturday was no different.
It took a late goal to tie it and overtime to clinch it for Russia against the underdog Danes, but when the game was on the line, Provorov was on the ice. He assisted on both the late game-tying tally and the overtime-winner.
He’s fantastic and may wind up being the best defenseman to come out of the 2015 draft. He looks that good.
Auston Matthews, Team USA
Matthews turned in another impressive performance in the U.S.’s 7-0 win over the Czech Republic. He scored a hat trick, moving him up to seven goals in the tournament, which leads all skaters.
Not only does he have the tournament lead, he’s one goal from tying the all-time record for most goals in the tournament by an American, set by Jeremy Roenick in 1989. It’s been a fantastic tournament for the 2016 draft eligible center. A few draft eligibles are really putting on a show and Matthews isn’t being outmatched.
Mitch Marner and Dylan Strome, Team Canada
Strome and Marner both played very good games despite Canada getting eliminated in the quarterfinals for the first time since 1998.
It wasn’t just that they contributed offense for the team, it was that they were both physical and created momentum for Canada when the momentum shifted in favor of Finland. Both played with a fire late in the game that was unmatched on the Canadian bench. That was tough with the seesaw scoring in the game and Finland having the crowd on their side.
Strome finished the game with a goal and a team-leading eight shots. Marner had two goals, was named player of the game for Canada and posted six shots, second only to Strome. Both of these guys showed some high-end skill in this tournament. Both could have the chance to redeem themselves next year.
Thomas Lillie, Team Denmark
Yes, they lost, but Denmark gave Russia a serious scare. Lillie was a big a part of that. He turned away 43 of 46 Russian shots for a.935 save percentage and a pretty solid tournament in a couple of tough matches.
The team proved more feisty than many projected, but a part of their success was having Lillie and Mathias Seldrup playing fantastic in net. They deserve some serious applause for giving Danish fans a thrill this tournament. It looked like they might beat Russia, they beat the Swiss and they held a lead against both Canada and the U.S. early in those games.
Joe Hicketts, Team Canada
Hicketts took a bad penalty late in the game for delay of game, but it’s kinda hard to blame him for it. He shot the puck from his defensive zone out of play at the far end of the rink. If the boards are a normal height in the rink, that maybe doesn’t go out.
Nonetheless, Hicketts had a very good tournament despite a couple blunders that just seemed to be bounces that didn’t go his way, like tipping a goal in on Mason MacDonald in the tournament’s opening game against the U.S.
Hicketts played well at both ends of the ice Saturday. While it’s maybe an easy comparison because of Hicketts’s stature, he reminded me of Jared Spurgeon, making simple plays in the defensive zone, moving the puck out when he could, activating in the offensive zone. He’s cautious, but not scared to charge the net and race for the puck.
Signing him as an undrafted free agent is going to work out well for the Detroit Red Wings.
Kaapo Kahkonen, Team Finland
The Wild prospect didn’t get the start against Canada, but had to come into the game in relief of Veini Vehilainen. It was obviously a shooting gallery on the ice, but when Kahkonen entered the game, Canada was pressing and it was looking bleak for the Finns.
But Kahkonen was solid in relief, only allowing two goals on 24 shots after Vehilainen allowed three on 10 shots.
Kahkonen has likely earned the right to be Finland’s starter against Sweden, whose defense could prove to be less porous than the Canadian defense should the team get down early again.
Adrian Kempe, Team Sweden
With an injury to Kempe in the first game of the tournament and strong performances from Alexander Nylander and Dmytro Timashov, Kempe’s performance has gone under the radar for Sweden. But he’s been a physical presence and an offensive force.
Kempe was easily one of the team’s more noticeable players on Saturday. He put up two points and now has three goals and six points in five games. I’ve sung his praises in previous days, but he’s going to be a key piece of their success if Sweden is able to medal.
Winger Joel Eriksson Ek also had a pretty solid game for Sweden. He had a goal, but could have easily had three. It was a nice bounce back after being held out of the game against Canada so that he was healthy when the games started to matter again.
Patrik Laine, Team Finland
Laine and linemate Jesse Puljujarvi continue to put together a historic performance. Laine was maybe the better of the two this time. The 6-foot-4 17-year-old was a force, in the mix any time things were clicking for Finland.
His two goals and three points on the game puts him at 11 points in five games so far. That ties him for ninth all-time among U18 players at the World Juniors and he’s got two games to go. Puljujarvi is already tied for fourth all-time.
The players above Puljujarvi? No real huge names. Just Eric Lindros, Wayne Gretzky and Jaromir Jagr.
Alex Nedeljkovic, Team USA
With a shutout on Saturday, Nedeljkovic has put together a memorable tournament. His.954 save percentage is the best in the tourney and he’s a huge part of bringing the U.S. to the semifinals.
With a 7-0 score you might think this game was more lopsided than it was (though it was lopsided). The U.S. only outshot the Czechs 35-28. The Czechs looked lackadaisical at times and didn’t play with a lot of fire, but if they could have gotten one past Nedeljkovic at any point in the first two periods (they only took two shots in the third), it’s easy to see how they could have rallied.
RELATED: Every NHL Team’s Prospects at the World Junior Championships
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6 Standouts From World Juniors Day 1Ruth Davidson has called for “serious people” to take charge of Brexit as she launched a fresh attack on Boris Johnson.
In an interview with the Times, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives warned that "a failure to face reality" about Britain’s post-EU future was selling the country short.
Ms Davidson had specific criticism for Mr Johnson's 4,200-word Daily Telegraph article published on the day of the Parsons Green terror attack, and his continuing claim that Brexit could allow an extra £350 million a week to be spent on the NHS.
“I think overoptimism and not recognising that there are practical realities that have to be faced, that have to be worked through and that complexity is not something you just skip over, that you actually have to work through, I think sells people short,” she said.
Asked specifically about Mr Johnson’s upbeat approach, she said: “This... needs serious people to do a lot of legwork and scanning the detail to make sure we do get to a place where it will all be OK."
Ms Davidson, who was a prominent Remain supporter, clashed with Mr Johnson during the EU referendum campaign.
Ms Davidson also ruled out leaving the Scottish parliament for Westminster before the next Holyrood elections in 2021.
In a poll of Tory members yesterday, Ms Davidson was the second favourite to succeed Theresa May as party leader – behind Mr Johnson.Insurgents in southern Afghanistan told locals that fingers found bearing the indelible ink used to mark voters would be removed.
"We will know those who cast a vote from the ink, and his finger will be cut off," a commander warned villagers in the south of the country, the New York Times reported.
The Taliban ruling council led by Mullah Omar has called on Afghans to boycott the election, described them as an American sham and told its fighters to block roads to polling stations.
The new threat of mutilation appeared to rule out hopes that lower level Taliban leaders would call a temporary ceasefire to allow the vote to proceed without violence.
Villagers in the rural Pashtun south of Afghanistan, a heartland for President Hamid Karzai, could deliver crucial votes for their kinsman, who is facing a second round run-off as he is unlikely to win by a 50 per cent threshold on Thursday.
But the risk of violent retribution from the Taliban and the prospect of re-electing a president who has attracted intense criticism for his policies in the final weeks of campaigning could dissuade many from turning out.
As the presidential campaign entered its final week, human rights advocates accused Mr Karzai of betraying Afghanistan's women for votes after it was disclosed he had ratified a controversial law said to condone marital rape.
The president's recent decision to free five convicted drug traffickers, including the nephew of his campaign manager, was also questioned by a minister in charge of hunting down Afghan opium lords.
Mr Karzai addressed thousands of supporters in the northeastern city of Herat as it emerged controversial legislation governing family life for the country's Shia minority had been rushed through to become law.
The president was forced to reform the original draft in the face of international outcry earlier this year when it was found to rule a woman had to satisfy her husband's sexual desires at least every fourth night.
But the ammended version, which has quietly come into force after being published in the country's official gazette, still maintains a husband can stop feeding his wife if she does not submit to him.
Brad Adams, Asia director of the New York-based Human Rights Watch, said: "Karzai has made an unthinkable deal to sell Afghan women out in return for the support of fundamentalists in the August 20 election."
The law also grants custody of children only to fathers and grandfathers.
Ozala Nemat, of the Afghan Women's Network, said some articles in the law had been improved, but it had been rushed through by the president to cement election alliances.
She said: "I read it as a political act, not a legal act."
Fatemeh Hosseini, an Afghan women's rights activist, added: "Karzai promised he would make changes and he has brought changes. But the changes are only in the wording, the context is the same.
"Karzai is trying to please both sides but for them, the mullahs are more important than women."
Mr Kazai's recent decision to pardon Bilal Wali Mohammad, the convicted drug trafficking nephew of Haji Din Mohammad, his campaign manager and former governor of Kabul, provoked criticism from a counter narcotics minister.
The release of the five traffickers, who were each sentenced to 16 to 20 years after being caught wearing military uniform in a truck carrying 250lb of opium, has already been met with dismay by western anti-drugs officials.
General Daud Daud, deputy interior minister for counter
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the company that brings purpose to society, it’s because they know that the most important client is, in fact, humanity.”
Follow BrightHouse on Twitter and LinkedIn, and subscribe to our blog.my guild Yaspresents is doing an online 3v3 tournament on EU Arena Pass, but we have a problem with latest hotfix patch not being live there (30% battle fatigue and fire blast glyph nerf). Is it somehow possible to hotfix it before next weekend (18th January).
With the Yaspresents tournament running, which showed the huge interest of players all around the globe to see the best PvP players in action - we need a hotfix for the tournament realm.Another sent the following mail to Blizzard:We need to get attention to this. So please tell your friends to post on the forums, on Twitter, on Facebook. Put it on the frontpage of your blogs or do a video about it. We need Blizzards attention to fix this or the tournament would have to be played on live.Thanks for support!Edit(Pawzz): We did it :) http://eu.battle.net...82643?page=2#40Usually, we admire that the artists can create characters vividly, while this time, we will introduce a different artist who turns living, breathing people into characters in oil painting. That is Alexa Meade.
Alexa Meade is a 23-year-old artist based in Washington, DC area. She spent four summers interning on Capitol Hill and in 2008 was a press staffer on the Obama Campaign. She graduated in 2009 from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY with a bachelor’s degree in political science. She never attended art school nor has she ever taken advanced painting courses. In August 2008, Meade began to experience a new genre of painting.
She applies acrylic paint to the surfaces of people, objects, and walls in a broad brushstroke that mimics the appearance of brushwork in a painting in a technique that she innovated. When the three-dimensional tableau is viewed in a two-dimensional photograph, it appears to be an oil painting. After 9 months of practice, she was able to develop a process for painting on people and unveiled her “Reverse Trompe L’Oeil” installation in October, 2009. The follow are some of her works, are you deceived?Disney Vacation Club is celebrating its 25th anniversary with new happenings for DVC Members, including the Disney Vacation Club 25 and Beyond Bash, an exclusive after-hours event at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Theme Park, and more. The Animal Kingdom event will be hosted Sept. 6, 13, 22 and 27. Those Guests that will be attending the DVC Safari Spectacular event will start mixing into the park each evening at 7 p.m. and will then remain in the park until midnight.
Guests will have access to select attractions, be able to purchase food at Flame Tree Barbecue, meet select Disney characters, and shop in select stores. Guests attending the event will wear wristbands.
Check-in/ Wristband distribution:
Although some Guests may arrive with wristbands from their DVC resort, beginning at 7 p.m., wristbands can also be picked up at Main Entrance. For Guests already in the park, the Dawa Bar will distribute wristbands beginning at 5:30 p.m.
EVENT OFFERINGS:
Attractions
Kilimanjaro Safaris (until 10:30 p.m.)
(until 10:30 p.m.) Kali River Rapids
Expedition Everest
Primeval Whirl
TriceraTop Spin
It’s Tough to be a Bug
Entertainment
DinoLand Dance Party
Tree of Life awakenings
Burudika and DJ Kinaan
Chakranadi
Discovery Island Carnivale
Characters from "Up" (their regular greeting location)
Characters from Bug’s Life (their regular greeting location by Creature Comforts)
Characters from "The Lion King" (outside of Festival of the Lion King)
Launchpad McQuack (by Tamu Tamu)
Characters from "The Jungle Book" (close to Expedition Everest)
Mickey Mouse & Minnie Mouse (Adventurers Outpost)
Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers (next to Chester and Hester’s Dinosaur Treasures)
Goofy (across from Flights of Wonder)
Meet Disney Vacation Club executives, 9-11 p.m. (Pizzafari)
Merchandise
Discovery Trading Company
Serka Zong Bazaar
Food & Beverage
Complimentary chips, cookies, ice cream, lemonade, and water will be available throughout the park.The first construction permits have been approved for LOCA @ the Goat Blocks, a mixed use development in the Central Eastside. The project, by developer Killian Pacific and architects Ankrom Moisan, is planned for a vacant site most recently occupied by a herd of goats. The name “LOCA”, according to an article in the Portland Tribune, is “a multiple pun on location, locavore, and crazy.”
The project includes 97,000 square feet of retail space and 247 apartments. The retail portion will be anchored by a hardware store and a grocery store, whose tenants have yet to be announced. 139 vehicular parking spaces will be provided for residents, and 246 for the retail uses. 43 short term and 510 long term bicycle parking spaces will be provided.
The project is mostly located on the vacant superblock bound by SE Belmont St, 10th Ave, Taylor St and 11th Ave. The site also includes portions of the block to the east of SE 11th Ave. The project will read as a number of distinct structures, separated by a series of alleys and streets. The North Building has four floors of apartments above the 25,000 sq ft grocery store. To the west of it is the two story Market Retail Building. The South Building has five stories of apartments above the 40,000 sq ft hardware store. The East Building, across SE 11th, will have three stories of apartments over smaller retail spaces.
The material palette for the Goat Blocks project varies by building. The North Building is primarily clad in orange metal panels, with a tan brick veneer at the grocery store base. The two story Market Retail Building is clad in a metallic grey metal panel. The East Building is a mix of white stucco and charcoal cement board siding. The South Building is primarily tumbled red brick veneer.
The Yamhill Alley begins at the level of SE 11th Ave, and gradually rises as it travels west, until it terminates at a plaza with views towards Downtown Portland. A series of steps then lead down to SE 10th Ave, or up to the Market Terrace, which connects to SE Belmont St. The alleyways are activated by a number of small retail spaces, the smallest of which are only a few hundred sq ft in size. Murals, to be approved through the City of Portland’s Original Art Mural Program, are proposed along the Market Terrace.
LOCA @ the Goat Blocks was approved [PDF] by the Design Commission in August 2014. The approval was appealed by the Central Eastside Industrial Council, who challenged the project because of the large number of housing units it would add to the area, and because of the potential impact to the ability of trucks to maneuverer. The Design Commission’s decision was upheld by the City Council.
This post has been corrected. An earlier version stated the project would have “over 111,000 sq ft” of retail space. The actual number is 97,000 sq ft.
Existing context
Plans, Sections and Elevations
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RedditDavid Miscavige: Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous
There was an interesting post today about how David Miscavige spends parishioner money. And I’ve read and heard other accounts of how he lives.
Let’s put this in context. Here we have most Scientologists scraping and scrimping to get every possible bit of money to the Church. Some people have taken out second or third mortgages. Some have raided their retirement savings, or their inheritances. They’ve gone without that vacation or that new car to contribute every penny they can.
Then, too, we have thousands of Sea Org Members, working for less than $50 a week, with no retirement savings, no possessions, living in communal dormitories and eating cafeteria food.
And then we have hundreds of RPF Members, working seven days a week, year after year, for about $12.00 a week, living in packed dormitories with 30 or 40 other people.
All right, given that context, let’s see how David Miscavige lives.
First, he pays himself a six-figure salary. And that’s without having to pay for housing, food, clothing, or transportation. That’s about forty times what the average Sea Org Member is paid. Over the last 25 years or so, he’s paid himself something like three million dollars.
He wears $5,000 tailored suits, $500 Egyptian cotton shirts, the finest Italian leather shoes. The average Sea Org Member gets his or her uniform supplied, if they are lucky. If they want any other clothing, say something nice to wear on that rare day off, they have to buy it themselves. And if they want underwear, socks, toiletries, any other personal items, they have to buy those things themselves too. Out of their 40 cents an hour.
If he needs to fly somewhere, Miscavige routinely takes a private jet. I guess a commercial flight is beneath him. Apparently millions have been spent to fly Miscavige and his personal staff around the world in the last ten years. If a Sea Org Member has to go somewhere on business, it’s the cheapest flight possible. And if they have to go somewhere for personal reasons, say a family emergency, they (or their family) have to pay.
And for Miscavige’s personal ground transportation? No expense spared. A $50,000 Acura RL for the Int Base. A $25,000 Mazda Miata. An $80,000 Range Rover. A $150,000 bulletproof GMC Van. A $25,000 custom-made motorcycle. A $110,000 BMW M6 bought for him by ASI staff for his birthday. Another $45,000 Acura to use then he’s in Clearwater. Most Sea Org Members don’t own a car, and if they do, it’s an old clunker they can’t afford the insurance on.
Food? A personal chef who travels with him. Haircut? A personal stylist who travels with him. Laundry? Cleaning? Done by personal staff, who are paid 40 cents an hour.
And if he wants to throw a birthday party to impress his friend Tom Cruise? No problem. Dave threw Tom a $250,000 party aboard Freewinds in 2004, and another $250,000 party in 2005. And the food, décor, music and entertainment were all put together by Sea Org Members, paid $50 a week.
Dave needs a place to stay in LA when he’s in town? No problem, purchase a $4,600,000.00 apartment complex.
Miscavige takes lavish personal vacations – including many Caribbean diving trips and a five star tour of Scotland (including cases of sampled Scotch being shipped to Miscavige’s residence afterward).
Once Dave did an event a Celebrity Centre. He was sweating like a pig – it was an outdoor event in LA in August, so not too surprising. He hired an outside video special effects firm to erase the sweat sheen, frame by frame, at a cost of $150,000. Oh, and of course his make-up person (a Sea Org member paid 40 cents an hour) was RPFed for “sabotage.”
This is the world of David Miscavige. A world where he can spend any amount, buy anything he wants, all with millions of parishioner money. Your money. And lord it over the lowly Sea Org Members who surround him.
So now how do you feel about all those sacrifices you had to make to get as much money as you could to the Church?
And if you’re thinking, “Well, he’s worth it, isn’t he? After all, he’s booming Scientology,” then you missed a few earlier posts, like this one and this one.[This article is excerpted from chapter 17 of Human Action: The Scholar's Edition. An MP3 audio file of this article, read by Jeff Riggenbach, is available for download.]
The notion of a neutral money is no less contradictory than that of a money of stable purchasing power. Money without a driving force of its own would not, as people assume, be a perfect money; it would not be money at all.
It is a popular fallacy to believe that perfect money should be neutral and endowed with unchanging purchasing power, and that the goal of monetary policy should be to realize this perfect money. It is easy to understand this idea as a reaction against the still-more-popular postulates of the inflationists. But it is an excessive reaction, it is in itself confused and contradictory, and it has worked havoc because it was strengthened by an inveterate error inherent in the thought of many philosophers and economists.
These thinkers are misled by the widespread belief that a state of rest is more perfect than one of movement. Their idea of perfection implies that no more perfect state can be thought of and consequently that every change would impair it. The best that can be said of a motion is that it is directed toward the attainment of a state of perfection in which there is rest because every further movement would lead into a less perfect state.
Motion is seen as the absence of equilibrium and full satisfaction, as a manifestation of trouble and want. As far as such thoughts merely establish the fact that action aims at the removal of uneasiness and ultimately at the attainment of full satisfaction, they are well-founded. But one must not forget that rest and equilibrium are not only present in a state in which perfect contentment has made people perfectly happy, but no less in a state in which, although wanting in many regards, they do not see any means of improving their condition.
The absence of action is not only the result of full satisfaction; it can no less be the corollary of the inability to render things more satisfactory. It can mean hopelessness as well as contentment.
With the real universe of action and unceasing change, with the economic system which cannot be rigid, neither neutrality of money nor stability of its purchasing power are compatible. A world of the kind that the necessary requirements of neutral and stable money presuppose would be a world without action.
It is therefore neither strange nor vicious that in the frame of such a changing world money is neither neutral nor stable in purchasing power. All plans to render money neutral and stable are contradictory. Money is an element of action and consequently of change.
Changes in the money relation, i.e., in the relation of the demand for and the supply of money, affect the exchange ratio between money on the one hand and the vendible commodities on the other hand. These changes do not affect at the same time and to the same extent the prices of the various commodities and services. They consequently affect the wealth of the various members of society in different ways.XXXTentacion Sorry, Migos... Turns Out You Didn't Jump Me!
XXXTentacion Apologizes to Migos After Blaming Them for Attack
XXXTentacion posted surveillance video of the alleged Migos jumping, and immediately had to apologize to them... 'cause it turns out it wasn't them who attacked him.
X posted the security footage Tuesday, as well as a pic of the 2 guys who actually appeared to jump him. Neither of the guys are Migos members.
As we reported, X initially thought one of the attackers was Takeoff, and blasted him on social media. He also posted a pic of Offset's fiancee, Cardi B.
For the record, the 2 alleged assailants were rockin' "Migo Gang" pendants -- but it's unclear if they have any real connection with the rappers.
X said to Takeoff, in an IG comment, ''From the Bottom of my heart I apologize to you, you only caught in the cross fire of your blood line, blessings."As others have written here before, users should be in control of their information. That’s at the core of privacy. Privacy has two aspects: disclosure and choice. Disclosure means informing users in plain language about the data collected about them and how it’s used. Choice means putting users in control of their data and giving them tools to protect it.
Have you ever wanted to take your web browsing “off the record”? Perhaps you’re using someone else’s computer and you don’t want them to know which sites you visited. Maybe you need to buy a gift for a loved one without ruining the surprise. Maybe you’re at an Internet kiosk and don’t want the next person using it to know at which website you bank.
What if you want to delete your browsing history after the fact, but you don’t want to lose your preferences at websites that you use frequently?
When we began planning IE8, we took a hard look at our customers’ concerns about privacy on the web. As evidenced by some of the comments on this blog during the IE7 days, many users are concerned about so-called “over-the-shoulder privacy”, or the ability to control what their spouses, friends, kids, and co-workers might see.
What about your privacy as you browse the web? As Dean outlined is his post earlier today, there is so-called “3rd-party” content on websites, some of which can gather data about how you browse the web. How do you know what that is, or how to control it?
With respect to privacy, IE8 gives users more choice about controlling what information they keep and exchange. In the first part of this post I’ll describe two Internet Explorer 8 features that help you control your history, cookies, and other information that Internet Explorer stores on your behalf. In the latter part, I’ll describe two more features that can help you control how your browsing history is shared by websites. By default, IE8 browses the web the same way IE7 does.
InPrivate™ Browsing lets you control whether or not IE saves your browsing history, cookies, and other data
lets you control whether or not IE saves your browsing history, cookies, and other data Delete Browsing History helps you control your browsing history after you’ve visited websites.
helps you control your browsing history after you’ve visited websites. InPrivate™ Blocking informs you about content that is in a position to observe your browsing history, and allows you to block it
InPrivate Subscriptions allow you to augment the capability of InPrivate Blocking by subscribing to lists of websites to block or allow.
InPrivate Browsing
If you are using a shared PC, a borrowed laptop from a friend, or a public PC, sometimes you don’t want other people to know where you’ve been on the web. Internet Explorer 8’s InPrivate Browsing makes that “over the shoulder” privacy easy by not storing history, cookies, temporary Internet files, or other data.
Using InPrivate Browsing is as easy as launching a new InPrivate Browsing window. When you’re done, just close the window and IE will take care of the rest.
While InPrivate Browsing is active, the following takes place:
New cookies are not stored All new cookies become “session” cookies Existing cookies can still be read The new DOM storage feature behaves the same way
New history entries will not be recorded
New temporary Internet files will be deleted after the Private Browsing window is closed
Form data is not stored
Passwords are not stored
Addresses typed into the address bar are not stored
Queries entered into the search box are not stored
Visited links will not be stored
Delete Browsing History
In Internet Explorer 7, we added a feature called Delete Browsing History that lets you delete in one click all of the information that IE saves. This is a necessary tool that is a standard feature in all modern web browsers. If there are things in your web browsing past that you want to erase, you can do that easily.
The problem is that usually you don’t want to delete everything! Cookies, in particular, are really useful for storing preferences on websites that you use frequently. Many sites have a “remember me” option, which stores a cookie on your PC and identifies your user account. Other sites, particularly financial websites, will store a cookie on each computer that you use to eliminate extra challenge questions (i.e. “What was your high school mascot?”).
IE8 solves this problem by adding an option that lets you keep cookies and temporary Internet files from websites saved in your Favorites list:
To avoid having your favorite sites “forget you”, simply add them to your Favorites, and make sure the “Preserve Favorites website data” checkbox is selected. IE will preserve any cookies or cache files that were created by websites in your favorites.
Oh – and by the way – we heard your feedback about checkboxes! Now Delete Browsing History will remember your preferences. We also added a “Delete Browsing History on Exit” feature if you really want to keep your history squeaky-clean! To do so, click Tools->Internet Options:
In his post earlier today, Dean outlined some of the privacy issues surrounding third-party content, which powers some of the rich experiences you get on the web today, such as interactive maps and social networking shortcuts (“add to Digg”).
Some third-party content is shared by multiple websites. If you happen to browse to sites that refer to the same third-party resource, i.e. a script, image, stylesheet, information is sent to that third-party. Over time, the third-party can create a profile of which websites you go to, what links you click on, etc. It’s hard to know exactly how your data will be used and with whom it will be shared without reading and understanding the privacy policy of each third-party site providing content to the website you visit,.
Consider this hypothetical example. You walk into a shopping mall. In the middle of the shopping mall, there is someone in front of a kiosk who asks you if he can record what stores you visit while you’re there as part of a survey. In order to do so, he writes down a description of what you look like – not your name – but what you’re wearing, your height, etc. In several of the stores throughout the mall, there are people who identify you based on this data, and record whether or not you visit a particular store. When the mall closes, the surveyors in the store report their tallies back to the kiosk. What the surveyor ends up with is a list of some of the stores you visit while you’re at the mall.
This is analogous to how some third-party content works on the web today. Again, without reading specific privacy policies, it’s hard to say in general what third-parties do with the data (or whether or not they record it at all).
The first difference between this mall example and the real world is that the mall survey is hypothetical. Again, different third-party sites do different things with the data they can collect, and the best way to understand what they actually do is reading their privacy policy. The other major difference between this example and the web is how explicitly users are presented with a choice about sharing their information. Clearly there are benefits to sharing your information, starting with richer experiences. Many web sites rely on third-parties to provide content and services like interactive maps and financial data, or analytics and advertising in order to operate effectively. These third-party services often collect information in order to do their jobs. There are also potential drawbacks, such as privacy risks (who has what information?) and increased exposure to malicious content. Put simply, the web relies on a trade, or value exchange, between users and sites. Information goes back and forth: in exchange for “free” services and content, users “pay” with information, not money. There is nothing wrong with such a trade, as long as users are informed and are in control of the choice.
InPrivate Blocking
InPrivate Blocking is a feature designed to help give you information about third-party content that has a line of sight into your web browsing, and gives you a choice about what information you share with these sites. As Dean mentioned in his post, it’s possible for sites to track users without cookies. The only way to ensure that your data is not disclosed is to block content and prevent communication to sites.
While you browse the web, your IE keeps a local record of which third-party items your browser accesses, and where they were accessed from. For example, if you visit http://www.contoso.com/index.html, which contains the following snippet:
<html>
<head> <title> Contoso.com Homepage </head>
…
<script src=http://www.woodgrove-int.com/tracking.js>
…
</html>
and then visit http://www.wingtiptoys.com/, which contains the same snippet:
<html>
<head> <title> Great deals at Wingtiptoys.com </head>
…
<script src=http://www.woodgrove-int.com/tracking.js>
…
</html>
Woodgrove-int.com is now in a position to know that you’ve been to both contoso.com and wingtiptoys.com.
InPrivate Blocking keeps a record of third-party items like the one above as you browse. When you choose to browse with InPrivate, IE automatically blocks sites that have “seen” you across more than ten sites.
You can also manually choose items to block or allow, or obtain information about the third-party content directly from the site by clicking the “More information from this website” link. Note that Internet Explorer will only record data for InPrivate Blocking when you are in “regular” browsing mode, as no browsing history is retained while browsing InPrivate. An easy way to think of it is that your normal browsing determines which items to block when you browse InPrivate.
InPrivate Subscriptions
Users can augment the capability of InPrivate Blocking with InPrivate Subscriptions. Some users want to protect their privacy, but don’t want to make granular decisions about content to block or allow. Users can delegate these decisions to publishers of InPrivate Subscriptions. Users can subscribe to a list the same way they add an Accelerator, Web Slice, or search provider to IE: by clicking a link on a web page and confirming that they want this functionality:
Under the covers, InPrivate Subscriptions are simply RSS feeds of Regular Expressions that specify sub-downloads to block or allow. Anyone can publish an InPrivate Subscription on their website, just as they can offer an Accelerator or Web Slice on their website. We’ll post details about the file format as part of the updated IE8 Developer’s Guide with Beta 2.
Conclusion
IE8 helps put you in control of your data, both on your PC and on the Web. IE8 Beta 2 is coming soon, and I encourage you to download it and give us feedback.
Andy Zeigler
Program Manager
P.S. Check out Dean and Andy talking about IE8 and Privacy on Channel 9.
Edit: Added a P.S.INDOT has developed the INDOT Mobile App to help motorists with their commute and contacting INDOT. The mobile app will allow for easier use of important traffic information and news updates.
Features of the app include travel maps, Report a Concern, Central Office and district contact information, GovDelivery signup and social media feeds. The app can also send notifications about weather, construction projects and emergency closures.
The INDOT Mobile App is available in the iTunes App Store and the Google Play store for Android.
The primary responsibility of every driver is the safe operation of his or her vehicle. Indiana law prohibits individuals from using a handheld electronic communication device to write, send or read a text message while driving. Drivers under the age of 21 are prohibited from using any electronic communication device while driving.
When in a vehicle, mobile communication devices should only be used by a passenger; or as a driver, when your vehicle is at a complete stop, at a safe location, out of the roadway. Don’t text and drive or use this app while driving.There have been a surprising number of Harley Davidson V-Twin powered cars put together over the years and we've covered quite a few on The Kneeslider. It didn't really strike me how many there were until I saw another example for sale and I started to think about it.
The latest one is this dragster style street rod for sale on eBay. I've never seen anything like this at the strip, but it looks pretty cool and I bet the owner gets a lot of looks on the street. It's powered by an 88 inch Twin Cam up front run though a Toyota gearbox and rear end and there's room for two on the motorcycle seat hidden within the bodywork. The owner says it's street legal and the headlights, taillights and plate seem to back that up. For a car as light as this thing probably is, I'm guessing the performance is pretty reasonable, maybe not real dragster performance, but it looks like a fun build and the appearance is authentic in every other way.
A few years ago this Model T with a Sportster engine showed up for sale. I thought it was pretty interesting. It used the Sportster's gearbox plus an electric reverse. I don't have any more information about it, but the owner's nephew did stop by in the comments who said the top speed was about 80 mph.
The HotRodHawg is a specialty car built and delivered to the customer as a roller chassis and body where you add the engine. It's a tube chassis with fiberglass roadster bodywork that runs the Harley's output through a 3 speed automatic transmission with overdrive. Not a bad looking little car.
This very cool little midget racer from back in the 1930s raced by Bill Vukovich Sr., was powered by the Drake V-Twin, which was a Harley Knucklehead with water jackets to get around the obvious cooling problems when an air cooled engine is hidden inside the bodywork. Nice.
Probably one of the sleekest setups was the Sundoulos Sportstar, a car that was originally designed for V8 power to race in the Grand-Am series until the rules changed on the builders and made the car obsolete before it was finished. The builder decided to salvage the effort and put together a pretty slick side by side V-Twin, two Harley engines mated together, but in an unusual 4 across tandem arrangement instead of in the quad 4 parallel setup you would expect. Gorgeous car, but a few years later they converted to Corvette LS-1 power, though I thought the twin Harley setup was an interesting outside the box concept.
Of course, the Ace Cycle Car, which eventually became the new Morgan 3 Wheeler, had a Harley V-Twin out front and it provides a rather sporty mount for weekend rides. Not a 4 wheeler, but very car like.
As long as we're talking 4 wheelers, it's probably a good time to remind you of the Harley quads, one homebuilt as an ATV and the really sweet looking kits from Q-Tec Engineering in Belgium to convert your Sportster or Softail to a 4 wheeler. They look extremely well done and if you could license them in the US for road use, I bet they would sell quite a few.
You know, if the engine works that well in all of these cars, you might think you could even put one in an airplane,... oh, wait, they're doing that, too..
Like I said, I hadn't given the Harley car idea much thought for a while and when I saw another one I realized they weren't as uncommon you might think. If you watched any of the videos of the new Morgan 3 wheeler, powered by an S&S V-Twin, especially the one with Jay Leno bombing down an English country road, it's apparent these V-Twins, that lots of guys like to say are low powered slugs, are actually very competent power plants, more than capable of a really satisfying and fun experience on four wheels as well as two. Neat stuff.Updated 8.15am
MET ÉIREANN HAS issued two national weather warnings which come into effect this morning as a winter storm sweeps across Ireland.
Storm Barbara has brought heavy wind and rain, and will impact most on the north-west, where there is a Status Orange wind warning in place for coastal regions and areas of high ground in Donegal, Galway and Mayo. Met Éireann said it will be “very windy” with severe gusts of between 100 and 120 km/h.
A status yellow warning is in place for the rest of the country, with gusts of up to 110 km/h expected today. Both of these warnings kicked in at 6am this morning and are in place until 6pm this evening.
A number of ferry crossings were cancelled yesterday and companies are advising customers to check their websites if they are due to travel today.
Coast Guard warning
The Coast Guard is warning people to take care when out on the coast today, saying that anyone planning on engaging in any coastal activities should first check that it is safe to do. It says people should “be mindful of the risks and life threatening dangers that can arise without warning”.
Many people will be engaging in outdoor activities along the coastline, be it on exposed coasts, cliffs, piers, harbour walls, beaches, promenades or other coastal areas.
The simple safety message is; Stay Back, Stay High, Stay Dry.
With regard to Christmas Day swims, the Coast Guard said it is urging the public to only participate in organised swims where medical support and lifeguards are available.
Lone swimming should be avoided and all swimmers should be cognisant that time in the water should be kept to a minimum as even the most experienced of swimmers can easily succumb to cramp or cold water shock.
The three Coast Guard Rescue Coordination Centres based in Malin, Valentia and Dublin, along with the Coast Guard Helicopter service and Coast Guard Volunteer units will all be operating over the holiday period.
If you see anybody in danger at sea, on the coast or on cliffs, call 112 and ask for the Coast Guard.
Safe on the roads
The Road Safety Authority (RSA) has advised road users to exercise caution and to check local weather and traffic conditions before setting out on a trip.
It is telling road users:
Beware of objects being blown out onto the road. Expect the unexpected. Watch out for falling/fallen debris on the road and vehicles veering across the road;
Control of a vehicle may be affected by strong cross winds. High sided vehicles and motorcyclists are particularly vulnerable to strong winds;
Allow extra space between you and vulnerable road users such as cyclists and motorcyclists;
Drive with dipped headlights at all times;
Check tyres and consider replacing them if the thread depth is below 3mm;
It takes longer to stop in wet conditions so slow down and leave extra space between you and the vehicle in front;
Take special care when driving behind goods vehicles as they generate a considerable amount of spray which reduces your visibility;
Be aware of the danger of aquaplaning especially on roads with speed limits of 100 km/h and 120 km/h.
With added risks posed by wet or flooded roads the RSA has the following advice:
If the road ahead is flooded choose another route, do not attempt to drive through it. Flooded roads that appear shallow could be deeper than you think;
After going through water, drive slowly with your foot on the brake pedal for a short distance – this helps to dry the brakes;
Sometimes roads can be closed due to their fragile state after wet weather or because they are blocked by flooding;
Road users should always follow recommended routes and obey signs closing roads to traffic;
Watch out for washed out roads, earth slides, broken water or sewer mains, loose or downed electrical wires, and fallen or falling objects.
Advice to pedestrians and cyclists:
Be seen. Wear bright clothing with reflective armbands or a reflective belt.
Take extra care when crossing the road or cycling in extremely windy conditions as a sudden gust of wind could blow you into the path of an oncoming vehicle.
Walk on a footpath, not in the street. Walk on the right hand side of the road, facing traffic if there are no footpaths.
- Additional reporting Aoife BarrySeattle Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch is not on the trading block, but many in the organization -- including Lynch -- do not expect the running back to be on the roster in 2015, according to sources.
The organization has grown tired of his ways, including pulling a no-show at the White House Super Bowl ceremony, his training camp holdout and his possible contribution to locker-room distractions.
Marshawn Lynch doesn't expect to be with Seattle next season -- and the team feels the same way, sources say. Otto Greule Jr/Getty Images
He might have been available for a trade by Tuesday's deadline, sources said, but fullback Derrick Coleman broke his foot in last week's loss to the Rams, causing backup running back Robert Turbin to be moved into a fullback role. Christine Michael will continue to get some carries.
Meanwhile, quarterback Russell Wilson had nothing to do with the team's recent trade that sent Percy Harvin to the Jets, sources said.
Sources said that Wilson had known for almost a month that the Seahawks were going to trade Harvin and, as ESPN reported last week, Wilson argued with general manager John Schneider and coach Pete Carroll to keep Harvin on the team until he was told it was futile to make a case for Harvin, who had worn out his welcome.
Any "envy" directed toward Wilson in the locker room is more aligned with quarterback dynamics, including the fact the star quarterback has major marketing endorsements, sources said.
Wilson was asked by the organization if he could limit some of his endorsements but they were all filmed during the offseason and his CBA-driven base salary of $662,000 is about half of what backup Tarvaris Jackson makes.
Some of Wilson's income footed the bill to fly his receivers to California for offseason workouts when they were not allowed on facility grounds. Otherwise, in-season, team sources said that he's all football, except for the time he spends at Seattle's Children Hospital on Tuesdays. The so-called divided locker room is very much overstated, sources said.Democratic Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe vetoed a bill Tuesday that would have restricted state funding for Planned Parenthood.
The bill, which passed the state Senate last week, would have restricted the Virginia Department of Health from providing funds to clinics that perform abortions which aren’t covered by Medicaid. Federal rules restrict Medicaid funding for abortions to cases of rape, incest, or the life of the mother.
“It’s time that our General Assembly understands that we have a responsibility to protect the rights and dignity of women,” Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe said at a press conference Tuesday. “Without access to reproductive care and the freedom to exercise choice, women are denied the choice to make deeply personal health decisions.”
McAuliffe spoke about the veto at an event outside the governor’s executive mansion to representatives of Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia and Progress Virginia, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
Elected in 2013, the Virginia Democrat has received nearly $1.9 million in campaign donations from Planned Parenthood organizations. Planned Parenthood
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’re realistic about the fact that not all prospects work out,” Epstein said.
Let’s look at the players the Cubs have. They’re all, obviously, phenomenal talents. But let’s look for some potential blemishes, just because we know they’re not perfect. In Triple-A, Baez has a 62% contact rate. That’s tied for the lowest in the league, and it’s lower than what we saw from George Springer. Baez swings hard and doesn’t walk, and if he doesn’t develop, this could very easily be why. Bryant, in Triple-A, has a 63% contact rate, albeit with better contact than Baez has. Bryant feels like more of a sure thing, but still, he’s not flawless.
Russell has barely played above Single-A. The same goes for Soler. Almora’s still in Single-A and he hasn’t performed like someone as polished as his reputation has previously asserted. His OPS right now is south of.700. McKinney isn’t thought of as a top prospect, and Alcantara could stand to refine his approach. Though he’s taken steps forward in 2014, he has yet to dominate any level, which is something some evaluators look for.
For the sake of fun and simplicity, let’s look at just the Cubs’ top four prospects right now. Let’s say each one has an 80% chance of developing into a good big-league regular. Then there would be just a 41% chance that all four players develop well, meaning there’d be a 59% chance of at least one flaming out for whatever reason or reasons. That’s too simple, and each player doesn’t have an 80% chance, but it’s meant to drive home a familiar message: this crop isn’t collectively going to achieve its ceiling. It’s a virtual guarantee that for one or more of these players, things will go wrong.
How about the other approach? The Cubs have a lot of good players currently playing similar positions. A neat thing about defensive positions is that they aren’t genetic. They aren’t programmed into a player; everything is flexible, negotiable. Jim Thome was drafted as a shortstop. B.J. Upton used to play shortstop. Kenley Jansen used to play catcher. Chris Young used to play basketball. It might be one thing if the Cubs had a stockpile of quality young first basemen, but having too many good athletes gives them a lot of ways they can go.
Epstein, from the article linked above:
“You can never have too many shortstops,” Epstein said. “They end up all over the field.”
[…]
“The good thing is these guys can all fit on the field together, and that would be a very impact group,” Epstein said.
Castro, right now, is a shortstop. As he gets older, maybe he moves to his left or his right. Baez, right now, is a shortstop, but some see him as a second baseman, and he could even shift to the outfield. Russell, right now, is a shortstop, but there’s thought he might grow too big as he matures. Bryant’s a third baseman who might end up in right field. Alcantara’s already shown his flexibility, and Almora’s a center fielder while Soler looks like a right fielder. McKinney, should he develop well, seems to have left field in his future.
Not every player can fit on the same field at once, that much is true, given that Anthony Rizzo is locked in at first base and none of these guys are backstops. But some of these guys are closer than others, and some of these guys might not be able to make it, and all the flexibility means holes can be filled as they need to be filled. The most pressing question people have is what the Cubs will do at shortstop, but short is the most demanding position on the field, and a decent shortstop has the skills to be a decent anything.
Here’s a table of Fan Scouting Report results from 2013. These capture overall league averages.
Position Instincts First Step Speed Hands Release Arm Strength Arm Accuracy Overall 2B 55 55 53 53 54 46 56 53 SS 60 61 59 58 59 60 57 59 3B 55 50 46 54 54 56 53 53 LF 44 51 54 44 44 45 46 47 CF 56 66 70 56 51 44 48 56 RF 50 53 55 50 50 54 53 52
Shortstops have the highest rating in Instincts, Hands, Release, Arm Strength, Arm Accuracy, and Overall. They’re second in First Step and Speed. If a player has demonstrated that he has the ability to play a competent short, then his tools should translate to other positions, given a bit of seasoning. An enormous number of current big-league non-shortstops are converted shortstops. Even if the Cubs elected to move a good defensive shortstop to another position, chances are that player would be even better at the new spot, relative to the rest of the league.
As JD Sussman recently said:
Positional adjustments will be important to determine whether the Cubs can get more value in a trade for one of their infielders than the value they would get from one’s performance boost at a lesser position. However, the notion that, shifting these talents down the defensive spectrum hurts their value to the Cubs isn’t beyond reproach. With the amount of infield talent the Cubs have, another trade is expected, but hardly necessary.
A year ago, people weren’t sure what the Rangers would do about their infield logjam. Despite regularly starting Adrian Beltre, Elvis Andrus, and Ian Kinsler, they managed to give more than 300 plate appearances to Jurickson Profar. Over the winter, Kinsler was moved in part to make some roster space. But Profar’s been hurt and hasn’t played, and Andrus hasn’t done anything to bounce back at the plate, owning a 77 wRC+ since the start of last season. The point being, things happen. Injuries can happen. Disappointments can happen. Regressions can happen. Sometimes you can see a crowded situation coming, but crowded situations result from a number of players simultaneously doing well, and we just can’t count on that as much as we’d like to. Not sustainably, not for very long.
Maybe, down the road, the Cubs will have something of a crowd in the infield and the outfield. Should they get there, it’ll be because they’ve really excelled with their player development. The probability right now is that they’ll have more than enough room for the players who continue to get better. The temptation is to see prospects as the best things they could become, but that hardly ever comes true. So the Cubs should be more than content to sit back and see where these talented players go. They don’t need to rush to diversify, because they don’t have too much of the same things. They might eventually have too much of the same things, but that’s not the same dilemma, and in fact it’s not a dilemma at all. If anything, it’s a blessing. You don’t draft for need because you don’t know what your needs will be by the time the draft pick is ready. And you don’t preemptively make a point of trading from system depth, because system depth and actual depth are two distinctly different things.Early in his career, Nick Offerman was told that he was going to be typecast in a very specific field of rolls: "plumbers and mechanics and bus drivers and farmers." He was understandably upset, so he did what any normal person would do:
My response to that was to get this three-quarter headshot—like, knees to head—with this huge foam latex cock about the size of my forearm and fist that I’d made for a play. I got a headshot taken with this thing hanging out of my fly and just looking defiantly at the camera. I sent it to everybody in town. [Laughs.] That was my response to being told I was gonna be playing bus drivers: “Oh yeah? Have you seen my dick?” And wonderfully, two people in town got it and thought it was really funny, and they put me in plays in their theaters.
I’m gonna go see if I can find this photograph. One of the good things is, I’m super-young. I’m like 22 or 23 in this photo. I’ll be interested to get [my publicist’s] opinion on publishing a photo of me with a huge cock sticking out of my pants, but I believe I’m all for it.
(From the AV Club interview, read the whole thing here.)A render of the renovated Uptown Station building in Oakland Uptown Station/YouTube
Uber has abandoned plans to move into a massive building in Oakland, California and is instead "exploring several options" for the site, including a sale.
The company had planned to turn Uptown Station, a 380,000-square foot building which formerly housed a Sears department store, into an extension of its global headquarters. Uber's more modest current headquarters are located on San Francisco's Market Street.
But Business Insider understands the change of plan is because Uber needs to cut its losses and hit profitability. The company remains hugely unprofitable and is dealing with board-level squabbles over who should be its new CEO, and how to raise future funds.
A spokeswoman told Business Insider: "As we look to strengthen our financial position so we can better serve riders and drivers for the long term, we're exploring several options for Uptown Station, including a sale. We remain committed to serving Oakland and our broader hometown Bay Area community."
We first saw the news on The San Francisco Business Times, which reported that Uber had originally paid $123.5 million (£96 million) for the building.
Rather than having two buildings, Uber will reportedly consolidate its headquarters into a new facility somewhere else in San Francisco.
The ride-hailing firm first announced the Oakland expansion in 2015, promising space for 2,000 to 3,000 employees. But it curtailed its plans in March this year, saying it would downsize to just a few hundred employees in Oakland, though it didn't explain why. The plan then was to lease about half the new office space.
It's not just a disappointment for Uber. Oakland is linked to San Francisco via the Bay Bridge and is seen as its more downmarket, poorer sister. Uber's move was described by Oakland mayor Libby Schaaf as a "game changer" for the city.
The company reported a $645 million (£503 million) loss on Wednesday for the second quarter— lower than previous quarters — on gross ride bookings of $8.7 billion (£6.7 billion).View unanswered posts | View active topics
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Welcome -- please introduce yourself here. If you have privacy concerns, use a user name. This Support Board is for ex-CoC and those wishing to be ex-CoC. Others are asked not to read or post here. Check your email or trash for the email link to activate your account. 191 1717 Sat Feb 23, 2019 12:41 pm chingy79
CoC doctrine, theology and crazy experiences. A place to snark and vent about CoC doctrine and/or our experiences in the CoC. This is a place for SUPPORT and AGREEMENT only, not a place to tell someone their experience and feelings are wrong, or why we disagree with them. 281 5656 Sat Feb 23, 2019 3:09 am ena
Spiritual, Physical, and Emotional Abuse Stress due to family, friends and/or church pressure. This is a place for SUPPORT and AGREEMENT only, not a place to tell someone their experience and feelings are wrong, or why we disagree with them. 130 2406 Sun Feb 24, 2019 12:12 am SolaDude
New Paths Share your personal journey of faith or skepticism. Ask about other Paths. This is a place for Support and Agreement only. 67 1314 Mon Feb 25, 2019 10:37 pm agricola
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Old Paths Reconsidered What is your view of God? The Bible? Christianity? Other religions? Science? CoC doctrine and theology? This is a place to respectfully DISCUSS DIFFERING VIEWS. The focus here is on ideas, facts and theories rather than on supporting needs and feelings. 252 5085 Tue Feb 26, 2019 7:45 pm SeanNational Signing Day isn’t just another day here at DFF. We take Devy seriously and to prove it, we’ve learned as much as we could about the 2017 freshman class just so we can share it with you.
Top Devy RBs in the Class of 2017
Cam Akers | 5’11” 213lbs | Committed to Florida State
Cam Akers is a well built, extremely explosive RB committed to Florida State. He adds in great change of direction, solid vision, and excellent balance. He should be another great RB for the Noles.
D’Andre Swift | 5’10” 214lbs | Committed to Georgia
D’Andre Swift has amazing suddenness and tremendous vision that he uses to find the soft spot in the defense. He adds in some excellent strength and balance that keeps him moving forward. But Swift is also very explosive and can explode upfield at any moment. He will be another excellent RB to add to the list of studs coming out of Georgia.
Khalan Laborn | 5’10” 199lbs | Committed to Florida State
You read that right, TWO FSU commits at the top of my rankings. Laborn is an extremely explosive athlete with good wiggle and vision to boot. He and Akers should provide FSU with an excellent 1-2 punch.
Stephen Carr | 6’0” 203lbs | Committed to USC
Carr is a speedy and ultra-elusive player that is always finding open holes in the defense. He is very sudden and has excellent vision which allows him to constantly keep moving forward. The Trojans should be lining him up sooner rather than later.
Najee Harris | 6’3” 226lbs | Committed to Alabama
Harris is another big, strong power back that will be running for the Crimson Tide. While he is a big back, he has deceptively fast speed and good wiggle for a guy his size. He will be another monster RB for Alabama.
J.K. Dobbins | 5’10” 201lbs | Committed to Ohio State
Dobbins is a very athletic running back with excellent wiggle and agility to make defenders miss. He uses fantastic vision to slice his way through the defense and also has that speed/explosion to take it to the house at any moment. Dobbins will provide a huge spark to the Buckeye’s offense.
Trey Sermon | 6’1” 214lbs | Committed to Oklahoma
Sermon is a very physical runner that isn’t afraid of contact and will run over anyone. He also has good vision and excellent balance that allow him to constantly move forward. Sermon is also a very good receiver for a running back. He should be a “do it all” type of back for the Sooners.
Anthony McFarland | 5’9” 203lbs | Committed to Maryland
McFarland is a smooth runner with a strong, compact frame. He is extremely explosive and uses his speed to continuously break off long runs. McFarland is also an excellent receiver and should be a threat all over the field for Maryland.
Salvon Ahmed | 6’0” 191lbs | Committed to Washington
Salvon Ahmed is an extremely shifty and quick running back committee to the University of Washington. He has excellent agility, suddenness, and vision to find the holes in the defenses then uses his speed to break way.
Brian Robinson | 6’2” 216lbs | Committed to Alabama
Robinson is a strong, physical runner that he combines with excellent balance in order to continue to push forward. He is also very sudden and has the ability to outrun the defense.
The Best of the Rest
Ty Chandler | 6’0” 190lbs | Committed to Tennessee Toneil Carter | 5’11” 198lbs | Committed to Texas Todd Sibley | 5’10” 214lbs | Committed to Pitt Bruce Jordan-Swilling | 6’1” 209lbs | Committed to Georgia Tech Cordarrian Richardson | 5’11” 220lbs | Undeclared** Robert Burns | 5’11” 215lbs | Committed to Miami Travis Etienne | 5’11” 199lbs | Committed to Clemson Zaquandre White | 6’0” 203 lbs | Committed to Florida State Alaric Williams | 6’0” 200lbs | Committed to Auburn Eno Benjamin | 5’10” 203lbs | Committed to Arizona St
Sleeper That Could See a Big Rise
Nathan Tilford | 6’1” 205lbs | Committed to Arizona
Be sure to join the conversation on Twitter at #NSD17 and while you’re there, follow me @_codygarrett as well as our Devy Watch account. If you missed @pacificscouting’s list of top freshmen wide receivers, you can find that here.Chernobyl units 1-3 now clear of damaged fuel
07 June 2016
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The last damaged used fuel assembly from units 1-3 of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant was removed yesterday - from the cooling pool of unit 1 - and transferred to ISF1, a wet-type interim storage facility.
Removal of damaged used nuclear fuel from unit 1 (Image: SSE ChNPP)
State Specialised Enterprise ChNPP, which is responsible for managing the Chernobyl site, noted the work had been completed after the State Inspectorate for Nuclear Regulation of Ukraine (SNRC) had permitted extension of the allotted time for the work beyond 14 April. Damaged fuel from unit 2 was completely removed by 23 April, it added.
On 26 April 1986, the Chernobyl plant suffered the worst nuclear accident in history when a power runaway event wrecked reactor 4. The three remaining reactor units, however, were vital to Ukraine's electricity needs and continued to operate for some years. Unit 2 shut down in 1991, unit 1 in 1996 and unit 3 in 2000. The plant officially entered the decommissioning phase in April last year, following approval by the SNRC. The first phase of decommissioning is the so-called final shutdown and preservation stage, which is expected to take ten years.
In a statement yesterday, SSE ChNPP said a “qualitatively new level of activity” could start at the plant as it enters the decommissioning stage.
Unloading the last of the damaged fuel means the status of the two units has now changed and they are no longer classed as nuclear installations. Once regulatory approval has been received, their status will formally become radioactive waste management facility, as has happened already with unit 3, SSE ChNPP said. This new status will enable work to "speed up", it said, on dismantling equipment and the plant's decommissioning. Accelerating the pace of this work will help SSE ChNPP reduce operating costs and thus the "burden" on the Ukrainian budget, which is partly funding the work.
On 25 April, one day before the 30th anniversary of the accident, the European Commission pledged to the Nuclear Safety Account fund the largest part of the €45 million ($51 million) donated by the G7 and the Commission in addition to existing support. This fund supports in particular the safe decommissioning of units 1 to 3 of the Chernobyl plant.
The Nuclear Safety Account, managed by the London-headquartered European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, funds the construction of a storage facility for used nuclear fuel from the operation of the plant.
The main project currently supported by the fund is the interim used fuel storage facility (ISF2). Its completion is foreseen for 2017. The facility will provide for the processing and storage of the used nuclear fuel from units 1, 2 and 3, which is required for the decommissioning of the plant.
SSE ChNPP announced on 26 November last year that the first ten canisters for ISF2 had been delivered to the site. ISF2 was constructed under a contract Ukraine signed with US-based Holtec International in 2007. It will store all the used fuel on the site for at least 100 years.
The 'double-walled' canisters are "at the heart of" the NUHOMS interim dry storage system to be used at ISF2 for the long-term interim storage of used nuclear fuel from the Chernobyl plant's RMBK-1000 reactors. The purpose of this system is to store the used fuel for the entire design service life of ISF2 in an inert gas environment.
SSE ChNPP said yesterday that "significant delay" in commissioning ISF2 had led to the need to use ISF1 as the main storage area for used nuclear fuel from the plant.
The EU's contribution was announced at the Nuclear Safety Account Pledging Conference that took place in Kiev to mark the 30th anniversary of the accident. This contribution is in addition to those already provided to the Chernobyl Shelter Fund for the construction of the New Safe Confinement (the Shelter) and to other related projects to isolate and ultimately dismantle the unit which suffered the accident. The Shelter, to be completed in 2017, will prevent radioactive releases and contribute to make the site environmentally safe and stable, which is also important to the countries directly bordering Ukraine. The EU is the main donor to this project with around €430 million.
Removal of used nuclear fuel from the Chernobyl plant has been carried out in three stages, SSE ChNPP noted. Firstly, fuel was unloaded from unit 3 and transferred to ISF1. Secondly, all undamaged fuel from units 1 and 2 was removed and transferred to ISF1, while technology for the safe management of damaged nuclear fuel was developed. Thirdly, and completed yesterday, the damaged fuel was removed from units 1 and 2.
All the fuel from unit 3 was removed in 2010 and in December 2012 it received the status of radioactive waste management facility. Work to transfer fuel from units 1 and 2 to the fifth compartment of ISF1 started in December 2011, following'stress tests' that were required following the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan of March that year.
All undamaged used nuclear fuel from unit 2 was removed by 30 November 2012, while the transfer of undamaged fuel from unit 1 was started the following month. All undamaged fuel from unit 1 was removed by 28 September 2013.
Researched and written
by World Nuclear News
Related topicsTesla has put in an offer to buy the solar panel company, SolarCity, which Elon Musk co-founded nine years ago.
The move, interpreted as an effort by Tesla to bolster its clean-energy business, sees Musk’s company offering an all-stock deal that could amount to $2.8 billion (£1.9 billion).
According to Reuters, Elon Musk described the deal as a "no-brainer". In a statement, Tesla said the deal would turn it into the "world's only vertically integrated energy company offering end-to-end clean energy products".
Tesla is primarily known for producing electric cars, but the company also creates home-powering batteries such as the Tesla Powerwall 2. Providing solar energy to power its batteries is a logical move, although given Musk’s role as chairman for SolarCity, there’s a question over why Tesla needs to buy SolarCity rather than closely collaborate.
The answer could be that Musk simply wants to consolidate his two firms. There are suggestions, however, that Tesla is bailing out SolarCity, which according to Reuters has around $6.24 billion in liabilities, including debt.
Tesla said in its statement that it would offer to buy the company for “approximately 21% to 30% over the closing price of SolarCity’s shares”. SolarCity closed with a market cap of $2.14 billion, with a 30% premium lifting the bidding figure to just under $2.8 billion.
SolarCity’s stock has since jumped by over 22%, while Tesla’s has fallen more than 8%.
You can read Tesla’s public offer letter in full here.As previously reported, comments surfaced on Twitter from fans who attended last night's WWE RAW in Omaha, Nebraska claiming that they had been ejected from the arena for chanting for CM Punk.
However, multiple sources have confirmed that this, in fact, did NOT happen after speaking with WWE officials and numerous fans in attendance who confirmed these such reports to be, as PWInsider.com quotes, "100% false."
PWInsider.com further states that while the Twitter comments themselves appeared to be legitimate at first, there was no basis whatsoever behind them. Furthermore, a fan who sent in comments to ProWrestling.net also confirms that despite reports stating otherwise, fans were not ejected for any "CM Punk" chants; however, he noted that some signs were confiscated, but that arena staff were incredibly nice and polite when doing so. This fan also stated that the individuals who had the "My Other CM Punk Sign Was Confiscated" sign that has gone viral were friends of his who gave him the report of some signs being confiscated.
Given the amount of attention this story has received, we at WrestlingNewsSource.com wanted to look into all reports with our trusted sources before posting anything further regarding it. In this case, it has become clear that the initial reports of fans being ejected from the arena last night for any "CM Punk" chants are false.In this tutorial, we will show you how to integrate JSF 2.0 with Spring 3 using :
JSF XML faces-config.xml Spring annotations JSR-330 standard injection
Tools and technologies used :
JSF 2.1.13 Spring 3.1.2.RELEASE Maven 3 Eclipse 4.2 Tomcat 6 or 7
1. Directory Structure
A standard Maven project for demonstration.
2. Project Dependencies
Declares JSF 2, Spring 3, JSR-330 inject, and Tomcat’s dependencies.
pom.xml
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/maven-v4_0_0.xsd"> <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion> <groupId>com.mkyong.common</groupId> <artifactId>JavaServerFaces</artifactId> <packaging>war</packaging> <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version> <name>JavaServerFaces Maven Webapp</name> <url>http://maven.apache.org</url> <dependencies> <!-- Spring framework --> <dependency> <groupId>org.springframework</groupId> <artifactId>spring-core</artifactId> <version>3.1.2.RELEASE</version> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>org.springframework</groupId> <artifactId>spring-web</artifactId> <version>3.1.2.RELEASE</version> </dependency> <!-- JSR-330 --> <dependency> <groupId>javax.inject</groupId> <artifactId>javax.inject</artifactId> <version>1</version> </dependency> <!-- JSF --> <dependency> <groupId>com.sun.faces</groupId> <artifactId>jsf-api</artifactId> <version>2.1.13</version> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>com.sun.faces</groupId> <artifactId>jsf-impl</artifactId> <version>2.1.13</version> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>javax.servlet</groupId> <artifactId>jstl</artifactId> <version>1.2</version> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>javax.servlet</groupId> <artifactId>servlet-api</artifactId> <version>2.5</version> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>javax.servlet.jsp</groupId> <artifactId>jsp-api</artifactId> <version>2.1</version> </dependency> <!-- EL --> <dependency> <groupId>org.glassfish.web</groupId> <artifactId>el-impl</artifactId> <version>2.2</version> </dependency> <!-- Tomcat 6 need this --> <dependency> <groupId>com.sun.el</groupId> <artifactId>el-ri</artifactId> <version>1.0</version> </dependency> </dependencies> <build> <finalName>JavaServerFaces</finalName> <plugins> <plugin> <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId> <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId> <version>2.3.1</version> <configuration> <source>1.6</source> <target>1.6</target> </configuration> </plugin> </plugins> </build> </project>
3. JSF 2 + Spring Integration
Spring’s bean in Spring Ioc context, and JSF’s managed bean in JSF Ioc context, how to make both working together? The solution is defined Spring’s SpringBeanFacesELResolver in faces-config.xml. Check this official Spring guide.
faces-config.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <faces-config xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-facesconfig_2_1.xsd" version="2.1"> <application> <el-resolver> org.springframework.web.jsf.el.SpringBeanFacesELResolver </el-resolver> </application> </faces-config>
See following 3 examples to inject Spring’s bean in JSF managed bean.
3.1. XML Schema Example
Many developers still prefer to use XML to manage beans. With SpringBeanFacesELResolver, just uses EL ${userBo} to inject Spring’s bean into JSF’s managed bean.
UserBo.java
package com.mkyong.user.bo; public interface UserBo{ public String getMessage(); }
UserBoImpl.java
package com.mkyong.user.bo.impl; import com.mkyong.user.bo.UserBo; public class UserBoImpl implements UserBo{ public String getMessage() { return "JSF 2 + Spring Integration"; } }
UserBean.java – JSF backing bean
package com.mkyong; import java.io.Serializable; import com.mkyong.user.bo.UserBo; public class UserBean{ //later inject in faces-config.xml UserBo userBo; public void setUserBo(UserBo userBo) { this.userBo = userBo; } public String printMsgFromSpring() { return userBo.getMessage(); } }
applicationContext.xml – Declares userBo bean
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.5.xsd"> <bean id="userBo" class="com.mkyong.user.bo.impl.UserBoImpl"></bean> </beans>
faces-config.xml – Declares managed bean and inject userBo
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <faces-config xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-facesconfig_2_0.xsd" version="2.0"> <managed-bean> <managed-bean-name>user</managed-bean-name> <managed-bean-class>com.mkyong.UserBean</managed-bean-class> <managed-bean-scope>session</managed-bean-scope> <managed-property> <property-name>userBo</property-name> <value>#{userBo}</value> </managed-property> </managed-bean> </faces-config>
3.2. Spring Annotations – Auto Scan
This example is using Spring annotations. Injects like a normal bean with @ManagedBean, @Autowired and @Component, it just works as expected.
UserBoImpl.java
package com.mkyong.user.bo.impl; import org.springframework.stereotype.Service; import com.mkyong.user.bo.UserBo; @Service public class UserBoImpl implements UserBo{ public String getMessage() { return "JSF 2 + Spring Integration"; } }
UserBean.java
package com.mkyong; import javax.faces.bean.ManagedBean; import javax.faces.bean.SessionScoped; import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired; import org.springframework.stereotype.Component; import com.mkyong.user.bo.UserBo; @Component @ManagedBean @SessionScoped public class UserBean{ @Autowired UserBo userBo; public void setUserBo(UserBo userBo) { this.userBo = userBo; } public String printMsgFromSpring() { return userBo.getMessage(); } }
applicationContext.xml – Enable the component auto scan
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.1.xsd http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-3.1.xsd"> <context:component-scan base-package="com.mkyong" /> </beans>
Mixed use of both JSF and Spring annotations are working fine, but it look weird and duplicated – @Component and @ManagedBean together. Actually, you can just uses a single @Component, see following new version, it’s pure Spring, and it works!
UserBean.java
package com.mkyong; import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired; import org.springframework.context.annotation.Scope; import org.springframework.stereotype.Component; import com.mkyong.user.bo.UserBo; @Component @Scope("session") public class UserBean{ @Autowired UserBo userBo; public void setUserBo(UserBo userBo) { this.userBo = userBo; } public String printMsgFromSpring() { return userBo.getMessage(); } }
3.3. JSR-330 Annotation
Since Spring 3.0, Spring offer supports for JSR-330 injection standard. Now, you can uses @Inject to replace for @Autowired and @Named for @Component. This is recommended to solution, follow JSR-330 standard make the application more portable to other environments, and it works fine in Spring framework.
UserBoImpl.java
package com.mkyong.user.bo.impl; import javax.inject.Named; import com.mkyong.user.bo.UserBo; @Named public class UserBoImpl implements UserBo{ public String getMessage() { return "JSF 2 + Spring Integration"; } }
UserBean.java
package com.mkyong; import javax.inject.Inject; import javax.inject.Named; import org.springframework.context.annotation.Scope; import com.mkyong.user.bo.UserBo; @Named @Scope("session") //need this, JSR-330 in Spring context is singleton by default public class UserBean { @Inject UserBo userBo; public void setUserBo(UserBo userBo) { this.userBo = userBo; } public String printMsgFromSpring() { return userBo.getMessage(); } }
applicationContext.xml – Need component auto scan also
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.1.xsd http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-3.1.xsd"> <context:component-scan base-package="com.mkyong" /> </beans>
4. Demo
Example in 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3 are doing exactly the thing – Inject userBo into JSF bean, just different implementation. Now, create a simple JSF page to show the the result.
default.xhtml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:h="http://java.sun.com/jsf/html" > <h:body> <h1>JSF 2.0 + Spring Example</h1> #{userBean.printMsgFromSpring()} </h:body> </html>
web.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <web-app xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee" xmlns:web="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd" id="WebApp_ID" version="2.5"> <display-name>JavaServerFaces</display-name> <!-- Add Support for Spring --> <listener> <listener-class> org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener </listener-class> </listener> <listener> <listener-class> org.springframework.web.context.request.RequestContextListener </listener-class> </listener> <!-- Change to "Production" when you are ready to deploy --> <context-param> <param-name>javax.faces.PROJECT_STAGE</param
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large man, though they all looked like dolls from the street... They say that the Cathedral of Milan is second only to St. Peter's at Rome. I cannot understand how it can be second to anything made by human hands.
The Gold Madonna at the top of the cathedral
Oscar Wilde visited Milan in June 1875. In a letter to his mother he wrote: "The Cathedral is an awful failure. Outside the design is monstrous and inartistic. The over-elaborated details stuck high up where no one can see them; everything is vile in it; it is, however, imposing and gigantic as a failure, through its great size and elaborate execution."[citation needed]
In Italian Hours, Henry James describes "a certain exhibition that I privately enjoyed of the relics of St. Charles Borromeus. This holy man lies at his eternal rest in a small but gorgeous sepulchral chapel … and for the modest sum of five francs you may have his shrivelled mortality unveiled and gaze at it with whatever reserves occur to you. The Catholic Church never renounces a chance of the sublime for fear of a chance of the ridiculous--especially when the chance of the sublime may be the very excellent chance of five francs. The performance in question, of which the good San Carlo paid in the first instance the cost, was impressive certainly, but as a monstrous matter or a grim comedy may still be. The little sacristan, having secured his audience, … lighted a couple of extra candles and proceeded to remove from above the altar, by means of a crank, a sort of sliding shutter, just as you may see a shop-boy do of a morning at his master's window. In this case too a large sheet of plate-glass was uncovered, and to form an idea of the étalage you must imagine that a jeweller, for reasons of his own, has struck an unnatural partnership with an undertaker. The black mummified corpse of the saint is stretched out in a glass coffin, clad in his mouldering canonicals, mitred, crosiered and gloved, glittering with votive jewels. It is an extraordinary mixture of death and life; the desiccated clay, the ashen rags, the hideous little black mask and skull, and the living, glowing, twinkling splendour of diamonds, emeralds and sapphires. The collection is really fine, and many great historic names are attached to the different offerings. Whatever may be the better opinion as to the future of the Church, I can't help thinking she will make a figure in the world so long as she retains this great fund of precious "properties," this prodigious capital decoratively invested and scintillating throughout Christendom at effectively-scattered points."
Artwork on the door of the Cathedral.
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]On Friday, MSNBC's Chris Matthews blamed the crisis in Egypt on George W. Bush and the Iraq war.
Two days later, climate alarmist extraodinaire Joe Romm blamed it on - wait for it! - global warming:
This summer’s extreme global weather raised fears of a “Coming Food Crisis,” as CAP’s John D. Podesta and Jake Caldwell warned in Foreign Policy: “Global food security is stretched to the breaking point, and Russia’s fires and Pakistan’s floods are making a bad situation worse.” Earlier this month I discussed how, in fact, “Extreme weather events helped drive food prices to record highs.” Back then, experts were worried about food riots. Now they are happening.
The Washington Post reported on the connection between food prices and Tunisian violence in mid-January, in a piece headlined, “Spike in global food prices contributes to Tunisian violence.” [...]
Robin Niblett, director of the Chatham House, was interviewed at Davos (click here) and said the Egyptian riots “were driven partly of course by the rise of food prices.”
NPR had a long story on the subject today, “Rising Food Prices Can Topple Governments, Too.”
After quoting various liberal media sources such as the Post and NPR, Romm reached this hysterical conclusion:
Energy insecurity and climate instability have now become key factors in food insecurity, which in turn has become a key factor in toppling governments. [...]
Those who think that the serious impacts of climate change — and our inane energy policies — on the world economy and U.S. national security are decades away are simply not paying attention.
Those of us that have been monitoring this insanity for years have regularly laughed at all the world's maladies these folks tie to global warming. Dr. John Brignell, a British engineering professor, publishes a growing list of such conspiracy theories at his website Number Watch.
I guess if Egyptians, after decades of poor treatment by a corrupt, authoritarian government, revolt and possibly topple said government, it's because in the past 160 years, the planet's temperature has risen by approximately (and debatably!) one degree Celsius.
Boggles the mind, doesn't it?
(H/T Marc Morano)The Japanese satellite Kaguya has been gone a long time — it crashed into the surface of the moon in June 2009. But the data it collected nearly a decade ago is still revealing incredible lunar secrets, and the Japanese space agency JAXA confirmed Wednesday the existence of an enormous cave in the moon. It’s the perfect place for a moon base.
Kaguya first spotted a giant vertical opening in the moon’s Marius Hills region back in 2009, but it’s only now that analysis of the radar data has revealed just how big this cave is. It’s more than 150 feet wide and deep and is more than 30 miles long. That’s a ton of space for a potential lunar base.
The big advantage of building a base inside such a cave is the natural protection that it would provide from cosmic radiation. The moon has next to no atmosphere, meaning any longtime inhabitants would be exposed to cosmic rays that we don’t have to worry about here on Earth, where we are naturally shielded.
Could the first moon base be built in there?
While we certainly could come up with a way to protect ourselves — and we’re going to have to, if we want long-term habitation of worlds like the moon or Mars — the cave could do the job for us.
There are other advantages, according to JAXA. The cave interior would also shield astronauts from meteorite impacts — again, more of a concern on the moon than on Earth because of the lack of atmosphere — and it would also have a more stable temperature.
It’s thought that this cave and others like it are lava tubes, created by volcanic blasts some 3.5 billion years ago. The team’s full findings are presented in the latest issue of Geophysical Research Letters.THAT REALLY WAS a game that had everything.
It’s never nice to be talking about the referee after a game like today’s because a full Croke Park can be an intimidating place for any official.
Joe McQuillan had a few big calls to make today and it looks like he got some of them wrong at least. The Dublin penalty for example, that looks as if the foul on Paul Flynn occurred just outside the box.
But he was going at such speed it was one of those decisions where some referees would have given a penalty, others would have whistled for a free. In a situation like that there’s an awful lot to be said for being able to go up to the man sitting with a TV in front of him who can call up a replay in seconds.
There was such a high tempo to the game and a lot of hard-hitting from both teams — it was a very physical game — and, to be fair, there were a few incidents he did pick up on but there were a couple more he missed.
A couple of Dublin lads are very lucky they didn’t get the line for straight reds. Philly McMahon appeared to throw the head in on Aidan O’Shea and Johnny Cooper came down very hard on Diarmuid O’Connor’s leg.
I don’t know if he meant it but it looked like he kept coming and hit O’Connor very hard.
Then there was the incident where Diarmuid Connolly was sent off but Lee Keegan only picked up a yellow card. It looked like Lee Keegan stopped him in his tracks and Connolly threw a punch but I thought the Mayo man came back with a follow up to say ‘I’m not stepping back here.’
It’s hard to know why there was a difference in card colour there but maybe television tonight will show it.
They’re big calls and it would be very difficult for any referee. It was Joe McQuillan today but it will be some other referee next time. It’s impossible for one man to pick up on everything.
How a lot of Mayo fans must have felt with 10 minutes to play. Source: Donall Farmer/INPHO
You’d nearly wonder is two referees the way to go because there was just so much going on today? When the game is like that, you’d have to have sympathy for the man in charge, it’s a very, very difficult job.
Bottle
Going into the game, those Mayo players would have been sick of hearing they don’t have the steel or physicality to deal with a game like today but, from what I’ve seen this year, they have that bit extra about them.
They were very physical on and off the ball and turned Dublin over a number of times out of sheer physical presence and when you’ve two teams going like that you’re going to get a tough, bruising encounter like the one we saw.
And when Mayo went seven points down with 10 minutes to play, I sure there were Mayo people saying ‘oh, here they go again.’ But they didn’t and fair play to the Mayo players for the bottle they showed.
I’m sure there were a couple of the Dublin lads thinking ‘we have this in the bag, we’re after breaking them here’ with ten minutes to go. There was one moment that stands out to me. Paul Flynn was flying down the Cusack Stand and there was a pop pass to Bernard Brogan on but he kicked it badly wide instead.
It was one of those shots that only had a one in five chance of going over but it’s the kind of thing you try when you’re six or seven points up. It really wasn’t the right thing to do though.
At this level, if you drop the percentage work-rate by even 2-3% — if just one or two lads switch off and start thinking about the final — you’re going to get punished and I think Dublin were today.
In the end though, the result probably was the fair one over the course of the 75 or so minutes, no team deserved to go home as losers with the display they put in.
Cillian O'Connor slots home a late penalty. Source: James Crombie/INPHO
Dublin’s indiscipline
Coming out of the game, I heard a lot of Mayo people saying they relied too heavily on dead balls today but I think you have to realise that if Dublin players did not commit those fouls, Mayo may have gotten through for scores anyway.
But Cillian O’Connor made sure he punished them. He was just deadly accurate today. Every time Dublin gave away a free inside the 45 you felt he was going to punish them and he did.
He was kicking them off the ground and out of his hands and his penalty was really well struck too.
It may not have been the highest quality of football at times — there was a lot of good play in it having said that — but it was edge-of-the-seat, exciting and there are not too many atmospheres that will match the end of the game today.
Replay
The only thing with a replay is that they rarely live up to the drawn game, we’ve learned that over the years but we’ll all buy into that over the next week.
That said, there’s plenty of great storylines to look forward to. Aidan O’Shea was kept quiet today and I think we’ll see much more from him on Saturday when there’s probably a bit less pressure on him.
We can expect more from Aidan O'Shea the next day. Source: Ryan Byrne/INPHO
We already know what will happen after the All-Ireland final though. If one of these teams loses the final against Kerry we’ll hear how they were tired after the replay and if they win we’ll hear that they benefited from the extra game.
Either way, it is difficult to bounce back from a game like that in six days and the backroom teams will be in overdrive this week to get both teams ready.
At the moment though, I think it’s too hard to call who’ll emerge as winners but you’d imagine it would be a lot tougher for Mayo to recover from conceding 1-4 in the final ten minutes that it may be for Dublin.
Kildare
Just a quick word on the news that Jason Ryan stepped down as Kildare boss this week. I wasn’t surprised when I heard because I think Jason only wanted to commit to one more year whereas the team is in transition and it was felt that maybe having the same man in place for three or four years would be the best course of action.
I think that makes a lot of sense and I feel there’s a desire to get someone from inside the county on board as manager now to bring the young lads on — and there are some good players coming through.
The name on everyone’s lips seems to be Glenn Ryan and I can see why because if you cut Glenn, he bleeds white and that might but be what Kildare needs now.2016 Symposium – James Kalb
Liberalism as a Religion
The strange and increasingly nonfunctional condition of Western political and social life cannot easily be changed, because its causes are quite basic.
To endure any length of time a society needs a coherent system of laws and standards. The system must be capable of attracting loyalty and acceptance of its authority, so it cannot be just a matter of positive law or the will of the powerful. Instead, it must be based on shared understandings of how things are. So a stable and functional society must be based on a common understanding of man, the world, and the goals of life that is thought to be founded on the nature of things and is supported by various conventions, observances, loyalties, and sanctions.
In other words, a functional society must be based on a common culture and what is in effect a religion—an understanding and response to ultimate reality that places man in a larger moral scheme of things. Such an orientation is fundamental, because it provides ultimate standards for resolving basic disputes, principles of connection that tell people what they owe each other, and ways of distinguishing social authority from the will of the powerful.
Such points were obvious to everyone until recently. European monarchies did not doubt them, and it was 1905 before republican France took crucifixes out of schools and law courts, replacing them with the Tricolor. East Asia is often considered rather secular, but China was ruled by the Son of Heaven until 1911 and Japan by a living god until 1945. And in America the Supreme Court asserted as recently as 1952 that “we are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.”¹ (Ten years later, the same court banned prayers and Bible reading from the public schools, and Americans have since substituted sensitivity training, Martin Luther King Day, and the use of metal detectors for more traditional observances.)
Today Western society also has a religion—people are willing to take Crucifixes and Bibles out of courtrooms and schools only when something is ready or almost ready to put there instead—but it is one that dares not speak its name in mainstream discussion.
That reluctance has good cause. The religion of the contemporary West is ultimately based on a cheapened version of Descartes that fudges but relies on his dualism—it would prefer strict materialism but cannot make it work—and excludes the God that gave him his guarantee that thought and sensation line up with physical reality. So it is a philosophically shaky view that people avoid discussing explicitly and dress up in a variety of ways so they can avoid thinking about what they are actually committed to.
In the view now authoritative in public life, the real world is at bottom the one described by modern physics, a purely spatial and quantitative realm that in principle is fully knowable through mathematics and the methods of the modern natural sciences. A society of course also needs a view of morality. In line with the primacy of the physical sciences, people today try to derive it in as concrete and publicly demonstrable a way as possible, consistent with Occam’s Razor understood as a principle that determines what is allowed to exist rather than one that asks what sorts of things are actually needed to explain our experience of the world.
The line of thought is rather unimpressive, and indeed constitutes an abandonment of reason in the name of reason. Subjective experience—thought, sensation, and desire—is somehow layered onto the physical world, but its ultimate status is left unclear. It is believed that it must somehow reduce to the world of modern physics, since anything else would be too weird and too much opposed to the modern dream of exact quantitative understanding and control. How the reduction would work is unimaginable, but the explanation needed to make the system minimally rational is put aside as a debt owed by the future that can be relied on absolutely even though it is recognized that it may never in fact be paid.
With that in mind, people try to tie moral issues as much as possible to the concrete and physical by concentrating on observable preferences. All of us have preferences, and feel that they have some degree of urgency and therefore some claim to satisfaction. All preferences are equally preferences, and we cannot easily compare one person’s feeling of urgency with another’s, so in the absence of tangible grounds for distinction it is assumed that all preferences have an equal claim to satisfaction.
The principle that it is good to satisfy preferences, together with our ability to manipulate the physical world and other people for that purpose, gives rise to our current version of morality and politics. The point of those spheres of life is taken to be construction of a system that satisfies preferences, as much and as equally as possible, subject to the stability, efficiency, and dominance of the system itself. That is the outlook that has convinced our educated contemporaries, at least if we ignore random individual doubts, variations, and add-ons that on the whole cancel each other out, and dominates our public life to the point that it has developed into what amounts to an intolerant and persecuting religion.
The development of that religion involves further logical oddities. Its basic proposition is that each of us establishes the good by his will, since individual preferences are what make things good or bad. The result is that each of us becomes a sort of divinity that creates ultimate moral reality ex nihilo. The United States Supreme Court has put it this way: “at the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”² By making that principle the touchstone for constitutional validity, as it did in the leading case Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the Court has made—or attempted to make, since the effort makes no sense—individual definitions of ultimate reality supremely authoritative in the public order.
On such a view, which is increasingly dominant throughout the West, the social and political problem becomes the problem of complying as much and equally as possible with the will of each of the petty gods that compose the people. A form of political and social life intended to be fully secular thus becomes theocratic and opposition to it blasphemous. Hence political correctness, with its absolute ideals of equality, inclusion, tolerance, and celebrating diversity; hence dogmas such as the radical factual equality of sexes and races, which has recently forced on us transgenderism and women in elite military units; hence all the candlelit vigils, rainbow flags, Martin Luther King days, and other such observances; and hence the abusive treatment accorded skeptics, heretics, and unbelievers who refuse fully to sign on to the project. All those things are expressions of an established religion that is now compulsory, a religion that begins with science and ends by trumping it, since the highest standard among most people, awe before that which is both divine and politically powerful, will always take precedence over lesser standards such as respect for physical evidence.
Like other religions, the religion and system of thought that dominates the contemporary West has strengths and weaknesses. Its great strength is that its principles—whatever the logical gaps—are clear, simple, and forcible in practice, lend themselves to effective propaganda and systems of control, and tell us what to do and how to do it with fewer ambiguities than most other systems of thought. Its extraordinary success transforming Western life is proof enough of that point.
Those principles also align with the active, enterprising, imperialistic, rather ruthless, and ultimately mindless (because anticontemplative) spirit guiding the modern state, modern economic life, and modern technology. They legitimize ruling institutions like global markets and supposedly neutral and expert transnational bureaucracies. Indeed, they make them the only institutions with ultimate legitimate authority. They tell us those institutions are uniquely rational, facilitate their functioning by giving those who dominate them a common understanding of what goals and measures make sense, and help silence the objections of ordinary people by telling them dissent is ignorant, irrational, and presumptively malicious. After all, if you do not accept as the supreme standard equal preference satisfaction achieved through comprehensive technological organization, you must want to suppress some people, enjoy causing them problems as an end in itself, or hate rationality. Why should your views be tolerated?
The outlook now dominant nonetheless has very serious weaknesses that will ultimately destroy it. The greatest is that it is useless as an understanding of human life. Modern thought strives for clarity and power at the expense of completeness. To that end it rejects pattern recognition in favor of mechanistic analysis, and puts all human goals at the same level. In philosophical jargon, it rejects formal and final cause in favor of exclusive reliance on material and efficient cause. That is ultimately why it hates what it calls essentialism, stereotypes, discrimination, and bigotry. Such ways of thinking and acting bring in patterns, distinctions, and understandings of how the world works that it does not want to recognize. Since they are fundamental to ordinary ways of thought, and the arguments against them are not strong, the natural response by those in power is to suppress them through ridicule, abuse, and legal penalties.
The method of mechanistic reduction has been effective in the physical sciences—hence its prestige—but it cannot be used to study everything. Complexly adaptive evolved systems, notably including human beings and societies, are too complicated to analyze in such a way—that point goes back at least to Burke—and must instead be studied by reference to type, function, and tendency. What is the nature of agrarian or industrial society? What are their tendencies? How do they respond to this situation or that? What factors complicate the situation? And likewise for other forms and dimensions of human life.
The modern rejection of pattern recognition discredits such ways of proceeding, and the results of abandoning them are extremely strange. They include, for example, insistence that aspects of human life that are as fundamental as cultural community and sexual connections and distinctions have no legitimate role in the functioning of society. To hold otherwise would mean sexism, racism, homophobia, xenophobia, and other such sins. The denial of human reality is responsible for much of the inability of the modern social sciences to make progress, and the mindlessness of much modern political discussion and policy—for example, the apparent belief of American planners that they could transform Iraq and the rest of the Arab world into Minnesota by eliminating governments, telling the people how great things are in Minneapolis, giving the national police training in correct procedures, and holding elections.
Rejection of patterns also has serious consequences at the moral level. Mechanistic understandings of human life can make sense of reward and punishment, but not identity and loyalty, so modern thought makes it harder and harder for man to see himself as part of a community, nation, or civilization. Hence, for example, the attitude now expected among decent and educated people that it is simply wrong to distinguish a Somalian from a fellow countryman—the evident view is that there is no significant network of obligations that joins us to the one but not the other—so borders should be open to as much immigration as possible from everywhere. Hence also the general disintegration of allegiance, and of willingness to sacrifice personal interest for the sake of something higher. Why be loyal to a social order that is not thought to involve patterns of life that make us what we are? The situation is exacerbated by the insistence on treating human goals as equally valid preferences. If there are no higher goods, why sacrifice for them? Why not be a narcissist?
Liberal modernity tries to avoid such problems in various ways. It puts forth content-free idols like the collectivity, symbolized by the Tricolor that replaced the Crucifix in France. It makes an even more content-free conception—equal freedom, the principle that everyone should be equally able to do and get what he wants—a moral absolute to be worshiped. And it turns the struggle for the vindication and universal triumph of that principle in all departments of life throughout the world into a perpetual jihad worthy of lifetimes of devotion and capable of giving rise to an endless array of saints, heroes, martyrs, and religious observances.
Irrational though it is, the solution has had some success, because nature abhors a vacuum. In spite of current public doctrine, people do not want to live the life of a pig and do not really think all goals are equal. We want what we want, but we want it to make sense, to be worthy of respect, and to be part of an overall pattern of life that we and others can reasonably approve. That means we insist on standards that transcend preference satisfaction and tell us which preferences deserve satisfaction because they are directed toward superior goods.
Content-free idols can serve the function in default of anything else, but they are not satisfying for most people. Making the collectivity an idol worked for a while. It gave everyone something larger and more lasting to identify with and thereby elevated lives and gave them a purpose outside themselves. But its lack of content outside itself meant it could attain convincing practical expression only through the exercise of power and triumph over other collectivities. Two catastrophic world wars and several horrific tyrannies made those drawbacks too obvious to ignore.
So that left equal freedom as the religious ideal that would motivate social order, achieved not through an idolized collectivity but through the kind of universal abstract legal regime symbolized by the UN, the ever-expanding EU, and the bureaucratically-supervised structure of human rights and global trade and development now emerging worldwide.
That is the ideal we now seem stuck with. Devotion to such a regime and its ever-increasing domination of everything everywhere gives those at the top and their hangers-on something larger to have faith in and live by. And it gives people whose business it is to explain the world a way to explain it. But it does not do much for ordinary people, because it is too abstract, inhuman, and distant from everyday life. It also diminishes them. The regime cannot allow the people’s choices to matter, because the point is to make all their choices equal. The practical result is to limit choice to a menu of employment options, consumer goods, and personal hobbies and indulgences that the regime finds easy to provide and manage. After all, how could a regime of universal equal freedom that celebrates diversity and also guarantees individual welfare be possible if ordinary people were allowed to go off, join together, and create situations that might make them unequal, raise awkward issues, or otherwise cause problems?
The specific religious nature of the current regime thus makes it tyrannical as well as blind to basic aspects of life and destructive of humane culture. To make matters worse, the nature of the regime means that it goes to extremes. Common sense and the concept of the normal have to do with the patterns that order everyday life. Public thought today views such things as a mass of prejudice that must be destroyed in favor of expertise and protection of conduct and beliefs that transgress patterns accepted by the people. How long can such an approach be maintained without disaster? Events such as the migrant crisis in Europe and the radical decline of support for established political leaders in America remind us that the long post-World War II period of social and political stability in the West, like other historical periods, will at some point reach its limit and give way to something quite different. What that will be cannot be predicted, but we can be assured, due to the inevitable collapse of the current consensus and the return of a reality principle, that it will not be politically correct.
– James Kalb is an attorney and writer living in Brooklyn, New York. A Catholic convert, he has written on politics, culture, and religion for a number of publications in Europe and the United States. He is the author of two books, The Tyranny of Liberalism: Understanding and Overcoming Administered Freedom, Inquisitorial Tolerance, and Equality by Command (ISI, 2008), and Against Inclusiveness: How the Diversity Regime is Flattening America and the West and What to Do About It (Angelico Press, 2013).
Endnotes:
Citation Style : This article is to be cited according to the following convention: James Kalb, “Liberalism as a Religion” SydneyTrads – Weblog of the Sydney Traditionalist Forum (30 April 2016) <sydneytrads.com/2016/04/30/2016-symposium-james-kalb> (accessed [date]).
The article that appears on this page is the author’s contribution to the 2016 Symposium of the Sydney Traditionalist Forum (STF). The views and opinions expressed in this article are the authors and do not necessarily reflect the policies or views of the STF or its members and affiliates. SydneyTrads is the web page of the Sydney Traditionalist Forum: an association of young professionals who form part of the Australian independent right (also known as “non-aligned right”).
AdvertisementsThe song-and-dance number shows off Santino Fontana and Vincent Rodriguez III's tap skills.
Ex-boyfriends. Who needs them? Definitely not Rebecca Bunch (Rachel Bloom).
On Friday’s “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” Rebecca’s two exes get together for the song-and-dance number, “We Tapped That Ass,” that reminisces about all times and all the places, they made sweet, sweet love to her around her house. The routine offered Greg (Santino Fontana) and Josh (Vincent Rodriguez III) to show off some of their amazing footwork.
READ MORE: ‘Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’ Gives the Season 2 Scoop on Rebecca’s Delusions and More
“‘[We Tapped] That Ass”’is very much kind of a throwback to old Gene Kelly musicals. So we draw our references from all over and it sort of has to serve the joke,” co-creator Aline Brosh McKenna told a group of reporters at a screening for the episode. “And doing an old-school tap number like you would with Gene Kelly or Donald O’Connor, but having it be about tapping someone’s ass. That was a happy day in the writer’s room, when they figured out that ‘[We Tapped] That Ass’ was tap. That was a happy day… If you notice, there aren’t a lot of cuts in it, it’s a lot of wides, you see their feet. It’s not cut in an MTV way, it’s cut in a very classic way, so you can really see that they’re extraordinary dancers, both of them.”
Check out the exclusive sneak peek of “We Tapped That Ass” below:
“Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” airs Friday at 9 p.m. on The CW.
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Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.From the files of the Total Mac Beginner Dept.: Some things on a Mac require System Preferences fiddling to fix—keyboard settings, Expose/Spaces, and so on. Press Option and the related function key, and up comes the related preferences.
Original image via bfishadow.
Commenter akers_ tested this out on his up-to-date MacBook and #tips box. Hold the Option key and hit the MacBook's special screen brightness adjuster, and you get your screen/power preferences. Option+Volume button brings up sound preferences, Option+"Dashboard" loads the Expose/Spaces preferences. Not all of the keys work—Option+Play/Pause simply launches iTunes—but the crucial preferences are all available.
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It's a good one—I've had a MacBook in my house for nearly a year now, and had no idea. For some of you, this may be old hat, and we're suitably impressed—no need to tell us so in the comments, if you catch our drift?
Options+Function Key for System Preferences [#tips]Staten Island Rep. Michael Grimm will be indicted following a two-year federal investigation of his business dealings and fund-raising activities, his attorney said Friday.
The charges against the former FBI agent and Marine are being handled by the US Attorney Loretta Lynch in Brooklyn, who has scrutinized more than $500,000 in campaign contributions the two-term GOP congressman raised with the help of an Israeli citizen named Ofer Biton.
But a law-enforcement source said the charges will be related to Grimm’s “shady restaurant dealings.”
Before he went to Washington in 2010, Grimm was a partner in an Upper East Side eatery called Healthalicious with Bennett Orfaly, who had ties to the Gambino crime family.
The congressman’s lawyer claimed the feds were conducting a witch hunt.
“After more than two years of investigation plagued by malicious leaks, violations of grand-jury secrecy, and strong-arm tactics, the US Attorney’s Office has disclosed its intent to file criminal charges against Congressman Grimm,” lawyer William McGinley said in a statement late Friday.
“We are disappointed by the government’s decision, but hardly surprised. From the beginning, the government has pursued a politically driven vendetta against Congressman Grimm and not an independent search for the truth. Congressman Grimm asserts his innocence of any wrongdoing.”
Federal agents have been looking into Grimm for at least two years, including his link to Biton, an Israeli citizen who pleaded guilty to a visa violation last year.
Grimm relied on Biton’s connections to raise more than $500,000 from followers of a mystical New York City rabbi named Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto. Many of those donations were suspected to be in violation of campaign finance laws.
The timing of the impending indictment could not have come at a worse time for Republicans.
It’s unlikely that Grimm’s criminal case will be resolved before the November election, so the GOP could be stuck with a damaged incumbent on the ballot.
Staten Island Republican chairman John Antoniello declined comment on whether he would try to replace Grimm as the party’s candidate.
Grimm was already facing a strong challenge from former Brooklyn Democratic Councilman Domenic Recchia. The district covers south Brooklyn as well as Staten Island.
“They are drinking champagne at Recchia’s HQ,” a Democratic source said.The Seattle Seahawks on Friday night ruled running back Marshawn Lynch out of Sunday's wild-card playoff game against the Minnesota Vikings.
The comeback path of running back Marshawn Lynch took a strange turn Friday when he told the Seahawks after practice that he couldn’t play and did not accompany the team to Minnesota for Sunday’s wild-card playoff game against the Vikings.
The Seahawks indicated all week that Lynch, who underwent abdominal surgery Nov. 25, would return for the game. He was listed as a full participant for Friday’s practice and could be seen afterward shooting baskets with the Seahawks’ other tailbacks during coach Pete Carroll’s news conference.
But Lynch did not board a bus to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and did not make the flight to Minneapolis with the Seahawks. The Seahawks released a statement Friday night that said Lynch had been declared out and added, “Following our final workout Friday he felt like he couldn’t play.”
Carroll had sent mixed signals during the day about Lynch’s availability.
Carroll said during his radio show Friday morning on KIRO 97.3 that: “He’s going to play. And he’s looked really good in practice. He’s practiced as hard as he ever has throughout the week just to prove to himself that he was right, I think, as well as everybody else. So he’s ready to go, and we are anxious to see him fit in.”
But when he met the media around 2 p.m. following practice Carroll said: “I have not said yet that he’s playing. I know that’s been out there, but I don’t know until we finish the week. He’s looked really good, and we’re hoping so. Very optimistic about it.”
Lynch was listed as a full participant for practices Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, and coaches said they thought there was no reason he couldn’t assume his regular role in the offense.
But after practice Friday, Carroll said, “I don’t know really’’ if Lynch would play against the Vikings and added that the team would have to assess how he responds to a full week of work.
“He’s questionable,” Carroll said. “We got to go tomorrow and make sure he’s OK after today, that same old thing. We just want to see how he’s taking to the week’s work and all of that. He looked good during the week and did some really good stuff, but we’ll just use all of the time that we have available.”
That Lynch was able to fully participate in practices week — something he rarely does during the season — had sent further signals that he would be back.
And the rest of Carroll’s comments about Lynch indicated nothing but optimism.
“It’s been a great week,’’ Carroll said. “He’s taken every rep that we needed him to this week.’’
Carroll said Lynch appeared a little leaner than when he was with the team earlier this season and added, “He looks really good, really trim. And that’s a sign of the hard work and him being really tuned into it. He does look very good.’’
But for now, the Seahawks will have to wait at least one more week — if there is another week — to get Lynch back.
Lynch has played in just seven games this season and not since since the Nov. 15 home loss to Arizona. He had abdominal surgery Nov. 25 in Philadelphia and then spent much of the next month or so in the Bay Area working out with MMA trainer Tareq Azim.
The team said it was OK with that arrangement, noting that Azim has a close relationship with Seattle offensive-line coach and run-game coordinator Tom Cable and that Lynch had worked with Azim in previous offseasons.
That the arrangement seemed different was evident, though, on one Wednesday when Carroll told the media Lynch was not with the team yet, only for the media a few hours later to walk to practice and see Lynch watching the workout through a window.
Carroll referred to Lynch as “off-site” and “at-large” during the time he was rehabbing in the Bay Area.
The team initially
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4 4 108 15 30 0.500 0 4 0.000 0 0 0.000 30 7.5 14 22 36 9.0 1 20 3 8 2 (Total) 7 4 130 18 35 0.514 0 4 0.000 0 0 0.000 36 5.1 16 25 41 5.9 1 28 4 9 3 Derrick Chandler 6 3 176 15 27 0.556 12 17 0.706 0 0 0.000 42 7.0 9 35 44 7.3 4 16 8 5 1 Detric Golden 8 3 183 21 44 0.477 14 21 0.667 0 5 0.000 56 7.0 2 9 11 1.4 23 3 10 0 8 Donald Bates 3 0 31 4 7 0.571 2 2 1.000 1 3 0.333 11 3.7 3 2 5 1.7 0 4 2 0 4 Roy Jones Jr. 13 9 435 23 73 0.315 1 4 0.250 0 9 0.000 47 3.6 7 42 49 3.8 36 24 17 0 19 Orlando Ranson 3 0 24 4 11 0.364 0 0 0.000 1 2 0.500 9 3.0 1 2 3 1.0 0 5 2 0 3 Michael Reese 1 0 13 1 3 0.333 1 2 0.500 0 0 0.000 3 3.0 0 3 3 3.0 0 2 1 0 0 Marshod Fairweather 4 2 76 3 23 0.130 1 2 0.500 1 7 0.143 8 2.0 4 5 9 2.3 0 13 10 0 1 Morris Jordan 3 0 36 2 7 0.286 2 2 1.000 0 1 0.000 6 2.0 1 1 2 0.7 1 5 1 1 1 Lonnie Benjamin 8 0 101 5 13 0.385 1 5 0.200 0 0 0.000 11 1.4 5 17 22 2.8 0 9 2 3 1 Jermaine Ealker 0 0 0 0 0 0.000 0 0 0.000 0 0 0.000 0 0.0 0 0 0 0.0 0 0 0 0 0 Ron Hale 0 0 0 0 0 0.000 0 0 0.000 0 0 0.000 0 0.0 0 0 0 0.0 0 0 0 0 0 Ryan Hoover 0 0 0 0 0 0.000 0 0 0.000 0 0 0.000 0 0.0 0 0 0 0.0 0 0 0 0 0 Clifford Rozier 2 1 19 0 3 0.000 0 0 0.000 0 0 0.000 0 0.0 1 2 3 1.5 1 6 4 0 0 TOTALS 18 4420 674 1398 0.482 434 627 0.692 62 200 0.310 1844 102.4 208 520 728 40.4 268 398 299 61 162 OPPONENTS 18 4420 747 1584 0.472 347 515 0.674 75 251 0.299 1916 106.4 257 510 767 42.6 327 452 316 58 149 Statistics thru 05/30/00 KANSAS G GS MIN FGM FGA Pct. FTM FTA Pct. 3PM 3PA Pct. PTS Avg. OR DR REB Avg. AST PF TO BS ST Martin Lewis 16 14 528 98 203 0.483 79 106 0.745 12 43 0.279 287 17.9 48 71 119 7.4 36 52 32 13 30 Bryant Basemore 15 13 530 101 217 0.465 43 58 0.741 6 23 0.261 251 16.7 38 88 126 8.4 63 33 41 10 31 Billy Thomas 16 14 608 82 203 0.404 49 59 0.831 26 88 0.295 239 14.9 21 48 69 4.3 51 37 47 5 34 Reggie Bassette 16 13 345 71 144 0.493 29 47 0.617 1 1 1.000 172 10.8 37 62 99 6.2 12 49 31 16 12 John Brown 16 2 328 68 115 0.591 32 54 0.593 0 1 0.000 168 10.5 38 62 100 6.3 33 35 46 12 9 Jerrod West 16 9 484 47 126 0.373 32 48 0.667 26 75 0.347 152 9.5 5 34 39 2.4 107 31 29 2 35 Tony Kitt 8 0 98 24 43 0.558 19 31 0.613 0 0 0.000 67 8.4 14 32 46 5.8 4 21 6 8 5 Greg Simpson 11 5 247 38 78 0.487 7 10 0.700 8 22 0.364 91 8.3 7 24 31 2.8 32 21 14 0 12 Mac Irvin 16 0 304 50 114 0.439 16 31 0.516 13 34 0.382 129 8.1 15 36 51 3.2 46 45 36 3 17 Desmond Ferguson 11 0 157 30 78 0.385 3 9 0.333 16 46 0.348 79 7.2 15 8 23 2.1 10 10 5 0 6 Cortez Barnes 3 0 32 3 9 0.333 2 2 1.000 1 3 0.333 9 3.0 3 1 4 1.3 2 1 4 0 3 Jason Perez 8 0 67 10 22 0.455 3 7 0.429 1 6 0.167 24 3.0 3 5 8 1.0 6 3 6 0 4 Reggie Geary 7 0 106 8 29 0.276 2 5 0.400 2 7 0.286 20 2.9 3 9 12 1.7 18 15 11 0 4 Cory Jenkins 3 0 21 1 5 0.200 5 7 0.714 0 0 0.000 7 2.3 2 2 4 1.3 1 6 1 1 0 Sean Riley 15 0 110 9 22 0.409 6 11 0.545 0 0 0.000 24 1.6 10 18 28 1.9 8 29 4 2 3 TOTALS 16 3965 640 1408 0.455 327 485 0.674 112 349 0.321 1719 107.4 259 500 759 47.4 429 388 313 72 205 OPPONENTS 16 3965 626 1324 0.473 329 507 0.649 58 204 0.284 1639 102.4 236 506 742 46.4 319 383 330 65 200 Statistics thru 05/30/00 LONG ISLAND G GS MIN FGM FGA Pct. FTM FTA Pct. 3PM 3PA Pct. PTS Avg. OR DR REB Avg. AST PF TO BS ST John Strickland 2 0 73 21 33 0.636 14 29 0.483 0 0 0.000 56 28.0 11 4 15 7.5 3 6 9 2 1 Chudney Gray 17 13 636 125 254 0.492 51 71 0.718 23 52 0.442 324 19.1 16 66 82 4.8 91 56 63 2 38 Rashad Scott 1 1 31 6 10 0.600 5 10 0.500 0 0 0.000 17 17.0 4 8 12 12.0 0 3 3 0 0 Tariq Kirksay 17 4 449 94 203 0.463 64 81 0.790 25 66 0.379 277 16.3 41 93 134 7.9 27 52 36 14 19 Lloyd Daniels 1 0 44 6 14 0.429 2 3 0.667 2 5 0.400 16 16.0 1 6 7 7.0 3 3 8 0 0 Daune Woodward 6 1 205 35 76 0.461 21 30 0.700 0 6 0.000 91 15.2 6 12 18 3.0 28 14 15 1 10 Jackie Robinson 14 9 477 71 152 0.467 47 81 0.580 0 2 0.000 189 13.5 48 57 105 7.5 14 43 27 3 10 Troy Bowers 3 0 77 17 31 0.548 5 10 0.500 0 0 0.000 39 13.0 4 10 14 4.7 0 7 7 1 1 Derek Brown 6 4 140 30 72 0.417 15 24 0.625 3 15 0.200 78 13.0 6 19 25 4.2 5 14 9 1 6 Brian Reese 11 7 290 44 74 0.595 38 52 0.731 0 0 0.000 126 11.5 22 40 62 5.6 31 20 29 5 4 Andre Howard 18 12 461 65 147 0.442 27 41 0.659 1 5 0.200 158 8.8 29 53 82 4.6 11 46 33 14 4 William McFarland 12 1 230 33 78 0.423 22 32 0.688 1 2 0.500 89 7.4 24 24 48 4.0 4 34 10 3 5 Howard Brown 7 5 165 18 52 0.346 9 14 0.643 3 15 0.200 48 6.9 7 13 20 2.9 11 19 11 1 8 Christian Felix 2 0 30 5 8 0.625 3 4 0.750 0 0 0.000 13 6.5 0 2 2 1.0 2 2 2 0 0 Brian Ehlers 15 0 225 29 70 0.414 19 22 0.864 13 34 0.382 90 6.0 6 22 28 1.9 17 24 13 1 8 Rasheed Sparks 7 0 158 14 35 0.400 8 12 0.667 3 15 0.200 39 5.6 7 13 20 2.9 7 16 12 4 8 Ndongo Ndiaye 3 1 68 6 20 0.300 4 8 0.500 0 2 0.000 16 5.3 7 4 11 3.7 2 9 5 9 1 Boris Akyurt 2 0 27 4 7 0.571 2 3 0.667 0 0 0.000 10 5.0 0 2 2 1.0 0 0 1 0 0 Rob Haskins 8 4 129 18 48 0.375 3 12 0.250 1 4 0.250 40 5.0 5 7 12 1.5 3 23 6 5 4 Shannon Henry 11 0 167 13 36 0.361 21 30 0.700 0 5 0.000 47 4.3 7 14 21 1.9 4 23 11 1 4 Darren DeSchryver 3 2 49 3 7 0.429 0 2 0.000 0 0 0.000 6 2.0 0 3 3 1.0 2 6 2 1 1 Acosta Kittles 8 0 48 5 14 0.357 2 2 1.000 4 9 0.444 16 2.0 0 1 1 0.1 2 8 2 0 2 Axel Calderon 4 0 52 2 8 0.250 1 8 0.125 0 0 0.000 5 1.3 3 8 11 2.8 3 12 6 2 1 Marcell Scott 5 0 40 2 8 0.250 1 2 0.500 1 4 0.250 6 1.2 3 4 7 1.4 3 5 4 0 3 Neil Edwards 5 0 49 1 7 0.143 2 4 0.500 0 0 0.000 4 0.8 3 5 8 1.6 1 7 0 1 0 Dawan Allison 0 0 0 0 0 0.000 0 0 0.000 0 0 0.000 0 0.0 0 0 0 0.0 0 0 0 0 0 Rob Haskins 0 0 0 0 0 0.000 0 0 0.000 0 0 0.000 0 0.0 0 0 0 0.0 0 0 0 0 0 TOTALS 18 4320 667 1464 0.456 386 587 0.658 80 241 0.332 1800 100.0 260 490 750 41.7 274 452 324 71 138 OPPONENTS 18 4320 642 1376 0.467 445 618 0.720 79 203 0.389 1808 100.4 183 506 689 38.3 297 421 314 69 170 Statistics thru 05/30/00 NEW JERSEY G GS MIN FGM FGA Pct. FTM FTA Pct. 3PM 3PA Pct. PTS Avg. OR DR REB Avg. AST PF TO BS ST Ray Tutt 2 0 48 12 24 0.500 11 13 0.846 1 3 0.333 36 18.0 1 2 3 1.5 2 4 0 1 1 Marshall Grier 16 10 455 84 174 0.483 89 106 0.840 0 0 0.000 257 16.1 22 32 54 3.4 28 47 24 3 20 Mark Blount 11 5 314 64 105 0.610 42 59 0.712 0 0 0.000 170 15.5 20 55 75 6.8 8 26 36 21 5 Aubrey Reese 15 2 363 80 170 0.471 66 81 0.815 3 15 0.200 229 15.3 14 39 53 3.5 50 37 44 2 26 Fred Herzog 16 9 407 84 182 0.462 39 45 0.867 1 13 0.077 208 13.0 10 53 63 3.9 28 56 26 6 14 Terell Baker 17 13 488 58 136 0.426 62 77 0.805 7 17 0.412 185 10.9 10 64 74 4.4 70 53 52 4 37 John Robinson 17 12 446 60 124 0.484 41 55 0.745 2 6 0.333 163 9.6 10 36 46 2.7 22 34 30 1 13 Tunji Awojobi 9 2 211 33 65 0.508 17 27 0.630 0 1 0.000 83 9.2 7 26 33 3.7 12 11 21 1 9 Rashon Turner 17 2 367 45 88 0.511 41 66 0.621 0 1 0.000 131 7.7 44 52 96 5.6 8 46 34 12 22 Dewy Fergusson 13 0 240 36 73 0.493 21 28 0.750 5 11 0.455 98 7.5 9 17 26 2.0 4 36 12 0 8 Hakeem Ward 16 6 311 48 85 0.565 14 18 0.778 0 0 0.000 110 6.9 25 44 69 4.3 10 53 21 12 11 William Cunningham 2 0 19 5 7 0.714 1 2 0.500 0 0 0.000 11 5.5 2 3 5 2.5 1 2 0 0 0 Ishua Benjamin 17 2 308 21 45 0.467 8 12 0.667 1 7 0.143 51 3.0 6 27 33 1.9 15 32 13 3 16 David Capers 1 0 5 1 1 1.000 0 0 0.000 0 1 0.000 2 2.0 0 0 0 0.0 0 0 1 0 0 Antoni Wyche 7 0 85 5 8 0.625 4 8 0.500 0 0 0.000 14 2.0 2 6 8 1.1 2 12 6 1 1 Gene Nabors 3 0 12 1 2 0.500 2 2 1.000 0 0 0.000 4 1.3 1 0 1 0.3 1 2 1 0 0 Tracey Walston 2 0 13 1 2 0.500 0 0 0.000 0 0 0.000 2 1.0 3 1 4 2.0 3 3 2 2 0 John Giraldo 1 0 5 0 1 0.000 0 0 0.000 0 1 0.000 0 0.0 0 0 0 0.0 0 2 0 1 0 Alvin Robinson 3 2 33 0 2 0.000 0 0 0.000 0 0 0.000 0 0.0 1 4 5 1.7 0 4 2 1 1 (Total) 6 2 49 0 5 0.000 1 1 1.000 0 0 0.000 1 0.2 3 4 7 1.2 0 8 2 1 1 TOTALS 17 4130 638 1294 0.493 458 599 0.765 20 76 0.263 1754 103.2 187 461 648 38.1 264 460 325 71 184 OPPONENTS 17 4130 623 1329 0.469 393 591 0.665 61 215 0.284 1700 100.0 238 460 698 41.1 236 387 340 78 132 Statistics thru 05/30/00 OKLAHOMA G GS MIN FGM FGA Pct. FTM FTA Pct. 3PM 3PA Pct. PTS Avg. OR DR REB Avg. AST PF TO BS ST Willie Burton 16 14 525 87 200 0.435 115 177 0.650 11 43 0.256 300 18.8 40 107 147 9.2 20 58 43 30 18 Ira Newble 5 3 164 32 65 0.492 23 27 0.852 1 5 0.200 88 17.6 10 12 22 4.4 4 15 5 0 3 Bubba Wells 14 11 395 78 169 0.462 53 70 0.757 10 27 0.370 219 15.6 15 44 59 4.2 18 22 22 3 11 David Hairston 6 3 170 37 75 0.493 9 12 0.750 10 29 0.345 93 15.5 10 8 18 3.0 10 15 9 9 7 Darren McClinton 10 6 263 50 103 0.485 25 31 0.806 18 42 0.429 143 14.3 3 20 23 2.3 44 10 19 3 8 Damian Owens 6 1 152 30 58 0.517 8 14 0.571 4 9 0.444 72 12.0 3 15 18 3.0 6 9 10 2 14 Galen Young 14 5 367 57 156 0.365 37 61 0.607 7 25 0.280 158 11.3 23 57 80 5.7 16 41 39 8 17 Chianti Roberts 19 15 579 86 133 0.647 36 59 0.610 1 8 0.125 209 11.0 42 82 124 6.5 39 78 41 6 31 Brett Robisch 15 12 438 68 146 0.466 20 23 0.870 0 1 0.000 156 10.4 37 61 98 6.5 25 62 26 4 11 LaBradford Smith 5 0 119 17 40 0.425 11 16 0.688 5 14 0.357 50 10.0 1 13 14 2.8 11 15 8 1 7 Malik Dixon 2 2 53 9 22 0.409 1 2 0.500 0 2 0.000 19 9.5 3 3 6 3.0 8 3 5 0 3 Steve Hart 19 3 348 61 123 0.496 51 82 0.622 2 11 0.182 175 9.2 15 20 35 1.8 27 27 28 5 9 Doug Gottllieb 17 8 404 39 95 0.411 18 35 0.514 2 12 0.167 98 5.8 3 24 27 1.6 106 29 41 4 28 Jervaughn Scales 2 0 18 5 8 0.625 1 2 0.500 0 0 0.000 11 5.5 5 7 12 6.0 1 4 1 1 0 Adrian Peterson 17 5 300 31 93 0.333 11 15 0.733 1 17 0.059 74 4.4 16 25 41 2.4 7 20 9 0 10 Richard Dumas 1 0 20 2 8 0.250 0 0 0.000 0 1 0.000 4 4.0 0 2 2 2.0 0 1 1 1 0 Johnny Tyson 13 2 189 20 36 0.556 10 17 0.588 0 0 0.000 50 3.8 15 33 48 3.7 13 19 12 10 5 Mylo Brooks 2 0 19 2 3 0.667 2 2 1.000 0 0 0.000 6 3.0 1 1 2 1.0 0 2 2 0 1 Eric Coley 4 0 51 1 5 0.200 8 10 0.800 0 0 0.000 10 2.5 3 6 9 2.3 6 11 0 1 5 Brian Montonati 3 0 26 3 10 0.300 0 0 0.000 0 0 0.000 6 2.0 3 4 7 2.3 2 8 4 0 1 Alonzo Richmond 5 0 18 1 3 0.333 6 14 0.429 0 0 0.000 8 1.6 2 2 4 0.8 2 3 0 1 1 Will Carrolton 1 0 2 0 0 0.000 0 0 0.000 0 0 0.000 0 0.0 0 0 0 0.0 0 0 0 0 0 Lou Moore 2 0 15 0 1 0.000 0 0 0.000 0 0 0.000 0 0.0 1 1 2 1.0 0 5 0 0 0 TOTALS 19 4635 716 1552 0.461 445 669 0.665 72 246 0.293 1949 102.6 251 547 798 42.0 365 457 325 89 190 OPPONENTS 19 4640 728 1623 0.449 402 605 0.664 82 270 0.304 1940 102.1 255 518 773 40.7 354 545 347 41 187 Statistics thru 05/30/00 PENNSYLVANIA G GS MIN FGM FGA Pct. FTM FTA Pct. 3PM 3PA Pct. PTS Avg. OR DR REB Avg. AST PF TO BS ST Kwan Johnson 18 15 760 158 366 0.432 100 143 0.699 30 88 0.341 446 24.8 16 57 73 4.1 67 42 58 1 38 Ace Custis 17 14 700 134 285 0.470 69 85 0.812 6 26 0.231 343 20.2 53 108 161 9.5 56 80 36 6 48 Lonnie Harrell 8 0 234 43 103 0.417 24 27 0.889 18 47 0.383 128 16.0 5 20 25 3.1 14 26 19 1 12 Ronnie Fields 18 10 465 102 216 0.472 68 84 0.810 5 15 0.333 277 15.4 24 63 87 4.8 27 79 44 3 32 Dominic Young 17 14 580 75 199 0.377 24 37 0.649 19 75 0.253 193 11.4 14 31 45 2.6 99 35 59 0 51 Larry Abney 18 3 441 70 138 0.507 43 64 0.672 0 0 0.000 183 10.2 52 73 125 6.9 6 63 21 7 17 Monte O'Quinn 18 13 373 50 102 0.490 38 54 0.704 0 1 0.000 138 7.7 34 60 94 5.2 5 49 21 4 9 Tony Rutland 18 1 346 31 86 0.360 27 31 0.871 15 45 0.333 104 5.8 7 24 31 1.7 40 41 16 1 28 Rafael Bigus 15 1 181 31 48 0.646 15 26 0.577 0 0 0.000 77 5.1 16 23 39 2.6 6 43 21 3 4 Otis Hill 9 0 96 17 30 0.567 4 7 0.571 0 0 0.000 38 4.2 8 11 19 2.1 1 21 8 3 2 Louis Davis 3 0 23 2 6 0.333 6 7 0.857 1 3 0.333 11 3.7 1 0 1 0.3 1 3 3 1 0 Johnny McCrimmon 3 0 34 2 3 0.667 4 5 0.800 0 0 0.000 8 2.7 4 4 8 2.7 0 3 3 2 1 Lief Nelson 9 2 88 7 16 0.438 3 4 0.750 0 1 0.000 17 1.9 2 9 11 1.2 0 11 3 2 0 Mickey Curley 1 0 8 0 1 0.000 1 1 1.000 0 0 0.000 1 1.0 0 0 0 0.0 0 2 0 1 0 Damon Jones 3 1 17 1 5 0.200 0 0 0.000 0 0 0.000 2 0.7 0 2 2 0.7 0 2 2 0 0 Anthony Stacey 9 1 45 2 9 0.222 1 1 1.000 0 0 0.000 5 0.6 1 1 2 0.2 0 3 1 1 1 Stefan Ciosici 4 0 21 0 1 0.000 1 2 0.500 0 0 0.000 1 0.3 1 5 6 1.5 1 6 1 0 1 Rob Haskins 1 0 7 0 3 0.000 0 0 0.000 0 2 0.000 0 0.0 0 0 0 0.0 1 2 0 0 0 (Total) 9 4 136 18 51 0.353 3 12 0.250 1 6 0.167 40 4.4 5 7 12 1.3 4 25 6 5 4 TOTALS 18 4419 725 1617 0.448 428 578 0.740 94 303 0.310 1972 109.6 238 491 729 40.5 324 511 316 36 244 OPPONENTS 18 4419 683 1492 0.458 487 667 0.730 72 229 0.314 1925 106.9 223 517 740 41.1 308 454 400 69 177 Statistics thru 05/30/00 WASHINGTON G GS MIN FGM FGA Pct. FTM FTA Pct. 3PM 3PA Pct. PTS Avg. OR DR REB Avg. AST PF TO BS ST A Reynolds-Dean 2 1 68 16 30 0.533 4 5 0.800 2 3 0.667 38 19.0 6 18 24 12.0 5 6 5 0 2 Raphael Edwards 8 4 285 55 126 0.437 34 46 0.739 0 3 0.000 144 18.0 21 47 68 8.5 12 30 24 6 11 Curt Smith 1 1 28 7 15 0.467 0 0
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the whole working population. And much of it still going unnoticed.’
*Harvey SB et al (in prep). Are Australians becoming more mentally ill? Results from the Australian National Health Surveys between 2001 and 2011.
Background Briefing is investigative journalism at its finest, exploring the issues of the day and examining society in a lively on-the-road documentary style.The bombshell videotape that threw Donald Trump’s presidential campaign into turmoil had been sitting on a shelf at NBC, ignored for more than a decade, according to reports.
Until Monday, when one of the producers of the network’s entertainment-news show “Access Hollywood’’ remembered the taping session with the show’s co-host Billy Bush, CNN reported Saturday, quoting an unidentified source.
Executives at the network reviewed it and decided that in light of Trump’s trashing of former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, the forgotten tape could make big news.
It did.
Executive producer Rob Silverstein looked at it and found that Trump bragged to Bush, “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything... Grab them by the p- - -y. You can do anything.’’
It also included Trump claiming to have tried unsuccessfully to get Bush’s co-host at the time, Nancy O’Dell, to have sex with him.
“We were debating what to do’’ with the tape, another NBC source told CNN.
By Friday, the report said, Silverstein decided to broadcast it — but not until Monday, the day after the second presidential debate.
That turned out to be a yuuuge mistake on the network’s part — it got scooped on its own story.
Silverstein soon got the bad news that The Washington Post had somehow gotten hold of the tape.
The newspaper said one of its reporters, David Fahrenthold, had a copy given to him by a source.
The newspaper’s story said the tape was not leaked anonymously; Fahrenthold knows the person who provided it.
Fahrenthold then called NBC for comment.
That’s when the network’s producers got an October surprise of their own, “blindsided” by their own scoop, according to CNN.Please explain this: Obama is incredibly unpopular, and Obamacare is one of the main reasons, yet some Republicans are now saying it's here to stay. That is flat-out unacceptable. GOP -- heal thyself.
You don't have to be a radical to understand that the GOP is afraid of its own shadow half the time, that it is suffering from an identity crisis and that it often lacks the courage of its convictions.
We've learned that it's not enough for Obama to be the worst president in the past billion years. Republicans have to give the voters a reason to vote for them and not just against his party.
Don't assume I'm being inconsistent because I have previously rejected the claim that Republicans don't have any plans to offer on health care, the economy and the rest. They definitely do, and they have offered numerous concrete ideas to reform health care, restructure entitlements, reverse our reckless course on taxing and spending, deregulate our administrative leviathan, and rebuild our national defenses.
What I'm saying -- and I've said this before -- is that they have to start acting as if they passionately believe in their ideas and they believe they must be adopted soon. They must make clear their urgency about our dire national situation and quit downplaying it because they're afraid of looking extreme or afraid of receiving an electoral spanking from a growing percentage of voters who are dependent on government.
Let's have more faith in the electorate. Let's have more faith in Americans. Let's not write everyone off because the Obama economy has placed so many in desperate economic straits and on some kind of government assistance.
Republicans have a duty to sell their ideas and to quit running from them. Those who want to grovel to the voters as a lesser version of the Democratic Party ought to be kicked to the curb. This country will not be saved by liberal lite. We must have a 180-degree reversal of our present course.
It has taken a while, but finally the public is waking up to Obama's destructive effect on this country. Even with a conspiratorially dishonest liberal media downplaying every negative bit of news concerning Obama and his policies, the public is still catching on. Many of Obama's formerly die-hard supporters are obviously grasping that he can no longer credibly blame his predecessor for his litany of policy disasters.
The latest Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor poll shows Obama's approval at 41 percent, "near the lowest level ever recorded in the 20 Heartland Monitor Polls since April 2009." Also: "Only one in four adults say his actions are increasing economic opportunity for people like them, also among his worst showings in the polls." Obama's numbers are particularly bad "in the seven red-leaning states" where Democrats are trying to defend their Senate seats in November.
Democrats can derive no comfort from polls showing that Congress is even less popular. These generic congressional polls always show Congress in disfavor with the public, but they have little correlation to congressional elections, especially compared with presidential approval ratings.
As I've recently written, Obama is pushing his income inequality meme as the latest iteration of his divide-and-conquer electoral strategy, but this poll suggests it's falling flat. Voters are wising to the disconnect between Obama's rhetoric and his results. They know you don't expand opportunity by beating up the rich. Even if they don't know that, they know that his policies are not remedying the problems of which he constantly complains. This poll shows that Obama's no longer escaping blame for the state of the economy.
Further, the poll reveals that only 27 percent said they believe the country is moving in the right direction, and a whopping 62 percent said it is on the wrong track. Think about that for a moment. Finally, people are awakening to the reality that Obama -- not George W. Bush -- "built this" economy. It's on him.
As such, it's time for Republican members of Congress such as Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers to dispense with this talk about Obamacare's being here to stay. There is no room for fatalism in a party that needs to recapture the imagination and support of the American people.
Obamacare is not here to stay. Thoughts to the contrary are noxious to the republic. Do not let this president succeed in completing his destruction of the best health care system in the history of the world just because it might be difficult to disentangle ourselves from Obamacare's poisonous tentacles.
Republicans, quit looking over your shoulders; believe in yourselves. Rediscover your backbone. Full repeal. Full reversal of Obamanomics. Pro-growth policies. Reinvigoration of the free market. Full restoration of America's strength and greatness."Trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see."
"Hundreds of trillions in unfunded liabilities."
"Washington is broke."
Those are the kinds of lines you hear from politicians (and even some smart people) all the time as Washington DC debates the Fiscal Cliff and so on.
But there's a couple of things you should know about the deficit.
One is that talking about this "Trillion dollar deficit hole" is basically nonsense.
As Paul Krugman points out in a recent post, the current deficit is mostly about the slump in the economy combined with the standard counter-cyclical spending, that naturally tapers off as the economy improves.
He notes two key numbers: One is that, if the economy were operating at about full potential (as measured by the CBO) the government would be collecting about $450 billion more in taxes. The other is that since the crisis, spending on "income security" (Food stamps, unemployment benefits, etc.) has jumped by about $250 billion. As such, it's probably safe to surmise, that just a return to economic normality, would entail a deficit closure of around $600 billion.
That still leaves $400 billion in deficit, but guess what, that's okay. That's less than 4% of GDP, which is the pace of nominal GDP growth. As long as your deficit isn't bigger than nominal GDP growth, your national debt isn't growing.
If you want to have a real discussion about how large/unsustainable government spending is, you don't want to use periods of economic abnormality, such as the last few years (just as you wouldn't want to go back to the Clinton years, and say that the government was a model of sustainability, because the dot-com bubble led to a surge in tax revenue). You have to cyclically adjust the deficit to have a real starting point, and if you do that now, then everything now is basically fine.
The other key point is that all this talk about spending cuts and tax hikes to close the deficit is basically just fantasy.
History is pretty clear on how you reduce the deficit: Get growth, and reduce unemployment.
We ran this chart earlier this week to show how nicely deficit/GDP and the unemployment rate correlated with each other. Throughout these decades tax and spending policies have changed a lot, but it clearly hasn't mattered. When unemployment drops, deficit/GDP drops. When unemployment rises, deficit/GDP rises. Growth is the only deficit reduction policy that matters.
But, but, what about those charts showing Medicare spending soaring as far as the eye can see?! Won't they swamp us, even if the economy grows?
Two things on this:
First, Medicare spending has already exploded from 2.5% of GDP to 9.7% of GDP. And yet the relationship between unemployment and deficits remains stable. And as Krugman notes above, our cyclically adjusted deficit still isn't that big compared to GDP. So the exploding entitlement doom charts are questionable just based on past evidence.
Heritage
But beyond that, as economist James Galbraith noted in an interview with Business Insider, these Medicare scare charts aren't real economic forecasts, but just "budget baselines" done by the CBO for the purpose of scoring the cost of bills. In reality, if Medicare costs were to explode like people anticipate, then overall GDP would grow a lot (because we'd be talking about healthcare being over 50% of the economy) and the rate of inflation for everything would have to rise to pick up for it. So there is an internal inconsistency to these charts.
So bottom line are three key points:LadySabastian ROCKED her first exchange! I am so grateful for this gift.
First off, I received a very large and nice box. It weighed 9 pounds! When I opened it, I was greeted with a ton of packing peanuts. I dug inside and found a parcel of 3 wrapped packages and a "Santa sack" full of more gifts!
I opened the sack first, and it contained a ton of snacks (peppermint Flipz, a boatload of Reese's cups, lemon and mint Milano cookies); various toys for my cat (catnip bird, 7 jingle/crinkle toys, a laser, and a bag of salmon treats); and 5 pairs of Harry Potter socks that I had on my amazon wishlist. Sweet!
I opened the card next, and it had a very nice note along with a $25 gift card for Hollister which is great because I need new jeans very badly. Wow. At this point, this is already more than I expected, and I still have three wrapped gifts to open!
The first package contained a Christmas book about squirrels! Squirrels are my very favorite animal and this is adorable. The author of the book makes little scenes outdoors and waits for her wild squirrels to come and interact with her sets... uh, cute as heck!
The second package had a World of Warcraft cookbook! The recipes look delicious, and the art inside is incredible. Love! I can't wait to try some of these out.
The third package contained a Harry Potter puzzle! OMG. This puzzle is challenging. The pieces are very odd shapes, and so much of it is the same color. I am not often challenged by puzzles, so I'm in heaven with this one. My boyfriend and I got started on it right away, and even put on The Sorcerer's Stone in the background while we worked, since that's what movie the puzzle scene is from. :) I dug into the Flipz while we worked!
LadySabastian, I hope you receive an equally thoughtful and wonderful gift from your Santa. Please know that this was one of my very favorite gifts from RedditGifts exchanges, and this is coming from a "seasoned veteran." I can tell that a lot of care and thought went into this present, and it was above and beyond.
Merry Christmas!Last week Mark Shuttleworth announced plans for Ubuntu to move away from X towards Wayland. Granted it is a long a time away, but a lot of people commended Canonical for such an important decision, which can potentially take desktop Linux to the next level (graphics wise).
Well here is more good news, from Red Hat this time. In a post in the Fedora mailing list, Adam Jackson of Red Hat, has said that Fedora will eventually switch to Wayland. Like Shuttleworth, he also said that Wayland is not stable enough and did not put an exact time frame. However, he said that Wayland might be packaged in Fedora 15 – for developers to play around with it.
This is what Jackson wrote:
Wayland's not a usable default yet. It'll probably be packaged in F15 as something you can play with. We don't even have a complete list of transition criteria yet, let alone a timeframe for switching the default. But it's likely to happen eventually because it's a serious win for a lot of things, and the downsides are pretty negligible despite the fear from the peanut gallery.
[source: Fedora Mailing List via: Phoronix]Every programmer and person who’s tried learning to code looks up code snippets to find the best way to develop their programs. Bing’s there to help now, with over 80 common code examples that can be edited and executed in your search results.
When you search for a common programming term, such as “bubble sort Python” or “Python array,” the new widget should appear. You can also switch the programming language to C, C++, C#, PHP, or Java to compare. Click the Run button, and you’ll see the code executed.
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Not every programming example or term will be presented here; we still need Stack Overflow! But Bing (with assist from HackerRank) has just become a more useful tool for developers and those learning to code.
HackerRank Partners with Bing to Help You Find Solutions Faster | HackerRank via TechCrunchIt’s no secret — well, no longer a secret — that a United States Air Force research laboratory once proposed developing a chemical “weapon” that when dropped on enemy camps, would act as a potent aphrodisiac and turn everyone gay.
Funny, we always just assumed that’s what they put in the fog machines at circuit parties.
But for readers who aren’t familiar with the government’s so-called “gay bomb,” it might surprise you to learn that what sounds like a diabolical 1950s plan ripped from the cutting room floor of Dr. Stragelove, was actually conceived of in 1994.
The same year Ace Of Base saw “The Sign” and the Cranberries asked if we had to let it “Linger,” some government-paid shill sat in a basement in Ohio trying to actualize a gay bomb. 1994 is also the year the Clinton administration enacted Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
And even if you do remember the story, which broke in 2007 through a Freedom of Information Request by the Sunshine Project, and went on to earn the lab the Ig Nobel Prize (the Razzie awards of the scientific community) the same year, chances are you haven’t actually seen the documents in question.
The entire thing reads like a high school science fair project gone very wrong, starting with the title — “Harassing, Annoying, and ‘Bad Guy’ Identifying Chemicals”:
It goes on to suggest such brilliant ideas as dropping chemicals that would attract aggressive rodents to enemy camps, and chemicals that would give enemies an “annoying” smell.
And then at the top of page two — “Category #3: Chemicals that effect [sic] human behavior so that discipline and morale in enemy units is adversely effected [sic]. One distasteful but completely non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behavior. Another example would be a chemical that made personnel very sensitive to sunlight.”
You can find the full three-page document here, which goes on to request such technological gems as a chemical that would “attract bees and cause them to sting.”
It concludes that “Some chemicals should only be used on enemy forces, while others could be used on mixtures of enemy personnel and civilians.” How very comforting.
The whole thing would be a lot funnier if it wasn’t so real, though that didn’t stop Tina Fey from taking up the subject in an episode of 30 Rock about a year later:Democratic senators are pushing back against the news that reporters will be barred from filming or recording audio of interviews in the Senate hallways without special permission, with many lawmakers noting that the restrictions come as the Senate considers high-profile courses of action on Russian election interference and an ObamaCare repeal bill.
Many Democratic senators tweeted about the crackdown on press access after reports of the new restrictions surfaced Tuesday.
Television reporters will now need permission from senators, the Senate Rules Committee, the Senate sergeant-at-arms or the Senate Radio and TV Gallery, depending on location, before conducting an on-camera interview with a senator anywhere in the Capitol or in the Senate office buildings, according to a Senate official familiar with the matter.
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A Senate Democratic aide said the decision to substantially curtail the access of television reporters was made unilaterally by Senate Rules Committee Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.).
The new rules come as Senate Republicans rush to finish an ObamaCare repeal bill, which Minority Leader Charles Schumer Charles (Chuck) Ellis SchumerBrennan fires back at'selfish' Trump over Harry Reid criticism Trump rips Harry Reid for 'failed career' after ex-Dem leader slams him in interview Harry Reid: 'I don't see anything' Trump is doing right MORE (D-N.Y.) brought up in a tweet criticizing the rules.
Some Democratic senators said lawmakers shouldn't need to avoid the press, emphasizing the importance of free press.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar Amy Jean KlobucharMore than 60 former staffers defend Klobuchar as ‘a mentor and a friend’ Warren Buffett: I would support Bloomberg if he ran for president Warren vows to forgo 'fancy receptions or big money fundraisers' MORE (D-Minn.) called for reporting at the Capitol to be allowed to "proceed as usual."
Other Democratic senators referenced the GOP's healthcare proposal, saying the GOP is trying to "hide" from its plan.
As ranking member of the Senate Rules Committee I call on the majority to allow reporting in the Capitol to proceed as usual. — Amy Klobuchar (@amyklobuchar) June 13, 2017
Senators shouldn't need to hide. We serve the people & they have a right to know what we are doing. https://t.co/HqGadvoQQu — Kamala Harris (@SenKamalaHarris) June 13, 2017
The new restrictions break years of precedent, which previously set that “videotaping and audio recording are permitted in the public areas of the House and Senate office buildings,” according to the Radio and TV Gallery website.
The new rules also provoked pushback from some GOP senators, with Sen. Ben Sasse (Neb.) calling them a "bad idea."This article is about the village in Worcestershire. For the slang term, see glans penis
Bell End is a village in the English county of Worcestershire. It is situated approximately 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) south-east of Hagley on the A491, north of Bromsgrove and close to Kidderminster, Stourbridge and Halesowen. It lies in the local government district of Bromsgrove.
The village lies about 1.5 miles (2.4 km) east of Belbroughton.
On the western side of the village is Bell Hall, a Victorian Gothic mansion on the site of the original manor house. It was built in 1847 for Charles Noel, later a High Sheriff of Worcestershire, by the architect Edward Smith of Oldswinford.[1] In 2010 the property was offered for sale at £3.5m.[2]
The village shares its name with the British slang for the glans penis.[3][4][5]"The U.S. does the bidding of the State Department and the CIA."
"[...] people are just pissed off this game is rigged."
New leak traces back to Soros and others, journalist saysLuke Rudkowski of We Are Change gave his take on the leakedrecently via a YouTube vid titled "Panama Papers Psyop, Complete Inside Job by Real Elite," published Tuesday.In the video Rudkowski says that the largest leak in journalistic history is engineered by the "top of the top elites to get rid of their lower competition."Rudkowski explains in the video that the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) is the agency responsible for organizing the leak along with George Soros's Open Society Foundation, USAID, the Ford Foundation, the Carnegie Endowment, the Rockefeller Family Fund, the W K Kellogg Foundation and the U.S. Government.Rodkowski also explains how USAID has been complimenting the CIA on high tech propaganda and destabilization.Rudkowski said that the "Panama Papers are an inside job."Shepard Ambellas is an activist, journalist, filmmaker, film producer, radio talk show host and the founder and editor-in-chief of Intellihub.Joyce Mackie bags groceries at a Big Y supermarket in Manchester, Conn on Sept. 23, 2011. AP Photo
(CBS News) - Experts gathering this week at the Reuters Food and Agriculture Summit in Chicago said an estimated 30 to 50 percent of the food produced globally goes to waste.
Reuters reports that on average, Americans throw away about 33 pounds of food each month which adds up to 396 lbs. in lost groceries a year, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Food production also hurts the environment by taking the world's water supply, emitting greenhouse gases and consumes a large amount of energy and chemicals.
As the world's population rises so too does demand for food and pressure on farmers. By 2050, experts estimate the population will grow from an estimated 7 to 9 billion people.
A growing population means more demand and high food prices.
NRDC specialist Dana Gunders said that no matter how sustainable farming is, "If the food's not getting eaten... it's not a good use of our resources."
Depending where you live, waste comes in different forms. For developing nations, food spoils more readily if it is not properly refrigerated. In wealthier Western countries, people often throw away good food.
In 2010 alone, 33 million tons of food ended up in landfills and incinerators across the United States, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
The EPA have suggested some possible solutions including recycling unused food to shelters and soup kitchens, while clarifying the difference between "sell by" and "use by" dates. That could help some people from throwing away their produce too soon.A team of security researchers has discovered a new malware campaign called WireLurker that targets Apple's desktop and mobile devices. Currently aimed at Chinese users, the team says it's "the biggest in scale we have ever seen."
Palo Alto Network explains that the malware has so far infected 467 applications designed for Apple's Mac OS X operating system. It's done that via a third-party Chinese Mac application store called the Maiyadi App Store. Over the last six months, those applications have been downloaded over 356,104 times—possibly infecting the Macs of hundreds of thousands of users.
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But the malware also appears to infect iOS devices when they're plugged into a Mac via USB."WireLurker monitors any iOS device connected via USB with an infected OS X computer and installs downloaded third-party applications or automatically generated malicious applications onto the device, regardless of whether it is jailbroken," explains Palo Alto Networks. "This is the reason we call it 'wire lurker.'"
It seems that WireLurker sits on a Mac, constantly listening for USB connections, then immediately infects iOS devices when they're plugged in. The malware appears to give access to all user data on the phone, from the address book to iMessage. But, interestingly, the malware so far hasn't been used to exploit anyone's device, says Palo Alto Networks. Rather, those behind it "are still preparing for an eventual attack."
It's worth remembering that this malware is very much China-focused right now, so there's not too much need to worry about being infected just yet. Apple is currently patching the vulnerability, though it's not clear when the fix will be ready. [Palo Alto Network via NYT]The Centre has said that Supreme Court’s repeated criticism of the ministry of home affairs for “inaction” on the list of websites with child pornographic content provided by petitioner Kamlesh Vaswani was the principal trigger for the blocking of 857 of them.“The ministry has taken action on the basis of the list of adult websites showing child pornography as provided to the court by petitioner,” additional solicitor general Pinky Anand told TOI on Monday.The law officer said the ministry would soon file an affidavit in the Supreme Court explaining its action taken on the issue raised by the petition even as she emphasized only those adult websites which had child pornographic content were blocked.On July 8, the SC had criticized the MHA for its inaction on the list provided by Vaswani and Anand had promptly assured the court that all necessary action would be taken within a month. “The ministry will soon file a response to the petition and detail the action taken. All necessary steps under the Information and Technology Act will be taken,” she had said. Though the bench headed by Chief Justice H L Dattu had exhorted the MHA to take action against websites with child pornographic content, it had raised a fundamental issue when Vaswani’s counsel Vijay Panjwani persisted for blocking of all websites with adult content.The CJI-headed bench had said, “It is an issue for the government to deal with. Can we pass an interim order directing blocking of all adult websites? And let us keep in mind the possible contention of a person who could ask what crime have I committed by browsing adult websites in private within the four walls of my house. Could he not argue about his right to freedom to do something within the four walls of his house without violating any law?” The petition was filed in 2013 and then UPA government had requested the court to adopt a restrained approach. Through then additional solicitor general K V Vishwananthan, it had told the court that en mass blocking of websites for porn content could prove counter-productive.He had explained to court that good, bad and ugly websites could all get blocked if the petitioner’s approach was to be implemented. “Everything would be blocked and even good literature would be blocked and it would cause greater harm,” he had said.The Outsider
Unhappy is he to whom the memories of childhood bring only fear and sadness. Wretched is he who looks back upon lone hours in vast and dismal chambers with brown hangings and maddening rows of antique books, or upon awed watches in twilight groves of grotesque, gigantic, and vine-encumbered trees that silently wave twisted branches far aloft. Such a lot the gods gave to me—to me, the dazed, the disappointed; the barren, the broken. And yet I am strangely content and cling desperately to those sere memories, when my mind momentarily threatens to reach beyond to the other.
I know not where I was born, save that the castle was infinitely old and infinitely horrible, full of dark passages and having high ceilings where the eye could find only cobwebs and shadows. The stones in the crumbling corridors seemed always hideously damp, and there was an accursed smell everywhere, as of the piled-up corpses of dead generations. It was never light, so that I used sometimes to light candles and gaze steadily at them for relief, nor was there any sun outdoors, since the terrible trees grew high above the topmost accessible tower. There was one black tower which reached above the trees into the unknown outer sky, but that was partly ruined and could not be ascended save by a well-nigh impossible climb up the sheer wall, stone by stone.
I must have lived years in this place, but I cannot measure the time. Beings must have cared for my needs, yet I cannot recall any person except myself, or anything alive but the noiseless rats and bats and spiders. I think that whoever nursed me must have been shockingly aged, since my first conception of a living person was that of somebody mockingly like myself, yet distorted, shrivelled, and decaying like the castle. To me there was nothing grotesque in the bones and skeletons that strewed some of the stone crypts deep down among the foundations. I fantastically associated these things with everyday events, and thought them more natural than the coloured pictures of living beings which I found in many of the mouldy books. From such books I learned all that I know. No teacher urged or guided me, and I do not recall hearing any human voice in all those years—not even my own; for although I had read of speech, I had never thought to try to speak aloud. My aspect was a matter equally unthought of, for there were no mirrors in the castle, and I merely regarded myself by instinct as akin to the youthful figures I saw drawn and painted in the books. I felt conscious of youth because I remembered so little.
Outside, across the putrid moat and under the dark mute trees, I would often lie and dream for hours about what I read in the books; and would longingly picture myself amidst gay crowds in the sunny world beyond the endless forests. Once I tried to escape from the forest, but as I went farther from the castle the shade grew denser and the air more filled with brooding fear; so that I ran frantically back lest I lose my way in a labyrinth of nighted silence.
So through endless twilights I dreamed and waited, though I knew not what I waited for. Then in the shadowy solitude my longing for light grew so frantic that I could rest no more, and I lifted entreating hands to the single black ruined tower that reached above the forest into the unknown outer sky. And at last I resolved to scale that tower, fall though I might; since it were better to glimpse the sky and perish, than to live without ever beholding day.
In the dank twilight I climbed the worn and aged stone stairs till I reached the level where they ceased, and thereafter clung perilously to small footholds leading upward. Ghastly and terrible was that dead, stairless cylinder of rock; black, ruined, and deserted, and sinister with startled bats whose wings made no noise. But more ghastly and terrible still was the slowness of my progress; for climb as I might, the darkness overhead grew no thinner, and a new chill as of haunted and venerable mould assailed me. I shivered as I wondered why I did not reach the light, and would have looked down had I dared. I fancied that night had come suddenly upon me, and vainly groped with one free hand for a window embrasure, that I might peer out and above, and try to judge the height I had once attained.
All at once, after an infinity of awesome, sightless, crawling up that concave and desperate precipice, I felt my head touch a solid thing, and I knew I must have gained the roof, or at least some kind of floor. In the darkness I raised my free hand and tested the barrier, finding it stone and immovable. Then came a deadly circuit of the tower, clinging to whatever holds the slimy wall could give; till finally my testing hand found the barrier yielding, and I turned upward again, pushing the slab or door with my head as I used both hands in my fearful ascent. There was no light revealed above, and as my hands went higher I knew that my climb was for the nonce ended; since the slab was the trapdoor of an aperture leading to a level stone surface of greater circumference than the lower tower, no doubt the floor of some lofty and capacious observation chamber. I crawled through carefully, and tried to prevent the heavy slab from falling back into place, but failed in the latter attempt. As I lay exhausted on the stone floor I heard the eerie echoes of its fall, hoped when necessary to pry it up again.
Believing I was now at prodigious height, far above the accursed branches of the wood, I dragged myself up from the floor and fumbled about for windows, that I might look for the first time upon the sky, and the moon and stars of which I had read. But on every hand I was disappointed; since all that I found were vast shelves of marble, bearing odious oblong boxes of disturbing size. More and more I reflected, and wondered what hoary secrets might abide in this high apartment so many aeons cut off from the castle below. Then unexpectedly my hands came upon a doorway, where hung a portal of stone, rough with strange chiselling. Trying it, I found it locked; but with a supreme burst of strength I overcame all obstacles and dragged it open inward. As I did so there came to me the purest ecstasy I have ever known; for shining tranquilly through an ornate grating of iron, and down a short stone passageway of steps that ascended from the newly found doorway, was the radiant full moon, which I had never before seen save in dreams and in vague visions I dared not call memories.
Fancying now that I had attained the very pinnacle of the castle, I commenced to rush up the few steps beyond the door; but the sudden veiling of the moon by a cloud caused me to stumble, and I felt my way more slowly in the dark. It was still very dark when I reached the grating—which I tried carefully and found unlocked, but which I did not open for fear of falling from the amazing height to which I had climbed. Then the moon came out.
Most demoniacal of all shocks is that of the abysmally unexpected and grotesquely unbelievable. Nothing I had before undergone could compare in terror with what I now saw; with the bizarre marvels that sight implied. The sight itself was as simple as it was stupefying, for it was merely this: instead of a dizzying prospect of treetops seen from a lofty eminence, there stretched around me on the level through the grating nothing less than the solid ground, decked and diversified by marble slabs and columns, and overshadowed by an ancient stone church, whose ruined spire gleamed spectrally in the moonlight.
Half unconscious, I opened the grating and staggered out upon the white gravel path that stretched away in two directions. My mind, stunned and chaotic as it was, still held the frantic craving for light; and not even the fantastic wonder which had happened could stay my course. I neither knew nor cared whether my experience was insanity, dreaming, or magic; but was determined to gaze on brilliance and gaiety at any cost. I knew not who I was or what I was, or what my surroundings might be; though as I continued to stumble along I became conscious of a kind of fearsome latent memory that made my progress not wholly fortuitous. I passed under an arch out of that region of slabs and columns, and wandered through the open country; sometimes following the visible road, but sometimes leaving it curiously to tread across meadows where only occasional ruins bespoke the ancient presence of a forgotten road. Once I swam across a swift river where crumbling, mossy masonry told of a bridge long vanished.
Over two hours must have passed before I reached what seemed to be my goal, a venerable ivied castle in a thickly wooded park, maddeningly familiar, yet full of perplexing strangeness to me. I saw that the moat was filled in, and that some of the well-known towers were demolished, whilst new wings existed to confuse the beholder. But what I observed with chief interest and delight were the open windows—gorgeously ablaze with light and sending forth sound of the gayest revelry. Advancing to one of these I looked in and saw an oddly dressed company indeed; making merry, and speaking brightly to one another. I had never, seemingly, heard human speech before and could guess only vaguely what was said. Some of the faces seemed to hold expressions that brought up incredibly remote recollections, others were utterly alien.
I now stepped through the low window into the brilliantly lighted room, stepping as I did so from my single bright moment of hope to my blackest convulsion of despair and realization. The nightmare was quick to come, for as I entered, there occurred immediately one of the most terrifying demonstrations I had ever conceived. Scarcely had I crossed the sill when there descended upon the whole company a sudden and unheralded fear of hideous intensity, distorting every face and evoking the most horrible screams from nearly every throat. Flight was universal, and in the clamour and panic several fell in a swoon and were dragged away by their madly fleeing companions. Many covered their eyes with their hands, and plunged blindly and awkwardly in their race to escape, overturning furniture and stumbling against the walls before they managed to reach one of the many doors.
The cries were shocking; and as I stood in the brilliant apartment alone and dazed, listening to their vanishing echoes, I trembled at the thought of what might be lurking near me unseen. At a casual inspection the room seemed deserted, but when I moved towards one of the alcoves I thought I detected a presence there—a hint of motion beyond the golden-arched doorway leading to another and somewhat similar room. As I approached the arch I began to perceive the presence more clearly; and then, with the first and last sound I ever uttered—a ghastly ululation that revolted me almost as poignantly as its noxious cause—I beheld in full, frightful vividness the inconceivable, indescribable, and unmentionable monstrosity which had by its simple appearance changed a merry company to a herd of delirious fugitives.
I cannot even hint what it was like, for it was a compound of all that is unclean, uncanny, unwelcome, abnormal, and detestable. It was the ghoulish shade of decay, antiquity, and dissolution; the putrid, dripping eidolon of unwholesome revelation, the awful baring of that which the merciful earth should always hide. God knows it was not of this world—or no longer of this world—yet to my horror I saw in its eaten-away and bone-revealing outlines a leering, abhorrent
|
YCHO] picked up in the limo. Can someone send her a stylist or a rope & a stool?
Its fairly apparent @MELANIATRUMP is a robot. Press the on button, install the Michelle Obama vocabulary drive, et voila! A literate beauty. Bss De Rothschild @BssDeRothschild Dec 1 The Turkish Lira has dropped faster than @MELANIATRUMP panties on her first date with @realDonaldTrump #
WHO IS SHE?
The Baroness did not go to the trouble of certifying her Twitter identity. She only began it after the election and she has 944 followers. She describes herself as " Baroness De Rothschild, CEO, Global Private Investment Banker, Entrepreneur, Philanthropist & Environmentalist, Avid Art Collector, Proud Globalist." She gives her address as London/New York and address as rothschildfoundation.org.uk
She could be Nadine de Rothschild, age 84. I don´t know. But I do know she is for real. Look at the people she follows on Twitter.
Five Regional US Federal Reserve banks. The Bank of Japan. George H.W. Bush, Jeff Bezos, Goldman Sachs, Christies, Sothebys, Scientology and Mother Jones.
Testimony to human cupidity and self-delusion is this final tweet: " Support your country, no matter how imperfect she may be. Love her - not uncritically, but love her. Reject all malign foreign interference." Foreign interference? Who does she think she is?
Clearly there is a schism in the Illuminati between those who want to embrace the Rothschild`s satanist Jewish vision of open borders, miscegenation, gender dysphoria and "climate change," and those who, at least, pay lip service to nation, race, religion and family. This is the beginning of a fight to the finish.
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Related- Alex Jones -Globalists won't stop until Trump is Deposed
First Comment by Sid Green, who is Jewish:
For people like me, this is getting interesting. I am very familiar with the manipulative attitude of this Tweeting Rothschild. Why is it so familiar? There is a way of talking to someone, where instead of really conveying information, you are basically baiting them, and trying to provoke some release of negative energy.
It's not about the words that are being said, it's about the tone and the context, and the emotions that it is meant to trigger. That's the way this Rothschild is talking. It's a form if psychic vampireism which I didn't realize was occult and many people who do it do it unwittingly.
It is actually very sad, but it's a habit for some people. For families who don't actively practice Satanism or Black Magic, this is like an appendix. This reminds me of what Francis stated about Jewish mothers having latent powers of witchcraft. It's not even intentional. Using this way of behaving in society can result in blunders, but if someone was smart and controlled like an evil occultist, they could channel this manipulative ability into Stockholm Syndrome-Hoodwinking an entire society.
With people so desirous of being told what to think and feel it's basically a piece of cake. People already want to indulge their basest emotions; this just urges them along. To be sure, this technique is morally wrong; it is against morality (the most important measure of anything) because it has a negative effect on the people involved, even the one unwittingly being a psychic vampire.
It's an occult thing which probably only is done "Correctly" by dedicated evil people. The Bible contains enough references to kindness and mercy that it is obvious to any honest Jew, Christian or Wiccan, that this technique is wrong. These are professional psychological rapists who actually intend to cause the damage they are causing. God will punish them. "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all"Image copyright Lindsay Cardwell Image caption Syrian refugees in Aberystwyth thanked the town's residents after their welcome earlier this year
Syrian refugees are expected to have been housed in all council areas across Wales by the end of 2016.
The Welsh Local Government Association said more than 300 refugees will then have been resettled in Wales in the first year of the Syrian resettlement programme.
Councils had previously been criticised for the speed they had been rehousing Syrian refugees.
But the WLGA said the criticism had been unfair.
The UK government has pledged to settle 20,000 Syrians in the UK by 2020 under the scheme.
But in August it was reported that only nine of Wales 22 councils had taken part up to the end of June.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Cheryl Martin from umbrella body Children in Wales says asylum seekers have to navigate unfamiliar systems
The WLGA has now confirmed to the assembly's equality committee that all authorities will have received refugee families into their areas, with over 300 refugees resettled in Wales by the end of December.
In a written submission to the committee ahead of verbal evidence to AMs on Thursday, it said: "While there has been some criticism of local authorities for not responding quickly enough, for those authorities with limited experience, making sure appropriate plans were in place to ensure a well-managed resettlement process was key."
"As such, we believe the criticism levelled has been unfair and in the main, the smooth way in which the arrival of refugees has been undertaken has borne out the benefit of effective planning."
Oxfam Cymru had been previously critical of the speed that councils were taking refguees from Syria.
Kirsty Davies-Warner, head of the charity, said "We are encouraged by the clear change in pace of the resettlement of Syrian refugees to Wales.
"It's terrific to see that every local authority within Wales will welcome refugee families from Syria - showing that Wales is providing a truly national response."
Image copyright Lindsay Cardwell
The Welsh Government does not deal with immigration and asylum policy, which is instead handled by the Home Office, but it is responsible for many of the services that support refugees and asylum seekers.
It has a delivery plan which lists a series of actions in areas including mental health and housing that it wants to see implemented.
But the WLGA said while those who work on relevant issues may be aware of the plan's existence, "there are no established mechanisms through which Welsh Government raises awareness of the delivery plan with authorities or specific departments".
As a result, it said some organisations may not made be aware of the actions required of them, but it said many of the issues included in the plan were being addressed.
A Welsh Government spokeswoman said its refugee and asylum seeker delivery plan published in March 2016 had already led to positive changes but it would update it with information on new schemes as they developed.For over a year now, the comics world has watched DC’s New 52 and paid careful attention to what it brought to the industry. Would the influx of new readers stay on long term? Would the changes made to the continuity/characters stick? Could they avoid the traps of the past?
And, most importantly: What will Marvel’s response be?
Well, it took a little longer than I thought it would, but bam! There it is: Marvel Now!
Now aside from the first-year-marketing-student title, the Marvel Now! re-whateveryouwannacallit has the potential to have a similar reception to the New 52.
By that I mean, everyone will say they hate it then buy 5 copies of it.
There are a lot of aspects of Marvel Now! that I really like. The creative teams they’ve got on their flagship books are top notch. I like that they are rolling it out over a 5-month period. I like that Bendis has finally, FINALLY found a way to shoehorn Rocket Raccoon back into our lives.
What I don’t like though is everyone pretending this is something new and different. Marvel Now! (I swear, it sounds like a promo film for a timeshare in Ft. Lauderdale) is exactly what Marvel (and any other comics pubisher) does every time a big event wraps up. From The Initiative to Dark Reign to The Heroic Age, new “eras” in comics are pretty clock work. While I don’t think that its necessarily a bad thing, I do think trotting out the dog and pony show as if we are re-inventing the wheel is a bit much. Especailly considering how far Marvel seem to be bending over backwards to declare it something new, but not new, which I’m sure won’t confuse people at all.
In my opinion, the DC relaunch was something different. They took almost everything they had and rolled the dice with it. You can debate as long as you have breath as to it being a success or not, but the bottom line is it was ballsy. Marvel Now! to me seems to be trying to capitalize on that ballsiness but not actually follow through with it.
Change is inevitable in comics, but what I think jades people the most is the marketing machine that tries to tell us it’s something other that what it is.
Great stories + Great Art + Timely Delivery = Good Comics = More Readers.
That’s all you need to do, guys. Really.
Today’s page comes from our very own Rus Wooton:
Rus Wooton is a comic creator best known for his lettering work on THE GUTTERS and books like THE WALKING DEAD, INVINCIBLE, BUTCHER BAKER and countless others from Marvel, Image, Dark Horse and Radical. An artist for as long as he can remember, Rus got degrees in Fine Arts and Art Education from the University of South Florida in 1996 and then went into freelancing, then working as Wizard’s web designer for three years, then to freelancing again. He’s been lettering since 2003 and draws and writes whenever he can. He is fueled by coffee, Dr Pepper, spicy Korean noodles and rock ‘n’ roll.
Have a great weekend, friends! See you back here Monday!
-MossA fragment of human pelvis excavated in Winchester is ‘very likely’ to be part of the remains of King Alfred the Great (849-899), or his son Edward, archaeologists announced today at a packed press conference.
Found during archaeological work at Hyde Abbey in the 1990s, the piece of bone belongs to an adult male aged 26-45, who died in AD 895-1017. Although disturbed by later activity on the site, the individual had originally been laid to rest near the abbey’s high altar, the excavation team report, a prestigious position that, during the 9th century, would have only been accorded to Alfred or his son and successor, Edward the Elder (874—877 — 924).
‘Who else could it be?’ said the team’s osteologist, Katie Tucker.
When Alfred died in 899, he was interred first in the Anglo-Saxon cathedral in Winchester (the Old Minster), but when this site became overcrowded, his bones were moved first to the New Minster, and then to the newly-founded Hyde Abbey, which marks its 900th anniversary this year.
Tradition suggested that he had been moved once more, however, and buried in an unmarked grave in St Bartholomew’s church, Hyde, after a 19th century antiquarian sold bones claimed to belong to the Wessex royal family to the Rector, William Williams. Recent radiocarbon dating of the contents of this burial indicates that this was not the case, however.
Representatives from the community cultural group Hyde900 and experts from the University of Winchester described how, following the media sensation following the discovery of Richard III’s skeleton last year, an emergency order was obtained to excavate the grave and take its contents into safe keeping.
The remains of at least six individuals, including five skull, were recovered from the grave, but recent radiocarbon dating of the remains placed all of them too late to belong to the Saxon king, yielding dates ranging from c.AD 1100-1500.
There was only one possible conclusion, Katie Tucker said: ‘The occupants of the Unmarked Grave were not among the West Saxon royal family.’
Undeterred, Katie contacted the Winchester Museum Service to find out more about a community excavation that took place on the site of Hyde Abbey between 1995 and 1999. This led her to a box of human bones that included part of a pelvis found at the site of the Abbey’s High Altar.
While most of the bones were too late to belong to King Alfred, the pelvis was considerably earlier, radiocarbon dated to AD 895-1017. ‘Bang on the money’, as Tom Higham, who carried out this analysis, put it.
‘The simplest explanation, given there was no Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Hyde Abbey, is that this bone comes from one of the members of the West Saxon royal family brought to the site,’ said Katie Tucker. ‘Given the age at death of the individual, and the probable male identity, the plausible candidates are King Alfred, King Edward the Elder, or the brother of King Edward, Æthelweard. All were buried in the Abbey. However, historical evidence indicates that only the coffins of Alfred and Edward were at the site of the High Altar. The discovery of the bone in a pit dug into the graves in front of the High Altar makes it far more likely that it comes from either Alfred or Edward.’
If this is part of the skeleton of Alfred or his son, it had a lucky escape: the bone was the only fragment of this individual found in backfill from 18th century disturbance.
Barbara Yorke, Professor Emerita of Early Medieval History at the University of Winchester, said: ‘Although Hyde Abbey was dismantled after the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 16th Century, the bodies seem to have been allowed to remain. But when a bridewell — a prison/workhouse — was built on the site in 1788, they were emptied out and the remains ‘thrown about’, according to an eyewitness.’
We will bring you more information as we have it – and in the upcoming issue of CA. Watch this space!Steyn-Clarke feud takes new twist
Dale Steyn said he would not forgive Michael Clarke for their on-field verbal stoush during the Cape Town Test until the Australia skipper shook his hand and apologised to him personally, yet previously unaired footage from cricket.com.au's archive showed this has already happened.
In the wake of South Africa's tri-series victory against Australia last Saturday in Zimbabwe, Steyn revealed a heated exchange between the pair six months earlier in Cape Town was still a raw wound.
The pair had exchanged barbs and gesticulations late on the fifth day of a fractious and tense Cape Town Test, with Steyn last week saying Clarke's comments were "personal" and he was still waiting for an apology.
Quick Single: Steyn still bitter about Cape Town stoush
The Australia skipper did make a personal apology after the match however, as previously unreleased footage filmed by cricket.com.au shows.
As the teams shook hands following Australia's series-clinching victory in the late afternoon Cape Town sun, Clarke stopped for an extended chat with Steyn and was overhead to say "sorry" directly to the Proteas' paceman.
Clarke's handshake was enthusiastic, accompanied by an apologetic smile and shake of the head. Australia's captain did most of the talking in the exchange as he gripped Steyn's hand, his left arm around the bowler's shoulder.
Steyn's reply drew a smile from vice-captain Brad Haddin, who was waiting in line behind Clarke. With a nod of his head and a pat on Clarke's shoulder, Steyn also appears to accept Clarke's sentiment before the pair part and the line-up moves forward again.
The footage could embarrass the South African, raising the question did Steyn simply forget this exchange following a bitter Test defeat for the Proteas, or are other motives at play.
Steyn certainly seemed to have no recollection of Clarke's apology when he was asked after Saturday's tri-series final if he had spoken to and forgiven Clarke since their Cape Town altercation.
"I haven't really spoken to him much since then, to be honest with you," Steyn said, after a pause.
"I don't take many things personally, but what he did say to me I did take personally.
"I know he apologised in the media, and I should be playing this down but, the day he comes and shakes my hand and says 'I really mean what I said' and behaves like the way he should, maybe then I will (forgive him).
"But for right now, he's not here, so I'll wait until I get to Australia."
Steyn could be in for a ferocious reception from the terraces when he does get to Australia for South Africa's limited-overs series here in November, but with Clarke in Harare for the majority of the tri-series until leaving with a recurrence of a hamstring injury, Steyn must not have opted to confront him.
"From my perspective I would hope that Dale and I have a good enough relationship," Clarke said in Harare.
"I'm pretty sure he would front me if he still had an issue with me and I think my apology at the time was well taken and respected from Dale."
The source of the initial resentment came when tempers flared that March day in Cape Town as Proteas batsman Vernon Philander's dismissal was overturned by the third umpire, when his right batting glove was judged to be off the bat as a Mitchell Johnson bouncer brushed it on its way to being caught at bat-pad.
What Steyn and Clarke said to each other on the field in the heat of battle remains known only to the players and umpires, neither of whom saw fit to report any player for a breach of the ICC's code of conduct.
However, sources from within the Australian playing group have confirmed to cricket.com.au the exchange was not "personal", although the unbecoming scenes did prompt Clarke to apologise publicly after play.
"I apologise to the opposition player I was out of line to," Clarke said in Cape Town.
"A player who I have the utmost respect for, who tries to kill me every time I bat – who batted exceptionally well.
"Let's just say he got me at a bad time (following Philander's review)."We are delighted to announce the signing of Heung-Min Son from Bayer Leverkusen, subject to work permit and international clearance.
The forward has signed a contract with the Club until 2020.
The South Korea international originally moved to Germany as a teenager and came through the ranks at Hamburger SV, scoring on his Bundesliga debut in October 2010 against 1. FC Köln.
A consistent goalscorer throughout his time in Germany, Son went on to make 78 appearances and score 20 times for Hamburg before joining Bayer Leverkusen in June, 2013.
He has helped them to Champions League qualification in each of his two seasons and made a total of 87 appearances, scoring 29 times at BayArena.
The 23-year-old is also a regular at international level with 11 goals in his 44 appearances for South Korea to date, including scoring against Algeria at the 2014 World Cup Finals.
He will wear the number 7 shirt with ‘Son’ on his back.The Code Warriors
Many moons ago, I stumbled across a website containing an index of “Flame Warriors.” The Flame Warriors were caricatures of personality archetypes that might be found in your typical early-to-mid 2000s discussion forum. Inspired by that and by different people with different characteristics that I’ve met in various capacities over the years, I decided to create a version called Code Warriors. The Code Warriors are personality types that you likely encounter when interacting with programmers.
Before I present the Warriors, I would like to make an aside about gender, given that this subject is often a sore one in the arena of programming. Almost all of the Warriors have genders assigned to them mainly so that Amanda has something to draw. If not for that, I might simply have made them androgynous. I mostly picked gender either randomly or based on the namesake of the warrior, when appropriate. So please don’t read any attempt at deeper meaning in the genders of the warriors–I’m looking to make no such commentary.
And now, the Warriors…
Nero fiddles while the code burns. You might have a show-stopping, mission-critical defect that everyone is in a frenzy to solve, and Nero is stamping his feet that the names of all TextBoxes in the application don’t end with “TextBox.” Your application might be a cesspool of singletons, globals, and cross-couplings, and Nero fires off angry emails about alphabetizing using statements/includes. You might have an unreadable, unapproachable stack of Jenga code, and Nero orders a massive refactoring to ensure that all block comments start at character twenty-six exactly on the line. Nero is generally a team lead or decision maker, though this is not strictly necessary. The defining characteristics of Nero are his complete inability to prioritize and his preoccupation with trivial matters. This is likely the result of being overmatched in his role and exerting some–any–manner of control of what’s happening around him. Like his namesake, Nero is probably not long for leadership one way (mutiny) or the other (complete failure and external intervention). If Nero is not promoted out of danger into a management role and is instead forced to continue in the trenches, possibly demoted, he may graduate to Nascar if he studies hard and learns a few tricks. When he does, he will hate other Neroes.
When he’s not programming: Organizing his pantry so that all can labels face outward, badgering patient waiters about the difference between “slightly browned medium rare” and “not quite medium.”
Chops: 1-3
Lifer has been programming at this company since you were in diapers and he’s still going to be doing it when your grandchildren are in diapers. He’s seen fads come and go for so long that he really doesn’t like the idea of any kind of change. If you propose change, he’ll be the first to say that it’s all been tried before and it will never work. He will then set about sabotaging your efforts and cite this sabotage later in post-mortems as proof that it’s pointless to try changing things. Lifer doesn’t need your fancy object-orientamation and text editors–he’s been making working software using a paperclip, a typewriter, and assembly code since 1974 and there’s no sense fixing what ain’t broke. Why a paperclip, you ask? Because screw you and mind your own business, that’s why. If you have any ideas of trying to outlast Lifer, you can just forget about it–he’ll never let the fact that he hates the company and his job interfere with staying there forever.
When he’s not programming: Screaming at neighborhood children to get off of his lawn, bemoaning the price of produce these days
Chops: 6 in theory, 2 in practice
Imagine the following. You come to work one morning, and those in before you are scurrying around in panic or staring intently at their screens. Disconcerted, you perform your morning ritual of getting the latest version of the code, and things go wrong. Horribly wrong. The code won’t build. There are files suddenly missing. The source control system itself doesn’t seem to be working. The network connection is spotty. All hell has broken loose. After half a day of frenetic effort from the entire group, the issues are finally resolved, and after two days, the forensics are all in, indicating what went wrong. And what went wrong is what always goes wrong: Patient Zero. Patient Zero is the lady who is always breaking the build, failing merges, and generally creating havoc. You will hear her say things like “oh yeah, I saw that message about source control conflicts so I just clicked the ‘permanently wipe everything on the server and upload whatever crap I have’ button–hope that’s alright.” She will say these things with a goofy grin or an “aw shucks” expression that utterly defies belief and threatens to turn your face all colors of the rainbow as you suppress your rage. Whenever anything goes wrong–especially things that render everyone unable to work–there’s a near certain chance it’s the work of Patient Zero.
When she’s not programming: Blocking the box in busy intersections, presenting 742 coupons to the only grocery clerk open in the store
Chops: 2-3
It’s pretty easy when looking at a code base to know whether Zorro has been through or not. He writes decent enough code, but it has a certain style to it. A very recognizable style. This is because Zorro puts his name everywhere. If he adds code to an existing method, he puts his initials in a comment above the line he changed, adds his initials to the method comment header, and, if it wouldn’t mean too much refactoring, he might even add his initials to the beginning of the method name itself. In code bases where he does more than maintenance programming, there will be methods and classes named after him and naming schemes where everything starts or ends with his initials. When other warriors stumble into a particularly Zorro-heavy section of the code, the vibe can be a bit like that moment in crime dramas where detectives enter a house and discover that the perfectly normal-seeming homeowner has erected a shrine to the victim in his attic. They shudder and back away slowly, not yet ready to cope with the rich tapestry of psychological issues that led to this moment. Zorro is generally competent enough and affable, but if he catches you de-Zorro-ing the codebase, his demeanor will cool noticeably. Zorro is usually too weird to be allied with or against most other warriors, though Style Sergeant is often enraged by him.
When he’s not programming: Carving his name into public rest room stalls, poring over various social media and dating profiles, telling himself he could still wind up being famous
Chops: 3-6
Bro, you know what’s even better than programming time? Miller Time. Beer Thirty is a programmer by day and a beer-shotgunning machine by night (and sometimes by day also). And while most would prefer to keep those worlds separate, Beer Thirty (generally due to his young age) is not one of those people. No code review will slip by without a mention of beer pong conquests. No meeting will pass without apologies for being “a little out of it” today. No lunch will be eaten without Beer Thirty mentioning that it sucks that he can’t have like three Natty Lites with this burger, amirite?!? Beer Thirty’s demeanor does serve to loosen things up and ease the tension among other, more serious warriors. Conferences and after-hours work events are where Beer Thirty really shines, though. Not to be confused with Mouthbreather, Beer Thirty might make women slightly uncomfortable with Beavis and Butthead style behavior, but he’s mainly in it for the booze. He actually has quite a substantial alcohol tolerance that serves as a buffer against behavior getting too over the top. Beer Thirty will usually get married and chill out, or else he’ll become a full-blown alcoholic, quietly slipping a little Bailey’s into his morning coffee rather than bragging about last night’s quarters domination down at Dirty Steve’s. Either way, there’s usually an upper age limit of twenty-seven or so on Beer Thirty.
When he’s not programming: Pub Crawls, Spring Break, Staring drunkenly at the coffee pot at Denny’s at 3:45 AM.
Chops: 3-7
Fake It ’til You Make It is just your average workaday programmer that happens to like what he’s doing an awful lot. He likes it so much so, in fact, that he tends to ramble on about it, and decides to let his passion for programming and rambling fuel a graduate degree via night school, endless reading, Pluralsight videos for fun, and even a blog. Fake It ’til You Make It would probably stop all this and worry that he’s a phony, except that he’s usually distracted by excitement about and interest in his subject matter. He does his best to understand and get along with all of the other warriors in the interest of learning and getting things done.
When he’s not programming: Writing about programming, writing about writing about programming, reading, getting his house’s lights to turn on and off from his phone
Chops: Never as high as he’d like
Fashionista’s preferences make the bleeding edge look like Betamax tape players. He’s known Ruby on Rails was yesterday’s news since 2005. Functional programming? Pff… maybe back in 2010. NoSQL? You must not have heard that it’s so last year to persist things to disk. No matter what your idea is or what new thing you’ve just discovered, Fashionista has heard of it, mastered it, and dismissed it. He is actually quite intelligent and good at what he does, but for him the goal of satisfying users or producing software that works takes a back seat to using whatever technology just came out, so he’s not especially effective in the trenches. Like some kind of misogynist caricature, Fashionista is principally interested in notching frameworks, paradigms, languages, etc. on his bedpost and laughing at people with fewer notches. Fashionista is the mortal enemy of Lifer, and has the general ability to anger a good cross section of warriors, but, interestingly, if you put two Fashionistas in a room together their behavior is remarkably similar to Siamese Fighting Fish.
When he’s not programming: Going to Starbucks ironically to make disgusted noises at iPad/iMac users, cleaning T-shirts of bands that made it out of his closet
Chops: 8
Guru is somewhere above the level of architect but still regarded as technical. She routinely speaks at company events and at developer conferences in general. She’s so famous and so well regarded that the young guys and gals often whisper among themselves that there is an Emperor’s New Clothes situation here. Surely she’s overrated, out-of-touch, or some kind of has-been. Every now and then some Grasshopper gets courageous enough to challenge her in some way, at which time she, politely and in good-natured fashion, blows their minds with some of the simplest, most elegant code you have ever seen. Doubters are mortified and even supporters are dumbfounded. Guru is Guru for a reason.
When she’s not programming: Speaking at conferences, advancing the cause of the industry, making people proud.
Chops: 10
If Junkyard is roaming around the office, you can generally smell him before you see him. If you’re walking by his desk, you’ll likely notice crumbs, takeout wrappers, and a sticky residue. No stranger to audible flatulence, wiping his nose on his sleeve or spitting into empty containers at his desk, Junkyard is a hygiene disaster. He may also be Mouthbreather, but most likely not–he tends to be affable and a genuinely good-natured person, if hard to be around for… superficial reasons. His natural tendency to repel other human beings does free him up to have more time to pursue technical acumen, so he is, on average, slightly better at programming.
When he’s not programming: Sweating, eating, sweating while eating, lettin’ it all hang out.
Chops: 6-7
Brute Force is well aware that inspiration strikes at the oddest of times in the oddest of places, and he knows that you have to just roll with it. It might occur to him that the source of recent performance issues in the code base is that people aren’t nulling out references. So Brute Force checks out every source file in existence and sets every variable to null everywhere he thinks it isn’t being used. In any managed language code bases, he does it twice for good measure. If he thinks that the application could benefit from more logging, he checks everything out again and adds logging to the beginning, middle, and end of every method in the entire code base. Are these things good ideas? No time to think about that–there’s a lot of work to do. Brute Force modifies every file in the code base first and asks questions later. Brute Force is often also Lifer and has usually defaulted his way into some position of authority, meaning he is allowed to run amok like Don Quixote through the code base. He occasionally forms a temporary weekend alliance with Thor that results in the rest of the team coming in Monday morning to find every class in the code base wrapped in a facade.
When he’s not programming: Digging holes in his back yard and filling them back in, painting his entire house with a 1″ brush
Chops: 2-3
MacGuyver is a code-rescue specialist. There is no legacy system that he can’t tame, no environment too hostile, no project too far gone. Are you working on machine control software with no source control, no test environment, and the only way to make changes is to ram them into multi-million dollar production and hope for the best? No problem, just call in MacGuyver. He’s worked with less. He’s happy with any text editor, programming language, compiler, or anything else, even if he hasn’t used it before. MacGuyver could be described as a duct-tape programmer, in a sense, but he transcends that. If you plug him into a disaster, he’ll save it. If you plug him into a well-factored code base, he’ll improve it. If MacGuyver ever tires of the front lines, he probably has a career as Guru waiting for him.
When he’s not programming: Saving children from burning buildings, bringing justice to the world
Chops: 9-10
The Ninja Assassin is the most devastating imaginable combination of stealth and damage. He finds a way to check changes into the code base not detectable by any audit of the source control scheme or any log. But these aren’t just any changes. After he finishes, the code compiles and builds and there are no failing unit tests, but when it goes into production something goes wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong. Ninja Assassin has stolen into the code in the dead of night and killed it so cleanly that nobody even realized it was dead at first. The only difference between Code Warrior Ninja Assassin and his counterpart in other forms of fiction is that the Code Warrior is lethal purely through a combination of incompetence and exceptionalism fallacy.
When he’s not programming: Driving tipsy, sticking his hands out on rides that say “keep hands in at all times”.
Chops: 5 less than whatever he believes he is.
Mouthbreather had a hard time with girls** growing up. A really hard time. Such a hard time, in fact, that his struggles continue to this day as a result of a festering feedback loop of desperation, resentment, desire, and awkwardness. Mouthbreather is generally quite good at programming since he has had a lot of time and frustration to direct into perfecting his craft, but he’s unlikely ever to advance particularly far in his career. He gives everyone on the team the creeps, but especially the women. Over the course of time and lots of tense HR meetings, there is an uneasy equilibrium in which Mouthbreather is given solo assignments and allowed to work from home. A lot.
When he’s not programming: I don’t want to say and you don’t want to know.
Chops: 7-9
**Mouthbreather is not necessarily male or heterosexual, but I’ve yet to see a counter-example in the wild.
Big Sis’ is the person in the department that helps preserve your sanity. She’s generally a senior developer that isn’t necessarily in charge, but she’s good, she has pull, and most importantly, she’s actually nice and pleasant to work with. When Nero is yelling at you about camel casing, Brute Force is hacking your classes to death and Lifer is griping about your use of syntax coloring, Big Sis’ is a breath of fresh air who comforts you, restores your faith in mankind, and shows you how to navigate the minefield of other warriors and their egos to be productive and write good code. She has carved out enough reputation for herself that when she steps in to defend you, other warriors generally put down their torches and scatter, grumbling as they go. Perhaps there is hope that being respected is better than being feared.
When she’s not programming: Volunteering at the local shelter, getting thoughtful presents for people.
Chops: 7-9
Anarchist firmly believes that you can’t like own software. The only real software is free and open source software. To illustrate this point, she writes “Micro$oft” whenever given the opportunity and calls anyone owning Apple products a “fanboy” (or perhaps “fanboi”). Utterly disdainful of the notion that people might shell out money for convenience, Anarchist is convinced that the only reason someone would pay for software is because he’s too stupid or technically incompetent either to write it himself or make it happen from the Linux command line using regular expressions, sed, and a whole bunch of elbow grease. Any open source or free software developer who decides to turn entrepreneur and ask for money immediately makes Anarchist’s “Enemies List” because there is no greater betrayal in her world. Anarchist spends enough time reinventing wheels and cobbling together ill-suited products that she’s not terribly productive, but the flip side of this equation is that she is incredibly good. Anarchist really has no allies among other warriors, though she and Fashionista have a grudging and reluctant respect for one another.
When she’s not programming: Thrift store shopping, spray painting people wearing fur coats, sneering.
Chops: 8-9
Moneyball is obsessed with statistics about the code that he works on. He knows impressive-sounding terms, like, “Cyclomatic Complexity,” and “Afferent Coupling,” and he doesn’t hesitate to use them. Just as Nero might graduate to Nascar, Nascar may later graduate to Moneyball. Moneyball is at the top of the “consider one factor at the exclusion of all others” food chain since his area of focus is actually pretty likely to improve code bases, but as long as he thinks any one characteristic of code and development always trump all others, there will be an upper bound to his chops. Moneyball’s Achilles’ heel for improvement is his tendency to believe anything can be folded into statistics meaningfully–he isn’t interested in going out to lunch with coworkers to bond unless you can show him hard data that eating at Chipotle leads to at least a twelve percent increase in bonding as measured by voice inflection during afternoon meetings.
When he’s not programming: Playing twelve separate fantasy football teams, refreshing the stock ticker on CNN.com
Chops: 6-8
Style Sergeant is who Style Cop reports to, and, mister, she runs a tight ship. Style Sergeant
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acts like she has a pencil up her bum, make a completely predictable cameo, complaining of 'losing sleep' over the Trump presidency. Yes, well one can see how she might. She is married to a power-grubbing, neocon, sell-out, but nonetheless, I've always pitied the man for having to gaze upon this harpy at the family brekky. She is a deeply unhappy woman. The aura she emits is reminiscent of a lingering toothache.
There was also a bit of scandal in the making of the thing, because one of the Russian interview subjects, the right-wing Russian philospher Alexander Dugin, got so angry at Sweeney, that he had security throw them out of his office, mid-interview, and then took to Facebook, where he has 30,000 followers, callling Sweeney a 'bastard','swine', a 'zero', an 'imbecile', a 'propagandist', and urging people to stay away from him.
Ripping stuff. Couldn't have said it better myself. Dugin's advice is spot-on.
The Russian news site Life.ru did an in-depth investigation into Sweeney and his colleagues, Richard Hill and Nicholas Stardi, in Russian, which is more great stuff exposing what awful 'journalists' these guys really are.
A translation follows below:
The best indicator of how well the propaganda dept at the BBC is doing is the comments on the version of the film that is open to the public on YT. They are devastating.
Chalk up another propaganda faceplant for the BBC and a win for the Russkies.
From Life.ru
While fake exposures оf Mr Trump have been widely ridiculed by the US media themselves, their British colleagues took the lead in playing up the ridiculous information. BBC has recently produced and broadcast a documentary film on the allegations. Life News conducted their own investigation to find out how the BBC team operated in Moscow to make this stunning ‘documentary’.
BBC dispatched 2 journalists to Moscow to be aided by a large group of Russian journalists and technicians. Some of those were freelancers while others were quite experienced professionals.
According to Life’s sources, the BBC team’s cameraman was Yuriy Burak who had worked previously with Discovery, ABC, National Geographic. They were also assisted by liberal columnist Pavel Greenshpun.
But the key “players” of course were the two British journalists, John Sweeney and Richard Hill coordinated from London by Nicholas Stardi - a very remarkable person. We’ll talk of him later.
Upon arriving to Moscow in December 2016, the British team went on to interview Russian experts and newsmakers. One of the first to be interviewed happened to be Alexander Dugin, a famous Russian philosopher of Eurasianism.
By their highly provocative questions the journalists were openly and successfully provoking him. He did call in the guards who threw the Brits out of the office. The incident immediately leaked to the social nets. In his FB account, Dugin himself had harsh words to say on them later to be used by Sweeny as an example of a ‘new world order rhetoric’ interposed with Donald Trump’s campaign footage:
I’ve kicked a BBC correspondent out. A rare bastard! … John Sweeney was in charge. His name tells it all: he’s a “globalist swine”. (‘Sweeney sounds like the Russian word for ‘swine’ - ‘sveenya’ - Ed.). They are making a fake news documentary on how Russians helped Trump to become President. Their only evidence - that Putin had worked in the KGB. Complete imbeciles. Zero journalistic skills! Soviet-style propagandist. Stay away from them!
Next, Sweeny asked the leader of Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) Vladimir Zhirinovsky about ‘what lessons in democracy Russia could teach the US after the assassination of Boris Nemtsov’. This happened at a public place, at the Moscow Youth Palace. According to the LDPR deputies present there, Zhirinovsky had a good laugh at Sweeny reminding him of the US militarism and interventionism. None of his comments made it to the film.
In another attempt to extract clichés confirming their prejudices, Sweeny and Hill approached Konstantin Kosachev, Chairman of the Federation Council’s Foreign Relations Committee. He disappointed them by pointing to the legality of Russian actions in the Crimea, and saying it was not an aggressor, and had no plans of territorial expansion.
In the best traditions of western journalism, all standups dedicated to the terrible Russian state and its omnipotent security services were filmed against the background of the FSB headquarters on the Lubyanka square in the center of Moscow. To be sure, it was accompanied by a sinister sounding music.
Some of the staff on the crew shared with us their increasing sense of annoyance with what they had to do. Both Russians and Brits told us that Sweeny’s choice of experts and his manners were taking the work nowhere. Two of our sources present at the conversation between Sweeny and Hill with the London office, told us that the interview with Zhirinovsky was brushed away as useless, while Kosachev was described as an official pretending he did not know about Putin’s connections with Trump. Dugin was deemed a particular disaster.
Eventually Lilia Shevtsova, fellow at the UK’s Royal Institute of International Affairs Chatham House, was invited as an expert. Interestingly, her interview did not made it to the film although Shevtsova did voice the full set of accusations of ‘Russian hackers’, ‘Putin - Trump connections’, ‘suppression of dissent through intimidation and murder’.
Life’s sources present at the interview explain this by the fact that Shevtsova had some positive words to say about Vladimir Putin calling him a skilful strategist and good manager. She also said ‘Russians have a very good foreign intelligence’. Apparently, according to our sources, the Brits failed to cut the interview in a suitable way.
Asked why she thought her interview was not used in the film, Lilia Shevtsova said she could not ‘recall’ being interviewed.
— I don’t remember, I don’t remember. I give lots of interviews. I just don’t remember this one, even the questions. Honest to God, I don’t remember.
And here some words are due about the third main player in the story - the team’s London coordinator Nicholas Stardi. As Life found out he is an old Russian hand. E.g. his Ukrainian contacts provided him with the video on the Adam Osmaev case. The guy was detained in Ukraine for plotting an assassination of Putin but was released by the post Maidan Ukrainian authorities in 2014. He needed this for a film on the killings of the members of North Caucasian terrorist underground in Turkey.
An anonymous source at the BBC Moscow bureau told us that as early as January 11 Stardi had talks with the investigations editor of Novay Gazeta Sergey Kanev and BBC’s Moscow bureau representative Olga Ivshina concerning a report by an unidentified MI6 agent on Trump’s connections with Russian intelligence.
Is it any wonder that it was Stardi who coordinated the Sweeny-Hill team in December. Mind you, December - well before the BuzzFeed exposé of Trump.
One’s got a feeling that BBC knew about a forthcoming leak well in advance and was preparing itself for its coverage by shooting in all the right places in Moscow like Kremlin etc. If so, the whole set up looks like a provocation by the US and UK security services to undermine the legitimacy of the US President Elect.
Russian political analyst Dmitry Drobnitsky remarks that the documentary drives at formenting a sense of fear of the ‘gang of hooligans’, aka European and US right wing conservative forces.
— “I expected much more from the BBC. The documentary is yet another proof of the new lows to which the Western media sank in 2016. They are afraid of change, they are afraid of the breaking up of the globalist project. Their journalistic investigations are scam, says Drobnitsky.
“The film is completely groundless yet its message is transparent — Trump is either a so called useful idiot, or part of the global mafia together with the Russians and Putin.”
This is why the film was made, he says.
— “The filmmakers rely primarily on spy agencies’ sources including the CIA. Or take Anne Applebaum as a key expert. She’s worse than McCaine.’
Applebaum is a war mongering journalist indeed. The film is supposed to make the European audiences tremble from fear.COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Two brothers who spent decades in prison for a 1975 fatal shooting they did not commit will receive an additional $4.38 million from the state for being wrongfully incarcerated.
Under the settlement approved Monday by a judge, Wiley Bridgeman will receive about $2.4 million for the 37 years he spent in prison. His brother Kwame Ajamu will receive about $2 million for the 25 years he was jailed.
Both men received a combined $1.6 million from the state in April. Terry Gilbert, their attorney, said the remaining amount constitutes the maximum amount the state can give for a wrongful incarceration claim, plus money for lost income and attorney's fees.
"They deserve whatever compensation and comfort they can get," Gilbert said.
A jury in August 1975 found Bridgeman, Ajamu and Ricky Jackson guilty of murdering Harold Franks outside a convenience store on the city's East Side. They were also convicted of trying to kill store owner Anna Robinson. A judge sentenced them to death, though that was later reduced to life.
Nearly 40 years later, a witness who was 12 years old at the time recanted his testimony and Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge David Matia cleared them of the charges. Bridgeman, 61, and Jackson, 59, were released in November 2014. Ajamu, 58, has been out of prison on parole since 2003.
Jackson, Bridgeman and Ajamu were freed with the help of the Ohio Innocence Project.
The trio has been visible since their exoneration, with speaking engagements and interviews about their case and time in prison.
All three have also filed federal lawsuits against the city and the detectives who put them behind bars, saying they lost most of their lives to incarceration.
Gilbert said the state's award has no bearing on the federal lawsuit. He said Bridgeman and Ajamu's case is progressing with depositions and discovery.
The brothers, along with Ajamu's wife, live in a house in Richfield.
The claims court in March awarded Jackson more than $1 million. Records show that the state has reached a settlement to award him more money, but it has not been finalized.
Click here to read the settlement document on a mobile device.Lara604 / Flickr, CC Technology giant Apple shuttled $11bn (£7bn) into offshore tax havens in the fourth quarter of 2012, an analysis of its corporate filings has revealed.
The iPad maker has slashed its tax bill by paying less than 2pc on its overseas profits, as it moves money through offshoots in low-tax countries such as the British Virgin Islands.
Apple's completely legal tax avoidance strategies bring the total the company has sheltered from the US tax authorities to $94bn, according to a Sunday Times analysis.
Corporation tax on Apple's overseas operations amount to just 1.9pc of profits, compared with a tax rate of up to 24pc in the UK and 35pc in the US.
Apple is estimated to have avoided more than £550m in tax in Britain in 2011. Its latest accounts show UK turnover at just over £1bn and profit at £81.3m, generating a tax bill of £14.4m.
However, analysis of its filings in America suggest a more realistic figure for UK turnover is £6.7bn. This would imply an estimated profit of £2.2bn and, at the then corporation tax rate of 26pc, a £570m tax bill, the Sunday Times reports.
Apple is the latest in a line of large companies that have been exposed for using legal tax holes which result in the company paying less tax.
Prime Minister David Cameron last week told tax-avoiding companies to "wake up and smell the coffee", comments which drew threats from Starbucks' UK managing director of suspending millions of pounds of investment in Britain.
Starbucks took an unprecedented step of pledging to pay £20m corporation tax in the UK, after it came under fire for paying nothing last year despite making sales of £398m.
Facebook has been accused of "immoral" behaviour after accounts showed that the social media giant paid a corporate tax bill of just over £238,000 last year, despite estimated revenues of £175m.
At the end of last month David Cameron demanded an investigation into claims of large-scale avoidance while Brussels moved to close European VAT loop-holes enjoyed by Amazon, Skype and Netflix.
The Prime Minister said HM Revenue & Customs should "look carefully" at cases where international corporations have legally been able to pay no corporation tax - or very small amounts - on billions of pounds of UK revenue.
Apple could not be reached for comment.Lakes typically aren’t thought of as deep and many would incorrectly assume that one of the Great Lakes holds the spot for the deepest – after all, they were carved out by glaciers during the last ice age. So if one of the Great Lakes isn’t the deepest, which lake is?
The Deepest Lake In The World
The current title holder is Lake Baikal of Siberia in Russia. It’s over a mile deep (5,387 feet) and is also the most voluminous fresh water lake on Earth containing nearly 20% of the world’s unfrozen fresh water.
Its incredible depth was created when Earth’s crust was pulled apart due to tectonic activity and created a rift. This ‘gap’ was eventually filled with fresh water. The lake is estimated to have been created over 25 million years ago which makes it also the world’s oldest. Because of the depth, clarity and remoteness, researchers will be deploying a ‘neutrino telescope’ in the lake. At a dept of almost.7 miles will lie the Baikal Deep Underwater Neutrino Telescope (BDUNT). It will consist of separate 192 optical modules
The silver medal goes to Lake Tanganyika, located in Africa, which is also a rift lake. It is.93 miles deep at its deepest and like Lake Baikal, is also a rift lake.
Deepest Lake In The United States?
The Great Lakes still don’t hold a candle to Crater Lake. Crater lake is a caldera lake located in southern Oregon. It is nearly 2,148-foot deep and is known for its incredible clarity.
The lake was formed inside a dormant volcano caldera and it is believed that it took 720 years for rain and snow to fill it to its current depth because no rivers or tributaries are connected to it. It is also the reason for it’s unusual clarity which was measured by scientists at 142 feet in 1997.
Crater Lake is also known for the “Old Man of the Lake”, a full-sized tree which is now a stump that has been bobbing vertically in the lake for over 100 years. Due to the low temperature of the water, the log is incredibly well preserved.
How Deep Is The Ocean? – Infographic
Infographic sourceBitcoin. Image: Antana/Flickr
The Securities and Exchange Commission is requesting more than $10 million in penalties from the bitcoin mining firms GAW Miners and ZenMiner, after CEO Joshua Homero Garza failed to respond to fraud charges against the embattled companies.
In December, the SEC charged Garza and his companies with defrauding investors in a Ponzi scheme. Garza had claimed the companies were using hardware to mine Bitcoin, a process that uses large amounts of computer power to solve puzzles that verify and secure Bitcoin transactions. Computers that find the correct solutions are given a prize—bitcoin currency—for solving them, of which Garza promised a portion to his customers.
In reality, Garza devoted "little or no computing power toward any mining activity," according to the SEC. Instead he paid customers with funds from his other ventures, including Bitcoin exchange Paybase, which imploded in April of 2015.
Garza had guaranteed that customer mining contracts with GAW and ZenMiner, which he community called Hashlets, would make a profit. The company sold at least $19 million Hashlets to more than 10,000 investors, most of which never recovered their full investments, and very few who made a profit.
After Garza declined to respond to these charges, the SEC filed a motion on Friday for a default penalty of $10,384,099 against the firms, including $10,078,331 in penalties plus prejudgement interest. The filing targets the companies specifically, as Garza has requested an extension to respond to charges filed against him personally.
"GAW Miners, often through its CEO Garza, also made a number of false and misleading statements to investors and potential investors about its and ZenMiner's virtual currency Mining operations," the SEC wrote.
It is still unclear where Garza is today, as he waived his motion of summons in this case, and it has been suggested that he has fled the country. Garza's lawyer Marjorie Peerce declined to comment on the case, or the whereabouts of her client.pullarius1 Profile Blog Joined May 2010 United States 508 Posts Last Edited: 2011-07-11 19:25:09 #1
Match 1: LeenockfOu v NSHoSeo_Tassadar
VODS
Game 1:
+ Show Spoiler + Xel'Naga Caverns
Leenock gasless pool expands. Tassy gets an early stargate for a void ray, then expands after three gates. Leenock gets some defensive spore crawlers and a roach warren with +1 missile attack. He changes his mind, canceling the roach warren in favor of a lair and a macro hatchery. He keeps the +1 missile attacks though, and remakes the roach warren alongside his hydralisk den after his lair finishes. Tassadar meanwhile has been building up his gateway count and ground army after expanding off of three gateways. He starts teching pretty hard, building a robo and a twilight council at the same time while upgrading +1 weapons. His army seems very weak at this point though, as he has just seven sentries, a zealot, two stalkers and a void ray at the 10'00'' mark. Leenock takes his third and gets an infestation pit.
Tassy moves to take his gold once blink finishes and he has some observers on the field. Leenock continues upgrading +2 ranged, gets +1 melee, and gets baneling drops. Tassadar takes his gold, techs to colossus and starts a very early +3 weapons while still on just +1 armor. Leenock takes his gold and builds a spire and hive as the two armies dance around the center cavern. Tassadar fleshes out his tech tree with both templar buildings and takes his fourth, leaving only the two lateral expansions on the map unclaimed. Leenock doesn't even bother with mutalisks, immediately building corruptors and morphing his spire into a greater spire within seconds of it finishing. Tassadar starts some DT harassment, but gets shut down by static defenses and a quick fungal.
When both players max at 20'00'' in, the protoss army has four colossus, four high templar, and a mainly stalker ground army. Leenock has six brood lords, four infestors, 36 banelings in overlords, and about sixty supply of a roach/hydra mix. Both players seem to have a fairly low worker count for this late in the game. Leenock has just 74 drones, and Tassadar has 62. At some point, a bunch of Leenock's drones have gone towards a huge spine crawler wall in the middle the map. Both players start suiciding units to free up supply. Tassadar sees the brood lords for the first time and builds two extra stargates for void rays. But when the first, and last, battle finally comes, Tassadar doesn't yet have anything to deal with the brood lords as his stalkers have to run from the baneling drops, so his roach/hydra/brood army is easily able to avoid the four templar and roll over Tassadar's units and gold base. Tassy gg's.
A long passive game on both sides where each player tried to out-tech the other. I think this hurt Tassadar, because he ended up making a lot of tech structures that he didn't get a lot of value out of. For instance, he made an early stargate that made just a single void ray and one later phoenix the whole game. He also teched to templar and researched storm for just a couple successful casts, and made only four colossus from his robo+thermal lance tech. I think he just tried to do too much and ended up with a very cream-of-wheat army.
Leenock 1-0
+ Show Spoiler + Dual Site
Leenock goes for speed first. Tassadar rushes for dark templar off of one base. Leenock isn't totally prepared for the DTs, but gets up spore crawlers in time to save his natural. Tassadar expands behind his aggression
and attacks with three archons, a bunch of zealots and some sentries while Leenock has only speedlings and slow banelings. Leenock loses his natural, but eventually forces Tassadar to retreat with a speedling counterattack. Leenock re-expands and tries to take a third afterward, but cancels it when Tassadar moves against it. Tassadar sees the third has been canceled, and tries to attack the natural with a zealot/archon heavy ground army/ But Leenock has infestors out, which fungal all the zealots in range of the spine crawlers! Tassy is forced to retreat. Meanwhile, Leenock has been sniping probes at the protoss natural with small zergling attacks, and has managed to equalize the worker and base counts. Leenock even equalizes the food counts after intercepting the retreating protoss army with speedlings! Both players take their thirds.
Now equal to his opponent in most respects, Leenock gets a spire and a hive at almost the same time and follows it up with a quick greater spire. Tassadar techs to high templar and storm. Both players take their golds, but Leenock suicides a bunch of zerglings to force Tassadar to cancel his. Once he has eight brood lords, Leenock gets +3 melee and adrenal glands. Leenock forces another cancel at Tassadar's gold, but Tassadar returns in kind.
When both players are happy with heir army compositions, Tassadar with pure gateway and Leenock with a dozen brood lords and infestor/ling, the two players' units take two different routes to their opponents' bases, completely missing each other and initiating a base trade. Both players annihilate all of each other's bases. The game states is left with 4 archons, 17 blink stalkers, and 3 high templar against 2 infestors, 10 brood lords, and 28 banelings in overlords. The biggest difference is that Tassadar is able to secure Leenock's old gold with twenty probes, while Leenock is forced to remote mine from the depths of Tassadar's main with six probes. The armies go for another very tense trade when they both think they know where the other's last buildings are. Leenock catches all of Tassadar's twenty probes in a fungal except two, one of which builds another nexus all the way across the map! Tassadar kills Leenock's last hatchery, sees a single missed extractor and rushes across the map to kill it. Leenock kills all of Tassy's buildings but doesn't know about the newly built nexus! Leenock is forced to gg just before he is eliminated from the game.
A much more exciting, long, and tense game. I love it when players quickly quickly decide on a course of action in an exotic endgame scenario.
Tassadar 1-1
+ Show Spoiler + Terminus RE, Leenock clockwise
The game starts with QXC admitting to having cheated on the Brood War campaign as both players expand before anything else. Tassadar goes for a stargate, but Leenock gets spore crawlers out and takes his third. Tassadar gets a void ray and three phoenix, which he uses to gain sight into the main for zealot warp-ins, which do a lot of damage to Leenock's economy since he has been quickly teching to infestors and doesn't have a lot of defense against zealots. Tassadar's main attack comes in the form of a huge chargelot wall that sweeps in after Leenock loses all of his infestors to phoenixes, and Leenock quickly has to gg.
Leenock seemed to have felt way too safe in this macro-est of macro maps. He teched and expanded very fast, and so had only zerglings to fight against zealots, which traded very inefficiently and put him too far behind.
Tassadar 2-1
+ Show Spoiler + Tal'Darim Altar, cross positions
Leenock gasless pool expands. Tassy goes for a forge-first expand. Leenock gets an early lair right after his natural's hatchery finishes. It turns into a spine crawler push, but the timing is a bit late and so only kills a forge and a gateway. Tassadar responds with a stargate AND dark templar. Leenock gets a fast spire, a macro hatch, and a third. Tassadar's dark templar kill a good number of drones as Leenock's mutalisks come into play. Tassadar responds to the spire play with blink and high templar. Leenock eventually kills the dark templar and techs to essentially everything you can get get off lair tech: infestors, roaches, baneling drops, but no hydralisks. When Leenock maxes off of mutalisks and roaches, Tassadar has just 140 supply. Leenock makes a questionable engagement with roaches and mutas straight up against blink stalkers and loses everything. But with Leenock now on four bases he is able to quickly re-max and take another huge food lead.The armies jockey for position on the map but there isn't much action aside from tepid DT harassment for a while.
Leenock once again goes for his quick tech to brood lords as Tassadar sends a blink stalker army to kill his fourth base. Leenock retreats to to defend, but Tassadar repositions his army in time and makes a great blinking stalker concave to destroy the roaches which are getting stormed over and over again. Tassadar moves against the natural for killing blow, pops six brood lords as they are morphing, and forces Leenock out of the game.
That was a crazy, strange game on both sides. I don't think Leenock knew exactly how to transition out of the spine push against DTs as he never seemed to take control of the game despite being very far ahead in supply for most of it. I think the game finally turned when Leenock lost his mutalisk, as it passed the initiative back to Tassadar's very mobile blink stalkers.
Tassadar wins 3-1
+ Show Spoiler + Tassadar is the first protoss to reach the Code A finals.
Match 2: ZeNEXPuzzle v IM_happy
VODS
Game 1:
+ Show Spoiler + Happy goes for a very fast cloak-less banshee off of just one early gas which he sets up to expand behind. Puzzle gets a gate, a robo, and expands. Happy gets infernal pre-ignitors and a raven as his banshee does no damage. Puzzle gets three immortals, which is good for him because Happy seems to be meching. Happy goes in and kills all of Puzzle's natural's probes with his hellions, but Puzzle just counterattacks with his immortal/gateway army and easily wins.
That was either a brilliantly crafted build that went slightly wrong, or Happy just teched way too fast and lost.
Puzzle 1-0
+ Show Spoiler + Dual Site
Happy 2-raxes, one proxied and lets one of Puzzle's probes into his base. At 4' Happy bitbybits across the map, but his units fall to stalkers despite some questionable micro by Puzzle. Happy stays in the game, but Puzzle easily goes for 3-gate robo with blink and an observer for a quick win.
Whoops. Puzzle luckily skipped his first zealot there. I wonder what Puzzle losing so many stalkers to stim-less marines means for his chances of winning a PvP.
Puzzle 2-0
+ Show Spoiler + Terminus RE, cross positions
Happy bunkers the bottom of Puzzle's ramp to ensure a safe one-rax expand. Puzzle happily just builds three gateways, breaks the bunker, and expands himself. Puzzle is able to smash his way up Happy's ramp, kill most of his army, and then just back off and start macroing off of three gates and a robo. But when Happy tries to finally establish his natural, Puzzle attacks, kills a medivac full of bio, and wins, giving us our first PvP finals of any GSL tournament.
Puzzle wins 3-0
+ Show Spoiler + I am always puzzled when players try unconventional tactics that lose so easily.
+ Show Spoiler + Tassadar and Puzzle are actually just the third and fourth protosses to make it to a GSL final of any sort, the two others being MC and Inca in Code S.
I'm a little bit rusty, so forgive!Game 1:Game 1: @pullarius1Speaker John Boehner John Andrew BoehnerEx-GOP lawmaker joins marijuana trade group Crowley, Shuster moving to K Street On unilateral executive action, Mitch McConnell was right — in 2014 MORE (R-Ohio) on Tuesday delivered a blunt message to President Obama ahead of his plan for increased unilateral action: We’re watching you. [WATCH VIDEO]
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House Republicans urged Obama not to go around Congress, and Boehner warned that Congress would act if the president's orders did not pass muster under the Constitution.
The House GOP "will continue to look closely at whether the president is faithfully executing laws, as he took an oath to do,” Boehner told reporters after a meeting of the Republican conference. “We’re going to watch very closely, because there’s a Constitution that we all take an oath to, including him, and following the Constitution is the basis for House Republicans.”
Asked what the House would do if lawmakers determined Obama skirted the Constitution, Boehner said only, “There are options that are available to us.” Republicans, he said, would discuss them at their annual retreat, which begins Wednesday in Cambridge, Md.
In his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, Obama plans to announce that he will unilaterally raise the minimum wage to $10.10 for employees under new federal contracts.
Boehner said he thought the president had the authority to do that, but he dismissed the action as one that is likely to have little practical impact.
“Let’s understand something: This affects not one current contract,” he said. “It only affects future contracts with the federal government. So I think the question is, how many people, Mr. President, will this executive action actually help?”
Citing his career as a small-business owner, Boehner blasted the president’s call for a higher minimum wage as “bad policy” that would costs jobs and “hurt the very people the president purports to want to help.”
Other Republican leaders said they agreed with Obama’s call for 2014 to be “a year of action,” but they prodded him to work with Congress to achieve results on job-creation measures.
“If that is going to happen, he needs to put down his pen and his phone and work with us, not around us, to make this country the great country that it can be,” said Rep. Lynn Jenkins (Kan.), vice chairwoman of the House Republican conference.
At a separate event, House Democrats took a more favorable view of Obama’s plans.
"Working with Congress, or if Congress wants, working without Congress, the president is going to get work done," Rep. Xavier Becerra (Calif.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said after a party meeting in the Capitol. "We applaud him for that."
Mike Lillis contributed.The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) — the China-led development bank headquartered in Beijing — was formally established Friday and is expected to commence operations early next year, China’s Xinhua News Agency reported. The establishment of the bank, which has fast translated into one of China’s biggest foreign policy successes, came after 17 funding members of the AIIB ratified an agreement.
“The AIIB is legally established as the Articles of Agreement take effect today,” Chinese Finance Minister Lou Jiwei reportedly said, adding that the bank will become operational once its board of directors and executive council meet for the first time in mid-January.
China and 20 other Asian nations, including India and Singapore, agreed to establish the AIIB last October. Since then, a host of European nations, including several American allies, including the U.K., France, Germany and Italy have joined the bank, despite opposition from Washington.
China, India and Russia are the three largest shareholders of AIIB, holding a 30.34 percent, 8.52 percent and 6.66 percent stake, respectively. Their voting shares are calculated at 26.06 percent, 7.5 percent and 5.92 percent, respectively.
Although the AIIB is being seen as a challenge to the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB), China insists that the aim of the new multilateral lender is to promote regional economic cooperation rather than compete with existing financial institutions.
“The popularity of AIIB stems from its win-win nature as the bank serves to enhance connectivity among Asian countries by supporting infrastructure development,” Jin Liqun, AIIB’s president-designate, told Xinhua. “A prosperous Asia will offer huge markets for global enterprises, which are hungry for business opportunities, and will boost international economic growth.”
The AIIB is expected to lend between $10 billion and $15 billion a year in its initial years, Jin added.Fiorentina head coach Vincenzo Montella denies Juan Cuadrado is set for a move to Premier League side Chelsea.
Chelsea are set to complete the transfer of Fiorentina's Juan Cuadrado "within the next 48 hours" with Mohamed Salah potentially going the other way on loan, club sources have told ESPN FC.
Cuadrado, 26, signed a new contract including a buyout clause worth 27 million pounds (35 million euros) last summer, which Chelsea will have to match.
Sources told ESPN FC that the London club have not yet activated the clause but have reached agreement on personal terms with the Colombian winger.
Chelsea will pay around 23 million pounds up front, with the rest of the fee made up of bonus clauses.
But in order to meet that and continue to adhere to financial fair play regulations, they may let Andre Schurrle leave Stamford Bridge for Wolfsburg now rather than in the summer.
Last week, Jose Mourinho publicly denied that Cuadrado was "marked" for a signing in January, only to then talk about the transfer situation in the same evasive way he had when Fernando Torres and Juan Mata left Stamford Bridge in recent windows.
Mourinho is known to have been an admirer of Cuadrado since the World Cup.
The player's versatility on the wing offers Chelsea greater tactical variety and means central midfield is more covered than when they have a player like Schurrle or Willian in the side -- something that has been an issue in big games when Cesc Fabregas and Nemanja Matic play as a two.
However, the situation around bringing him in was always dependent on getting the right deals for Salah and Schurrle -- but that now looks to be the case.
Wolfsburg are understood to be optimistic about their chances of striking a deal for Schurrle for less than the 25 million pounds Chelsea want. Borussia Dortmund are also monitoring the situation.Getty Images
In the wake of his four-hour meeting with Vikings coach Mike Zimmer and G.M. Rick Spielman, running back Adrian Peterson has issued a statement that suggests his concerns were not resolved during the get-together.
“I appreciate Rick [Spielman] and Coach [Mike] Zimmer coming down to see me today,” Peterson said in a statement issued to Josina Anderson of ESPN. “We had a great dialogue and they were able to understand where I was coming from and concerns my family and I still have. We respect each other and hopefully the situation can pan out so that everyone involved is content.”
By using the phrase “still have,” Peterson’s statement suggests that Wednesday’s meeting failed to resolve them.
Zimmer has twice told PFT Live that, if Peterson is dead set on leaving the Vikings, Zimmer would accommodate the player.
Peterson’s father, Nelson, has confirmed that Adrian believes Vikings COO Kevin Warren worked with the NFL to keep Adrian off the field for the balance of the 2014 season. The truth may be that the NFL was determined to keep Peterson from playing, with or without the team’s consent. If so, the team’s best play would have been to cooperate with the league office. Resistance wouldn’t have changed the outcome, and may have simply angered the powers-that-be.As the House investigation into Donald Trump's possible coordination with Russia heats up, Democratic congressman and House Intelligence Committee member Mike Quigley (D-IL) tells CNN that there's "probable cause to believe there was cooperation between the Russians and the Trump campaign."
The House investigation into Donald Trump’s possible coordination with Russians during the 2016 election is heating up again, with the recent announcement that former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates has been called to testify in May. Revelations from Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee are already proving quite stunning.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the ranking member on the committee, has repeatedly hinted at evidence of collusion, but his fellow committee member Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL) just dropped a very specific bombshell about the evidence that he has seen.
In an interview with CNN’s Poppy Harlow, Quigley invoked a damning legal term:
HARLOW: Sitting where you sit on the intel committee have you seen any evidence of that? QUIGLEY: Let me put
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#1: Anonymizer
One can surf anonymously and easy with the help of a nice services called CGI/Web proxies. Simply type a URL you want to visit -- the Page does the job for you, selecting random CGI/Web proxy from a hundreds of available services, securing you from many potential dangers. When you follow a link on a page viewed via CGI proxy you get there via the this proxy again, so you don't have to type a new URL.
CGI/Web proxy has two more nice features. Firstly, there are WWW sites that are inaccessible from one place, but easily accessible from another. Once I was trying to load a page located in Australia for 20 minutes, all in vain. Using CGI/Web proxies immediately solved the problem. Secondly, there are certain sites that give you information depending on where you are "calling" from. Let's take an example. I was at Encyclopedia Britannica site, trying to check the price for their products. Clicking on Order Information button gave me the list of Britannica's dealers all over the world, no price info. Going to the same place via the Anonymizer led me to a different page, where I found the price list. As it turned out the local dealer's price for Encyclopedia Britannica CD was several times higher than the one at which it's sold in USA. Good savings!
Some CGI/Web proxies are able to encrypt URLs (uniform resource locator) in a way that these can be used as reference for a server. If a request with an encrypted URL occurs, they are able to decrypt the URL and forward it to the server, without enabling the user to get knowledge about the server address. All references in the servers response are again encrypted before the response is forwarded to the client.
Some CGI/Web proxies are able to use secure HTTPS protocol for exchanging data between proxy and your computer, even if original server is not secure. This option excluding possiblility to sniff a data flow between your computer and this proxy is very useful in some cases, for example, when you are forced to work in possibly scanned/sniffed insecure public network.
To get your personal CGI/Web/FTP proxy simply download free James Marshall CGIproxy script and install on your Web server (Apache as a rule, Perl or mod_perl support is required), Glype proxy is another CGI script written in PHP which allows webmasters to quickly and easily set up their own proxy sites or PHProxy. Our ProxySite Perl script allows to run your own Web proxy on any computer (Linux, Windows,..) with only Perl interpreter installed.
Method #2: Proxy Servers
Proxy - a server setup designed to offer either firewall security or faster access to cached content normally accessible only through slower connections.
Proxy server - is the software installed on some network server. The main purpose of this software is to relay traffic between two network hosts (client and server), sometimes this software does some data caching (usually this is performed by HTTP proxies). If your browser is configured to work through the proxy server then all your network traffic will go through that proxy server.
The main purposes of proxy servers:
Transfer speed improvement (in case of caching proxies). You may use your ISP's proxy to access the internet - usually you have better connection to your ISP's proxy than to other hosts, if this proxy has the resource you requested from the internet you will get a copy of it from proxy (from its cache).
Security and privacy (for HTTP). Anonymous proxies hide information about your computer in the request headers, so you can safely surf the net and your information will never be used in any way.
LAN interconnection (or LAN to WAN connection). Sometimes you experience some problems while accessing the server located in the other network (for example in the internet).
There are 3 types of HTTP proxies:
Fully anonymous (elite or high anonymous) proxies. Such proxies do not change request fields and look like real browser. You real IP is also hidden of course. People that administrating internet servers will think that you are not using any proxies.
Anonymous proxies also do not show your real IP but change the request fields, so it is very easy to detect that proxy while log analyzing. Nothing really matters, but some server administrators restrict the proxy requests.
Transparent proxies (not anonymous, simply HTTP) change the request fields, also they transfer real IP. Such proxies are not applicable for security and privacy while surfing on net. You can use them only for network speed improvement.
When Web Proxy Servers are Useful?
Permitting and restricting client access to the Internet based on the client IP Address.
Caching documents for internal documents. - Selectively controlling access to the Internet and subnets based on the submitted URL.
Providing Internet access for companies using private networks.
Converting data to HTML format so it is readable by a browser.
One can also anonymize one's web surfing by using a proxy server. Proxy servers are similar to the Anonymizer, i.e. web pages are retrieved by the proxy server rather than by the person actually browsing the Web (you). But there are several important distinctions: proxy servers don't help with cookies, hostile applets or code. In most of the cases they do just one thing: they conceal your real geograhic location.
Most of proxy servers restrict access based on the IP Address from which a user connects to them. In other words if you have an account with Bluh-Bluh-Com, you can't use La-Di-Da-Net's proxy server, access will be denied. Fortunately you can always find a "kind-hearted" proxy server on the Net the owners of which openly state that the service is publicly available, or a proxy server that doesn't restrict access that due to whatever reason, but the fact is not known to everyone.
How do you find a "kind-hearted" proxy server? Good news for lazy people: there are many lists of available proxy servers with periodic updates: http://rosinstrument.com/proxy/. RSS feeds are also available for proxy lists syndication and to keep up with proxy lists in an automated manner that can be piped into special programs or filtered displays, such us Google Reader, Bloglines, etc.: in browser, in Google Reader, planetlab in browser, planetlab in Google Reader.
For those who are not so lazy: find your own proxy server, it's real easy. Go to your favorite search engine (Google.com for example) and type something like +":8080" +":3128" +":1080" filetype:txt OR filetype:html, and you'll get the list of Web pages where ISPs give complete instructions to their users of how they should configure their browsers. Try every proxy address and after 5 or 7 failures you will surely find a proxy server that works for you. So let's say you have found a proxy, e.g.: some.proxy.com, HTTP port 8080. To make your browser use a proxy server fill out the corresponding fields in Manual Proxy Configuration tab (hope you can find it yourself).
Custom Search
Testing proxy lists you have found.
As a rule a quality of proxies from proxy lists you have found by such ways is sufficiently low because of large number of requests to these proxies by many users which have found that lists in search engine, number of professional abusers and robots using these proxies very intensive for network adverising, spamming, flooding forums, bulletin boards, blogs and so on. Number of working proxies from such lists varies from 0.00% to 10-20%. Therefore manual selection of operable proxies is not possible. Fortunately, a few of proxy testing software exists such as our ProxyCheck Java application, Proxyrama for Windows with source code available, Charon for Windows and others. See our Related Links for more examples.
Warnings!
Misconfigured Servers Often, a PUBLIC proxy server is open because it has not been configured properly. Most of open proxy servers are not supposed to be public. The person that configured the server was not aware of the potential problems and security risks. It is very common to for a novice administrator to set up a proxy with access rights that allow anyone to connect. To close a proxy server it is necessary to force users to connect from one IP Address or a range of IP Addresses. An alternative is to require users to use a user name and password. 'Honey Pots' or 'Honey Proxies' Everything that is done on or through the open proxy server can be logged and traced. A honey pot is an open proxy server intentionally deployed by security professionals to lure hackers and track their every move. A honey pot can also be installed by a hacker. A hacker can put a proxy server up on his, or a victim's computer and wait for a scanner to find it. Sending spam e-mail trough a honey pot proxy exposes the sender's activity. When a spammer uses the proxy to send bulk email, it is possible to collect the content of the spam and report the spammer to his ISP. Educational, academic public proxy systems: Planetlab, CoDeeN The CoDeeN (a suite of network services, including a CDN, that provides users with more robust access to network content) proxies are big, fast, logged and cached proxy servers cluster based on PlanetLab (a global platform for testing and deploying an emerging class of planetary-scale network services) global research network which was founded in 2002 in Princeton, Berkley and now consists of more than 700 nodes located in many educational and research institutions in the world opened for public use. These proxies are often placed in many "anonymous proxy lists" such as "high anonymous" and "elite", HOWEVER everything you do online is thoroughly tracked. As a rule these proxies are configured on 3124,3127,3128,8888 TCP ports. Some limitations for these proxies usage also exist, for example HTTP POST method is disabled. Security Risks When you use an open proxy server, your computer is making a direct connection to another computer. You do not know who is in control of the remote computer. If you are using proxy servers from open proxy lists, you could be trusting your email messages, passwords or other sensitive information to a person running the server. Someone can be watching the unencrypted information you are transferring over the network.
Configuring your browser to easy switch between multiple proxy configurations
There are many different software that could be used to set up a proxy for your system. For example small and free SwitchProxy Tool Extension for Mozilla, Firefox, Thunderbird. SwitchProxy lets you manage and switch between multiple proxy configurations quickly and easily. You can also use it as an anonymizer to protect your computer from prying eyes. Text proxy lists in host:port format are very flexible and can be used with most proxy software for Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Firefox, Thunderbird, Opera and other browsers.
Configuring your browser with "Proxy Auto-Config File" proxy.pac
Definition
Firefox
Firefox 2
Internet Explorer
only SOCKS, CONNECT or HTTP selection
to select only HTTP proxy use http://rosinstrument.com/cgi-bin/http.pac as configuration script.
as configuration script. to select only CONNECT (HTTPS) proxy use http://rosinstrument.com/cgi-bin/https.pac as configuration script.
as configuration script. to select only SOCKS proxy use http://rosinstrument.com/cgi-bin/socks.pac as configuration script.
Configuring your browser manually
FireFox
Mozilla, Nestcape Navigator 6.x, Nestcape Navigator 4.x, Netscape Communicator
Konqueror
Internet Explorer 5.x, 6.x, 7.x, 8.x
Internet Explorer 4.x, Internet Explorer 3.x
Opera 8.x, Opera 9.x
Mozilla Thunderbird proxy settings
mIRC
Emule
Kazaa
AOL Instant Messenger
Yahoo Messenger proxy settings
MSN Messenger
Windows Media Player 9.x, 8.x, 7.x
Once you have carried out this simple operation, you can start surfing the Web leaving traces as if you are from Bulgaria, USA, North Korea (that would be fun!) or somewhere else, but...there is one more very important privacy concern, "Is My Proxy Anonymous?".
Is My Proxy Anonymous?
Not all proxy servers are truly anonymous. Some of them let the system administrator of the site that you visit via a proxy server find out the IP Address from which the proxy server is accessed, i.e. your real IP Address. You can perform an anonymity check test: DETECT PROXY
If you get the message: Proxy server is detected! - then there is a security hole in your proxy, and information about your real IP Address will be listed. If the message is Proxy server is not detected - everything should be OK. In any case, carefully study the list of IP Addresses that is returned by this online tool. None of them should belong to you. You can also use alternative tests to check if your browser is anonymous. Such tests can give a complete list of the parametrs your browser passes to a remote server (this is called Environmental Variables).
Where are these proxies from?
Sometimes is required to determine Country, City or even geographical latitude and longitude to select from proxies list or servers list. Now it possible HERE, due to bulk interface to geoiplookup utility. Paste HERE your public proxies or simply hosts list in simple text format and press "Lookup GeoIP info" button. As a result you'll get your bulk proxies list opposite to corresponding Country, City, Longitude and Latitude and even link to Google Map of this server geographical location.
Test My Proxy Speed
Anonymity and Caching for speedup surfing are priority aims of Proxy servers. But not all proxy servers sufficiently fast for comfortable surfing due to high server load, bad/slow client-server connection and so on. To determine does proxy you have selected have sufficient speed for you CLICK HERE to measure your connection speed twice, first, without proxy configured, second, with proxy configured. If you'll have received sufficiently similar results for measured speed in both cases, so the configured proxy has speed capabilities sufficient for your connection speed. Otherwise try to select and to test another proxy.
Final Considerations
In spite of all of the the above said... use proxies only when it's necessary. Working via proxy servers slows down data transfer rate and is an additional load on the network and the servers. Another important thing that is often forgotten by many people: use proxies for legal purposes. Hiding you identity is ok (at least in the free world) as long as you want to visit a site that offers, say, pornography. But if you use a proxy server for purchasing CDs or software with a bogus credit card number there is a good chance that you'll end up in prison, let alone the moral aspects. Remeber, all the connections are logged, and if you violate the law you can be tracked down. The site administrator can check the logs and contact the proxy's administrator, he can in turn check his own logs and find your real IP Address, then they both will contact your ISP, and your ISP keeps logs too... Anyway, I hope you got it.
Specially for paranoiacs
Look, different tools described above can be chained! For example you set up your browser to use Proxy A, and you know the addresses and port numbers of 2 more servers Proxy B and Proxy C. The URL that you type should look something like that: http://proxyB:port/http://proxyC:port/http://www.whereyougo.com/ As the result you go to the site via 3 servers: A,B and C. One of them can be the Anonymizer. WARNING: Not all the proxy servers allow chains like that. Such capabilities exist ONLY for CGI/Web proxies (pay attention to chaining CGI proxy combobox), HTTP proxies with CONNECT capabilities (additional software is required for chaining, usually such software supports both SOCKS and CONNECT proxies, see examples for SOCKS) and SOCKS proxies (such software is required as Prtunnel, Proxyrama and others).
Anonymity and Myths
Anonymity is derived from the greek word ανωνυμία, meaning without a name or name-less. In colloquial use, the term typically refers to a person, and often means that the Ppersonal identity, or personally identifiable information of that person is not known.
The main question is of course, what are you trying to hide? Closely following that is how important is it? The precautions you take have to weigh up to the value of the data you are trying to protect, in this case, you are trying to protect your anonymity. In the recent years privacy and anonymity have become big issues with CCTV cameras everywhere, and projects like Echelon reading all your e-mails and reporting back to the Orwellian ‘Big Brother’. So just for normal surfing, or if you are planning on hacking a foreign governments personnel database (not that we recommend that of course), you need to protect yourself in different ways.
Remember Anonymity is not an absolute, there are varying degrees.
The Myths
Using a proxy I found on the web in my browser is enough.
People have been using proxies for years, normally open proxies found from scanning large IP ranges on the internet, what you have to think though, is this proxy open for a purpose? Is this purpose to listen to what you are doing? To collect your passwords? Also it’s not infallible, remember the traffic has to go from your computer to the proxy, and come back in, those records can be corelated in your country alone and need to external aid. Plus the proxy may keep records of who access what and when, it make be a honeypot and keep full packet logs of all completed TCP/IP sessions. The problem is you just don’t know.
If I chain proxies no one can find me.
Also not true, it doesn’t matter if you cross through Taiwan, Korea, Russia and Iraq, your ISP just needs to see the packets going out and coming in at the right times to your machine from the last proxy hop in your chain.
The Reality
It can be said, pretty much whole heartedly, there is no such thing as real anonymity online, if you do something bad enough, the people in power can find you. IP Spoofing is misunderstood in 9/10 cases and is no protection against anything (I’ll write an article about this later). And web proxies, as above, offer little or no protection. They are good enough if you just want to stop your school/parents/office from tracking your surfing habits, but they won’t protect you from doing time if you commit a federal crime. The next best thing from this is Onion Routing, the common peer to peer implementation known as Tor.
Onion Routing prevents the transport medium from knowing who is communicating with whom — the network knows only that communication is taking place. In addition, the content of the communication is hidden from eavesdroppers up to the point where the traffic leaves the OR network.
Source: Onion Router
Tor is a toolset for a wide range of organizations and people that want to improve their safety and security on the Internet. Using Tor can help you anonymize web browsing and publishing, instant messaging, IRC, SSH, and other applications that use the TCP protocol. Tor also provides a platform on which software developers can build new applications with built-in anonymity, safety, and privacy features.
You can read more at the Tor site, the Wikipedia articles Onion routing and Tor (anonymity network).
Getting Tored Up
For most people Tor is enough, I recommend getting the Tor Bundle, which includes Tor, TorCP and Privoxy. All you need to do is set your applications to use a proxy, host is localhost and port is 8118. Instructions with screenshots are here: Linux/BSD/Unix, Windows. Then you’re done, it works for most applications. Just remember though it’s encrypted from your machine to the end point, not from the end point to wherever it’s going, so that Tor node can see whatever traffic you are sending through Tor.. So make sure you encrypt (POPS, SMTP with TLS etc).
The h07 unix research team recognized that people paranoid enough to use tor are still dumb enough to use plaintext-authentication protocols like pop3 and telnet. They might think it’s “secure because tor encrypts it”. This isn’t the case. It’s encrypted, but …… communication from client to entry node and exit node to server will still remain as is. POP3, telnet and others will still be plain-text and thus subject to sniffing.
Freenet p2p software
Freenet project is free software which lets you publish and obtain information on the Internet without fear of censorship. To achieve this freedom, the network is entirely decentralized and publishers and consumers of information are anonymous.
Freenet can be thought of as a large storage device. When you store a file in it, you receive a key which can be used to retrieve the file. When you supply Freenet with a key, it returns the appropriate file (if it is located). The storage space is distributed among all connected nodes on Freenet.
Freenet is a Peer-to-peer network, which is both decentralized and anonymized. The nodes that you connect to only knows its nearest neighbours and has no idea about how the network as a whole is structured.
Freenet is built on the principle of small world networks. By connecting to nodes of people you already know, and the people you know in turn connect to people they know, one should be able to reach all nodes in a Freenet network.
XeroBank (aka Torpark) Browser and XeroBank anonymity network
xB Browser is an commercial anonymous web browser designed to run on both the Tor and XeroBank anonymity network. xB Browser was originally forked from Portable Firefox web browser with Tor access built into it, but was redesigned from scratch in 2007. It is designed for use on portable media such as a USB flash drive but it can also be used on any hard disk drive. The XeroBank network routes traffic through at least two multi-jurisdictional hops. In contrast to Tor, the XeroBank network is immune to 3rd-party traffic injection, supports both TCP and UDP protocols, and performs channel multiplexing for low observability, however it is run by a single entity.
True Anonymity?
It may not be totally legal, but it’s pretty much bulletproof (Unless of course you get caught in a car parking jacking off to porn downloaded from an open Wireless Access Point). When you do this, you should make sure you are using an anonymous operating system, so what better than a bootable distro especially for this purpose, called Anonym-OS, You can check it out here.
kaos.theory’s Anonym.OS LiveCD is a bootable live cd based on OpenBSD that provides a hardened operating environment whereby all ingress traffic is denied and all egress traffic is automatically and transparently encrypted and/or anonymized.
Using SocksCap client and SOCKS proxy for anonymity in non HTTP applications without build in SOCKS protocol support (telnet, ftp, IRC and so on)
What is SocksCap? SocksCap automatically enables Windows-based TCP and UDP networking client applications to traverse a SOCKS firewall. SocksCap intercepts the networking calls from WinSock applications and redirects them through the SOCKS server without any modification to the orginal applications or to the operating system software or drivers. It is a great difference in situation with built-in SOCKS support from the years of SocksCap debut. Most network applications now have SOCKS protocol built-in support. Only few of the legacy applications need SocksCap type standalone application for SOCKS servers usage. Where do I get SocksCap? Is SocksCap free? Is the source code available? SocksCap now as a matter of fact is out-of-date and not supported software, but there are a lot of SocksCap clones and successors, see Related List for alternate SOCKS capable servers (SS5, Dante, 3Proxy etc.) and clients (Socks5, FreeCap etc.). What do I enter for SOCKS server and port in SocksCap Setup? Enter the address and port of the SOCKS server you need to traverse. If you are not sure what those are, contact your ISP, network administrator, or firewall administrator for your site or consult a lists: SOCKS LIST 1, SOCKS LIST 2.
Using HTTPort software and CONNECT/SSL/HTTPS proxy for anonymity for HTTP and non HTTP applications and bypassing of your local HTTP proxy filtering
HTTPort allows you to bypass your HTTP proxy, which is blocking you from the Internet. With HTTPort you may use various Internet software from behind the proxy, ex. e-mail, instant messengers, P2P file sharing, ICQ, News, FTP, IRC, etc. The basic idea is that you set up your Internet software in such a manner, that it connects to your own local PC as if it was the remote server it needed. HTTPort then intercepts that connection and runs it through a tunnel through the proxy.
HTTPort doesn't really care for the proxy as such, it works perfectly with firewalls, transparent accelerators, NATs and basically anything that lets HTTP protocol through. HTTP is the basis for web surfing, so if you can freely surf the web from where you are, HTTPort will bring you the rest of the Internet applications.
HTTPort performs tunneling using one of two modes. The following schemes will give you the idea.
In SSL/CONNECT mode HTTPort can make a tunnel through a proxy all by itself. It requires that the proxy supports a certain HTTP feature, specifically CONNECT HTTP method. Most of the proxies have this method disabled by default, and administrators don't readily enable it, so if you find that this tunneling mode works for you, you must be lucky. SSL/CONNECT mode much faster, but encryption can't be used in this mode and as described here, your proxy tracks all your actions easily.
Remote host method is much more capable for tunneling through just about any proxy. In this mode HTTPort uses a special server software called HTTHost installed somewhere outside of your proxy-blocked network. HTTHost is basically a web server with a twist. When HTTPort is doing tunneling, it sends series of HTTP requests to the HTTHost. The proxy sees it af if you were surfing to some web site, and consciously allows you to. HTTHost in turn performs it's half of tunneling and talks to the target servers. This mode is much slower, but works in most cases, and it features strong data encryption which makes proxy logging useless.
Using Proxifier to tunnel any Windows/Mac network application through SOCKS/HTTPS proxy server
Proxifier is a Windows/Mac program that allows network applications that do not support working through proxy servers operate through a HTTPS or SOCKS proxy server or a chain of proxy servers.
With Proxifier you can easily tunnel all connections on the system or separate applications. You can work with any Internet client (browsers, FTP, IRC, BitTorrent, messengers, telnet, SSH, video/audio, games...) through a network that is separated from Internet by a firewall (only one open port is required for a proxy tunnel to bypass firewall). Proxifier will provide you with added privacy in all your Internet activities. An example is sending and receiving email through a proxy server or by chaining multiple proxy servers together. Proxifier supports all mail clients while allowing you to remain anonymous.
Related linksWhen it comes to Star Trek books, few fans consider them canon. It’s understandable, especially with novels written during the run of a series on television. But sometimes a book comes along that almost has to be taken as canon because of who wrote it. During Voyager’s third season, series co-creator Jeri Taylor penned the back story of Captain Janeway in Mosaic. As the creator of the character, no one was more qualified to tell us how Kathryn went from a child in Bloomington, Indiana, to captain of a starship lost in the Delta Quadrant.
In this episode of Literary Treks, hosts Matthew Rushing and Christopher Jones are joined by Charlynn Schmidt of To The Journey to discuss Mosaic, the portrayal of Janeway as a child, student, and young woman, what drives her to help the Ocampo and protect her crew at all costs, and, of course, Jeri Taylor’s obsession with hair.
In our news segment we take a look at new blurbs for Sacraments of Fire and Seekers 3, and we judge John Jackson Miller’s Takedown by its cover.
News
Sacraments of Fire blurb revealed (2:37)
Seekers 3: Long Shot blurb revealed (4:52)
Judge a Book by Its Cover: Takedown (6:31)
Feature: Mosaic
Memories and Impressions (9:35)
Structuring the Life of Baby Janeway (20:10)
The Portrayal of Janeway: Good or Bad? (26:42)
Trying to Write a Strong Woman in the ‘90s (33:47)
Everybody’s Got Better Hair Than Me (37:45)
Delving Into the Psyche of Janeway (43:15)
Final Thoughts (53:31)
Closing (58:04)DETROIT (AP) — Pressure from fellow Democrats grew for Michigan Rep. John Conyers to resign after a former staffer said the longest-serving member of the House made unwanted sexual advances that included partially undressing in front of her in a hotel room and inappropriate touching.
On Tuesday, members of the Congressional Black Caucus met with Conyers and explained to one of their founding members why he should resign, but stressed the decision was up to him, the senior House aide said.
The caucus chairman, Rep. Cedric Richmond, called the meeting a "candid conversation about the seriousness of the allegations against him."
Another caucus member, Rep. Bennie Thompson, said Conyers should, "go home and talk to his constituents and listen to them and make a decision based on that."
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi pressured the 88-year-old Conyers behind the scenes to leave the chamber, according to a senior House aide, who spoke late Tuesday on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
Conyers missed two roll call votes in the House Tuesday and was photographed by a passenger boarding a flight to Detroit from Washington.
Early Wednesday, Conyers' son told reporters outside the family's Detroit home that it's "disconcerting" to see how his father is being treated following the allegations.
"It's very unfortunate to see him fight so long for so many people and to automatically have the allegations assumed to be true," John Conyers III said.
He noted, however: "And of course, with sexual assault, women are to be believed. But in this instance he has no history of this."
The pressure on the lawmaker first elected in 1964 came after Deanna Maher, who ran a Michigan office for Conyers from 1997 to 2005, accused him of several incidents of sexual misconduct. She told The Associated Press Tuesday that the first incident occurred in 1997 during a three-day Congressional Black Caucus event in Washington, which she said she "felt honored" to attend.
Maher said while she was in the bedroom of a hotel suite, Conyers walked in, called room service and ordered sandwiches.
"I had my nightclothes on," said Maher, who now lives in the Holland area in western Michigan. "I was just scared to death. I was married at the time. He sat in the bedroom taking his clothes off. I didn't say anything and he didn't say anything."
Nothing happened between them, she added.
"He didn't go naked. He was down to his skivvies," Maher said. "He sat there eating sandwiches and then he stormed out and slammed the door. I was so embarrassed and ashamed of myself for being so stupid. I needed a job."
"He didn't put his hand on me, but the message was loud and clear," she said.
The House Ethics Committee is investigating Conyers, who announced Sunday that he would step aside as the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee.
"We are at a watershed moment for our country in the fight against sexual harassment and discrimination," Pelosi wrote to the committee. "The Committee on Ethics has a great responsibility to proceed expeditiously as well as fairly into any investigation of credible harassment and discrimination allegations."
Conyers is among a number of prominent men in politics, entertainment and journalism who have been accused of sexual misconduct in the wake of explosive allegations against former Hollywood executive Harvey Weinstein. Also last week, Republican Rep. Joe Barton apologized for a nude photograph leaked on social media.
Maher's allegations against Conyers initially were reported by The Detroit News. She said there were other incidents involving unwanted touching in a car in 1998 and unwanted touching of her legs under her dress in 1999.
Conyers was driving the two to a Detroit-area airport in 1998 when he began touching her leg, Maher told the AP.
"He was feeling me up," she said. "He was an older guy, a terrible driver and all over Interstate 75. He was stopped by a (Michigan State Police) trooper."
Conyers' attorney, Arnold Reed, said Maher's allegations are uncorroborated and Conyers denies wrongdoing.
"John Conyers has always said he's not guilty of harassing these women," Reed said. "Any woman or man that is violated, that's unacceptable — completely unacceptable. By the same token, a person has a right to protest his innocence. This is what we call due process. Mr. Conyers wants to be cooperative and will be cooperative with any investigation."
Last week, BuzzFeed News reported that the 88-year-old lawmaker had settled a complaint in 2015 from a woman staffer who alleged she was fired because she rejected his sexual advances.
BuzzFeed reported that Conyers' office paid the woman over $27,000 to settle the complaint under a confidentiality agreement. BuzzFeed also published affidavits from former staff members who said they had witnessed Conyers touching female staffers inappropriately or requesting sexual favors.
___
Associated Press reporter Alan Fram in Washington and videographer Mike Householder in Detroit contributed to this story.Last summer, the Secular Student Alliance formed a strategic partnership with the Freedom From Religion Foundation in order to protect the rights of young atheists. It was a match made in hell, in all the right ways.
Looks like that partnership is being put to use thanks to a developing situation in North Carolina, where administrators at Pisgah High School in Canton are refusing to allow an atheist club to form:
After first meeting with Assistant Principal Connie Weeks, the student was told that Weeks needed to “look into” the formation of the group. At subsequent meetings, the student was told by Weeks that they should just join a different club, because the secular club didn’t “fit in” to the community at Pisgah High School, and there were no faculty sponsors available — despite the Equal Access Act stating that if a sponsor couldn’t be found, the administration is required to assign one.
What does that even mean, it doesn’t “fit in”?! That’s why a lot of student groups form in the first place: because the kids who don’t fit in with most of their classmates want to create a community for themselves. Weeks is basically telling students who are already marginalized that they can’t have a group because… they’re too marginalized. And odds are she figured her dismissal would be enough to put an end to the issue, not realizing the student in question knew the rules as well as she did and would call for reinforcements.
The SSA played “Good Cop” months ago, sending a civil letter to the school’s principal, only to get no response in return.
Now, FFRF along with the ACLU of North Carolina are getting involved, with a much more detailed letter to the district’s superintendent:
Preventing Pisgah High students from forming an SSA group not only violates the law but is also bad policy. Nonreligious and non-Christian students within Pisgah High should have an equal opportunity to make their school a better place for themselves and their classmates. If students want to build a community as a nonreligious minority, they should be allowed to do so.
There’s just no excuse for administrators to deny an atheist group from forming when it appears that they have no problem with a Fellowship of Christian Athletes group at the school.
Cash Wilson, the father of the student who wants to start the group, fully supports what his daughter is doing:
“As both a parent and secular activist, I am inspired by the tenacity of these teenagers who didn’t cower in their corners but instead contacted their friends and advocates at the SSA,” said Cash Wilson, the father of the student in question. “A secular club is a welcome addition to any school, but especially a school here in the zealous mountains of North Carolina. It will help secular students will no longer feel alone and ostracized. My full respect and admiration to the student activists, the fine folks at SSA, the FFRF legal team, and the North Carolina ACLU.”
Wilson isn’t kidding about his own activism. We last saw him in November, when, in response to a local school district accepting posters proclaiming “In God We Trust,” he got the district to accept more posters that celebrated the Treaty of Tripoli and said “… the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”
Best of luck to Wilson’s daughter and her classmates for not letting up and continuing to fight for their group. They’re on the right side of the issue. Now it’s up to the administrators to realize that and join them.In April, at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, my husband, Ben Bradlee, and I found ourselves sandwiched between the Kardashians and Newt and Callista Gingrich. Heavily made up and smiling for the cameras, the reality TV family and the political couple were swarmed over by the paparazzi, who were screaming and shouting the celebrities’ names to make them look toward the cameras for that million-dollar photograph.
I was shoved up against Callista’s hair and nearly broke my nose. It was scary. I felt as if I had been caught in a crowded theater and someone had yelled fire. Ben and I (he spouting expletives all the way), grabbed onto each other and managed to escape to the equally crowded hallway where desperate celebrity guests were heading toward the ballroom, murmuring to us as they passed, “Get me out of here.”
It was telling that Vanity Fair had bought more tables at the dinner than most of the Washington news organizations.
On the way home (we skipped the after-parties), I suddenly realized that this grotesque event signaled the end of power as we have known it. That dinner — which seemed to have more celebrities, clients and advertisers than journalists and politicians — was the tipping point.
As Tom Brokaw noted the next day on “Meet the Press,” it’s time to rethink the “glittering” annual dinner. The event, he said, “separates the press from the people they’re supposed to serve, symbolically.”
The decline of power has been happening for a while. In 1987, I wrote a piece for this magazine called “The Party’s Over.” In it, I chronicled the demise of the Washington hostess. That was 25 years ago, and people were complaining even then that Washington would never be the same.
But power still trumped money in those days. Today, money trumps power. If Katharine Graham, the late publisher of The Washington Post, were having a party today, and politicians or statesmen received a conflicting invitation to a party put together by Sheldon Ad
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baton from Maya Moore as the fulcrum of Geno Auriemma's powerhouse program. She was on her way home after 48 hours, and spent a year away from the game entirely. Delle Donne enrolled at the University of Delaware, played as a walk-on for the volleyball team, and dedicated herself to studies as a Human Services major; she spent her summer teaching at Lizzie's school.
"It completely changed my thinking," Delle Donne said of her basketball sabbatical. "Really rejuvenated me to come back and play again. And you have to have that, because otherwise it becomes grueling, no fun, and you become burnt out. I have basketball, but it's not everything to me."
A happier Delle Donne returned from that time away, and one comfortable enough to be a public figure beyond her basketball duties. There's Elena Delle Donne, global ambassador for the Special Olympics. Elena Delle Donne, overcoming Lyme Disease in college and becoming a spokesperson for the fight against the disease. There's Elena Delle Donne, who is an editor at Bikini.com, where she uses her platform to advocate for health and fitness.
"I think we have a bunch of players who are, increasingly, becoming household names, and I would include Elena in this category," WNBA commissioner Laurel Richie told me. "First and foremost, she is recognized as a spectacular athlete. And then, as people get to know her, through her life experiences, she is very comfortable sharing the things that she's passionate about." Elena Delle Donne is comfortable being seen. The challenge for the WNBA, as ever, is getting people to watch. It has not traditionally been easy, but 2015 already feels different.
Why would you... could you please stop mushing the best player this league has ever seen? It's rude. — Photo by Jerry Lai-USA TODAY Sports
Here is what the current moment in women's sports sounds like in corporate-speak, courtesy of FOX Sports Executive VP Robert Gottlieb: "Being able to connect the U.S. Women's National Team with an iconic brand like THE SIMPSONS to help raise awareness for the Women's World Cup is really quite an honor. The Women's World Cup is going to be a truly cultural event in the U.S. beginning next month, and this partnership with THE SIMPSONS and Gracie Films is one of several examples of how elements of 21st Century Fox have worked together in creative ways to promote this huge tournament."
Look past the stilted business language, and there is fact. Fox Sports promoted the heck out of the Women's World Cup, which is surely part of how 8.4 million people came to watch a women's soccer game between USA and Germany on a Tuesday night, and 26.7 million tuned in for the World Cup Final. Fox Sports drew on its various platforms to raise awareness of a big-ticket event, which is a strategy that's familiar to anybody who has ever watched anything on television. In so doing, they proved that it works for women's sports as well as anything else. This seems obvious, but until recently, had been untried.
ESPN and the WNBA may be the only ones positioned to take another crack at this approach, and take advantage of this moment. While the NWSL, the American women's professional soccer league, just announced a TV deal that involves only six televised matches, none of them until August, the WNBA, for its part, will be on throughout July and August, including a pair of rematches between last year's finals participants, Chicago and Phoenix. Not only can ESPN and the league spotlight Delle Donne, they can do so alongside Griner, and perhaps capture some of the Bird/Magic dynamic that helped elevate the NBA from a niche sport to the juggernaut it is today.
Or at least get prospective fans to give the league a shot. "What I hear time and time again is people who are walking out of the arena after their first game, the game is faster and more athletic than they perhaps thought it was going to be," says Richie, who as WNBA commissioner is admittedly not an unbiased authority. "There's an element of surprise."
The league appears to understand that getting people in the door means putting as much Elena Delle Donne on television as possible. "It's gonna be more of a full time job for me," she says. "Whether it's photo shoots for magazines or interviews, I have to be in the media, and be top of mind for everybody."
And so she's doing it. After Delle Donne fought through double-teams to score 26 points on a Tuesday night against the Liberty, she spent the next day making the rounds at Bristol, appearing on first His and Hers and then SportsCenter to discuss her season. She recently read some mean tweets about her in one video that's gone viral and has dunked in a superhero costume in another. Delle Donne visited her family over the July 4 weekend, but only after doing an interview with CNN.
"The thing that's frustrating is, we have to let the media know what's happening," Delle Donne says. "It's men, and it would be all over the place. But we have to be like, 'She had 45 points the other night. Can we get her in at ESPN and talk about it?'" That mean tweets video begins with Delle Donne noting that SportsCenter had tweeted out an incorrect spelling of her name
It's definitely normal for a basketball player to be defended by this many people. — Photo by Jerry Lai-USA TODAY Sports
Read through Delle Donne's Twitter mentions, and you will notice that, in addition to the binary conversation around male athletes—fans in support, haters in opposition—she is subject to the usual dreary-stupid physical appraisal that attends female athletes. A link to a slideshow of "Hot photos of WNBA Leading Scorer Elena Delle Donne." Marriage proposals, and proposals less honorable than that. LeBron's mentions do not look like this.
"Never, and it's something females face daily," Delle Donne agreed. "On Twitter, I'll focus more on people who talk about my game, rather than talking about looks, or wanting to marry me. That's always kind of—read it and keep going. But if that's going to bring more fans, well, that's what we need."
Gene, Delle Donne's brother and agent, takes a similarly instrumental approach to all that uninvited attention. "Her game is a work of art. And Elena's 6-5 and beautiful," Gene said. "So not only does she appeal to 12-, 13-year-old girls, she also appeals to men, 30-60. If you're Nike, who endorses Elena, that's what they're looking at. Does Gene Delle Donne, father, want to purchase these sneakers for his daughter?"
"For me, the biggest things is production on the basketball court," Delle Donne said. "Being the best player I possibly can be. And I hope that people will notice that first, before my looks. Unfortunately, in female sports, it seems like people's favorite athletes are the pretty ones. In men's sports, it's the best players. At some point maybe that'll change. Right now, it's the other way around. People love Alex Morgan on the soccer field, [but noticed her first] because she's gorgeous. People love Sydney LeRoux. But in another respect, if that's what's going to get people to watch at first, then great. I have to embrace all of it, because I know: at this point, we have to get eyes on the W. We have to get people watching. And if they're going to tune in because someone might be a little pretty, then fine. They can see what a great product we put out there."
***
Delle Donne had a hero growing up: Sheryl Swoopes, the first player the WNBA ever signed.
"As a kid you'd think I'd look up to her because she was special, and her game was so versatile," Delle Donne said. "But I loved that she had a shoe out. That was so cool to me, that a woman had a shoe, and I had to wear her shoe. That's really why Sheryl became so awesome to me."
Swoopes was a singular figure at the beginning of the WNBA, and Delle Donne, again through circumstances beyond her control, may be in a similar spot. With many WNBA veterans preparing to leave the scene—Tamika Catchings is in her final season, Diana Taurasi is sitting out the year to rest and recuperate from her European basketball obligations, as is Candace Parker— this is now Elena Della Donne's WNBA. She, in turn, sees her role in the league expansively, and as part of a broader project.
"I feel like America is changing and shifting," Delle Donne said. "Even with the ruling of the Supreme Court on gay marriage. We're at a time period where people are starting to understand equality, and really start to get it. There's been incredible players in the past who should have been noticed. But I guess times weren't right. Hopefully, this is the right time."
In the meantime, she is playing basketball. The Sky have had a difficult season—center Sylvia Fowles has requested a trade and Tamera Young, the team's Stacey Augmon, is hurt. As a result, Delle Donne has had to carry a LeBron-in-the-Finals load, and has done so without complaint or a single skipped beat. On the defensive end, she can be seen rotating out to contest three-point shots, guarding a post player, and protecting the rim from penetrating guards within the same possession; she's doubled her defensive rebounding percentage, from 11.4 percent of available rebounds last year to 22.5 this season. And while Delle Donne is scoring more than any previous WNBA player, she's also shooting just 20 percent from three, well off of her career 37 percent mark. If that rate normalizes—Delle Donne said the shots are going down in practice, just not in the games—her production could shoot further into the stratosphere.
On the day we spoke, Delle Donne had just completed her fifth game in ten days, playing 194 of a possible 205 minutes and serving as the focal point on both ends of the floor. The Sky went to Delle Donne on the final possession, and she sealed the game with a pair of inevitable free throws.
As she came off the court, a family approached her. They'd been in contact with the Sky—they'd driven all the way from Montreal to see her. Elena embraced their little girl and took several photos with the group. Her teammates and the Sun had all gone to the locker room. People were filing out of the arena.
"Of course I'm going to take a little bit of time," Delle Donne said later, when she'd finally reached the locker room. "I'm not exhausted, I'm not crawling off the court. I can smile for a picture, and impact her life, hopefully. It's nothing for me to take a picture." Then another girl approached her, someone who hadn't contacted the Sky in advance, maybe hadn't come all that far. Delle Donne embraced her, and smiled again for the camera.The Peyton Manning story rages on and likely will throughout the weekend. Some time after I wrote about the Broncos being a darkhorse for Manning, and asking all of you if it was a good idea, Adam Schefter reported that the Broncos were indeed one of the teams that contacts Manning's representatives and reports since have said the Broncos will go hard after Peyton.
Broncos Country seems to be excited about the prospects of the Broncos pursuit. With over 2300 votes - a pretty good sample size - nearly 61% of you say you want the Broncos to go after Manning. I thought it would be a good time to get some specifics on what the staff here at MHR think, as well as two Broncos-blogging friends of mine - to see if they feel the Broncos should bring the former Colts QB to Denver.
We'll start with our guests - Kyle Montgomery of BroncoTalk and Kim Constantinesco from Predominantly Orange. Both have been writing about the Broncos for a long time and both have opinions I respect.
Ladies first - Kim what do you think about the Broncos pursuit of Peyton Manning?
Kim Constantinesco
Peyton Manning is that bike under the Christmas tree. It's a gift that doesn't even need to be unwrapped because the pure sight of it brings tears of joy, even without the suspense of wondering what it is. There has been no bigger free agent on the NFL market, and at the age of 36, the number of teams reportedly showing an interest in the 11x Pro Bowler and 4x AP MVP is unprecedented. If there's one thing that could knock Tebowmania off it's main stage, it's Manningmania. It's hard not to get excited about the Broncos being one of the teams to pursue Manning. Their plan to go after Manning stands on solid ground. They are a team on the upswing, they have the run support, and their defense is on the rise. John Fox is a guy that's great to work with and the team looks to be a consistent playoff team so long as they continue to improve. However, I doubt that Denver is a top choice for Mannning. He likes playing in a dome, he's used to being the face of the franchise, and he wants to sign with a team that will be a Super Bowl contender next year who is also willing to sign some big name free agents. Manning is leaning towards an AFC team (he doesn't want to play his brother, Eli, potentially multiple times on his way to the Super Bowl). He probably doesn't want to play in the AFC East since he would have to go through Tom Brady twice per season. If Manning doesn't end up a Bronco, I'm happy with wherever he goes as long as he stays out of the AFC West.
Next up, Kyle, who was asked the same question about the Broncos and Manning:
Kyle Montgomery -
The Denver Broncos should absolutely, unequivocally pursue Peyton Manning, and they shouldn't apologize for doing it. Every team in the NFL without an established franchise quarterback should be making that call to Manning, and yes, the Broncos fall within that group. Tebow may be penciled-in as the starter heading into training camp in 2012, but he has not been given "franchise QB" status yet. And while you'd like to give a young player with potential confidence in his starting status, you don't pass on a future Hall of Famer. You don't pass on Peyton Manning. There are the given caveats. There are the medical risks that absolutely need to be thoroughly, thoroughly evaluated. You trust your employees to do that. You trust your medical experts to clear the player. Then you move on. The Broncos have the cap space to make the move. They have a renowned owner who wants to win and a Hall of Fame quarterback in the front office who can relate to Manning. And they have John Fox, who has already shown his willingness to adapt an offensive system to his quarterback's strengths. They have a real shot at winning Manning if they make a serious effort. I think they should, and I think they will.
Thanks to Kim and Kyle for their thoughts. Now we get the feelings of MHR Staffers. In no particular order, here is what they thought:
Tim Lynch -
Absolutely Not. First, we'll have to fork over an arm and leg in terms of cash. What is the point of bringing in Manning? It is either to mentor Tim Tebow and let him develop or it is to move on from Tim Tebow and draft a new quarterback in two years. The fanbase is so overly in love with Tebow, that this move will only dampen the excitement - especially if Peyton Manning is just a shell of his former self. Like Warren Moon or Brett Favre after they left their former teams. Second, how can John Elway not see the potential in Tebow the rest of us see. There is no arguing Tebow is still raw, but he has something few other quarterbacks in NFL history have had. That innate ability to find a way to win when the game is close. As a fan who grew up watching Elway do the same thing, I finally feel like I've found a quarterback worthy of carrying on that torch. I finally feel I get to see what Tim Tebow can do with a full off-season and zero quarterback controversy. How can Elway not be excited to see what Tebow can do when not just thrown into the fire during the middle of the season with an offense tailored to an immobile and talent-deficient journeyman quarterback? Then again, Elway is the only quarterback to ever play the game that I idolize more than Tebow right now... Go Broncos!
Kaptain Kirk -
Absolutely. The Broncos currently have a starter that struggles with the basic act of throwing the football and getting the team lined up to snap the ball. He has trouble making decisions to the point where he is afraid to make a pass attempt unless the receiver is open by 5 or more yards. And although he keeps stating he will work harder than anyone else, continues to put his image above the team or improving as a quarterback, choosing instead to write books and model underwear instead of receiving instruction to become a quarterback. On the flip side, in Peyton Manning, you have a tried and tested top of the line Franchise quarterback that can actually make a difference in the outcome of a game with his wit and his arm. Someone who is an actual "Gamer," you know, a player that plays the entire game, not just the last 5 minutes. The question becomes, would the Broncos be a better team in 2012 with Peyton Manning leading them, or Tim Tebow. I believe the unanimous answer to that question is Manning.
Troy Hufford -
I can't say that I blame the Broncos for pursuing Peyton Manning. It's hard to pass up a future Hall of Famer when he hits the open market. Truth be told, I was hesitant about his recovery from the get go, but if the Broncos landed him, it wouldn't be a long term fix, anyways. What could it hurt? We've got the money to pursue him, so let's go for it. The main question would be Tim Tebow. What happens with him? Does a Manning signing mean the end of Tim Tebow? I don't think it does. It's no secret he could use some work as a passer and having Peyton Manning mentor him could help. Reading defenses, making progressions, knowing how to check in and out of plays are just a few things that Tebow seems to struggle with and Manning excels at. If that started to rub off on Tebow, in a year or two, we could be witnessing a totally transformed quarterback... for the better. I say we should pursue Manning with everything we've got. With Manning lifting our offense and our defense starting to grow teeth, the Broncos could be right in the hunt for a playoff run.
Brian Shrout -
Should the Broncos Pursue Peyton Manning? In my opinion, no. There are three reasons for this: 1)It would tie up too much cash -- Peyton won't come cheap and it would negatively impact Denver's ability to address other areas of need through Free Agency and/or the Draft. 2)The youth of the offense -- the offensive line is not yet consistent enough in it's protection and the receivers are relatively young which means that the rest of the offense does not perform at the level Manning is accustomed to and would want. 3)Long term implications -- by bringing in Manning, the Broncos would be saying that the Tebow experiment is over before it had a chance to prove itself one way or the other. Further, since I don't see Manning playing more than four more years, Denver would be in the unenviable position of having to hope in two to three years that there is a starting-caliber quarterback available to groom behind Manning -- I doubt there are many starting-caliber quarterbacks who would want to sit on the bench for three to four years.
Sayre Bedinger -
One thing that I've maintained all offseason is that whatever team happens to get Peyton Manning is automatically not just a division contender, but a legitimate contender to take whatever conference they are in. Dolphins, Cardinals, Redskins, Broncos--regardless of what team it is, I think Peyton Manning automatically makes his new team a 10-12 win team. We saw what kind of team the Colts were without him, and what kind of team they were with him. The biggest questions surrounding Manning are age and injury. Those are not comforting concerns, especially when you're talking about rumors of Tim Tebow being traded if Manning is indeed acquired. That is something I am not in favor of. Tim Tebow is the future of the Broncos' franchise. I would fully support obtaining Peyton Manning as a bridge to the Tebow gap, so to speak, but I am not in favor of wiping the slate clean and starting with Manning as a short-term solution. As a fan of the game, I would be honored to have Manning wearing orange and blue. He is arguably the greatest quarterback of all-time, and he is a winner. The Colts weren't always great in the playoffs, but darn it they were always there. I think the Broncos would be foolish not to look into this opportunity if they don't think Tebow is capable of winning in the short term, or if they think he can benefit from the tutelage of Manning. The question then becomes whether or not Manning would be willing to let Tebow learn under him. Would he welcome that kind of pressure? Would he sign himself up for a situation where the feeling is that, once again, he is a short-term solution. Perhaps he is willing to realize that at this point in career, and perhaps not. If asked to raise my hand in favor of signing Manning, consider me on board. He's a great player with a great work ethic who would fit in well with this fan base and football city. Plus, I'd much rather have him in Denver than Kansas City or any other AFC team.
Jess Place(Jezru) -
The Broncos should, as a professional sports organization, do their due diligence regarding any player that has the potential to help the team. However, the Broncos are not one just one player away from winning. In the games that we lost last year (under the Tebow regime), quarterback play was not the beginning and end of why we lost (though I have been quick to say it was a reason under Orton). That said, adding Manning to the team as it stands now will not have the impact that everyone seems to be hoping for. This type of quick-fix mercenary QB acquisition traditionally doesn't work. Few people remember that Joe Namath finished his career with the Rams. Fewer remember that Johnny Unitas ended his run with the Chargers. Then there's the whole Favre debacle in recent years. Experiments like this don't end well... Just ask Eric Mangini and Brad Childress. If we bring Manning in and he fails, it will set the Broncos back a few years from being a contender. Then there's the whole Tebow thing. Some people say that Tebow could learn from Manning. I am not one of those people. Tebow, like it or not, has earned the right to sink or swim. No amount of pine riding is going to prepare him to play any better in the NFL. He sat most of 2010 and a quarter of 2011, he's done his time and it's time to see what we got. Personally, I'm not sure what he's capable of, but I'd like to find out before we allow ourselves to be distracted by shiny objects. Lastly, there has been a lot of twitter conversation about Manning bringing #18 to Denver. Let us not forget that there has only ever been one #18 in Broncos history and his name was Frank Tripucka. #18 was the first jersey to be retired by the Broncos and nobody has worn it since. If for whatever reason the stars align and Manning does come to Denver, we as fans need to hold Frank in high regard for what he did for the Broncos and not even entertain the idea that Manning could somehow wear that number. Unretiring numbers may work in Seattle, but that kind of disrespect certainly shouldn't fly for the Broncos or their fans. It sets a dirty precedent that fifty years from now some hotshot could come to Denver and demand #7 or #44... We just can't let that happen. Ever.
By my count, it is 5-3 in favor of going after Manning, or right around 60%. The writers here - and around the web - are a good cross-section of what the members of Broncos Country are thinking. John Elway's job is to put the best 53 players on the Denver Broncos each and every year. His job is to equip his coaching staff with the tools they need to win as many games as possible - to win the AFC West, to make the playoffs and to compete for the Super Bowl. Any player, and I stress, ANY PLAYER, that is available that can improve the Denver Broncos should be looked at. Elway owes it to the team, the fans and the other players in the locker room.
I don't know if the Broncos will win the Peyton Manning sweepstakes. The fact that they are in, and looking to be aggressive, is a positive sign to me, that Pat Bowlen, John Elway and Brian Xanders are trying to win. They are trying to win now, and will leave no stone unturned in order to do that.
GO BRONCOS!In reporting on a proposed ballot issue that would "block unions from deducting dues from state workers' paychecks" and that is being promoted by Independence Institute president Jon Caldara, the Rocky Mountain News failed to mention that the think tank was the primary sponsor of the "Ask First" campaign, which pushed for similar paycheck-deduction restrictions at the local level in previous elections but failed in two of the three cities where it was on the November 6 ballot.
A November 29 Rocky Mountain News article about a proposed ballot issue being promoted by Independence Institute president Jon Caldara that would "block unions from deducting dues from state workers' paychecks" failed to note that the Independence Institute was the primary sponsor of the "Ask First" campaign, which attempted to impose the same restriction at the city and county level in past elections. As Colorado Media Matters has noted, Ask First helped promote and place similar measures blocking payroll deductions on the November 6 ballot in Greeley and Englewood, where voters defeated them, and in Centennial, where it passed.
The News article by April M. Washington reported that "Caldara and Sen. Nancy Spence, R-Centennial, filed a ballot proposal with the state Wednesday that would ban private organizations and special interests from using the state's payroll system to collect dues." The article further reported:
The move comes weeks after Gov. Bill Ritter signed an executive order giving unions the right to organize state workers. "Now that Ritter is bringing unions to state government, it merely says the people's payroll system won't be used to funnel money to special interest," said Caldara, president of the Independence Institute, a Colorado free market think tank. The proposed measure will continue to allow the state to deduct tax withholding, charitable donations and child support from paychecks. Ritter's spokesman Evan Dreyer said Caldara was attempting to amend the state Constitution to halt a standard payroll practice in both the private and public sectors. The state for years had collected union dues through payroll deductions until former Gov. Bill Owens halted the practice. Ritter rescinded Owens' executive order when he became governor in January.
The News, however, did not mention that Caldara's "free market think tank" was the primary sponsor of similar payroll-deduction measures at the local level or that Ask First ballot initiatives failed in Greeley and Englewood on November 6. As Colorado Media Matters documented, during a November 6 broadcast on Newsradio 850 KOA, Caldara raised the "possibility" that the Ask First campaign could "go statewide," but for the second straight day failed to disclose that his organization launched and sponsored the campaign.
Despite omitting the think tank's sponsorship of Ask First campaigns at the city and county level in its November 29 article, the News in a September 20 editorial noted the Independence Institute's role and stated that it was "encourag[ed]" by opposition to "the automatic deduction of union dues from paychecks." The editorial further noted that Ask First "has chalked up some victories. Commissioners in Arapahoe, El Paso, Jefferson, Mesa and Weld counties have passed paycheck protection policies covering county workers." It continued:HTC was founded way back in 1997, and it was founded on May 19, which means tomorrow will be 20 years of HTC’s existence, so HTC decided to commemorate this occasion by releasing a really nice infographic. If you take a look at the infographic which is available down below, you will essentially get to see a timeline of their key products. Now, as part of this infographic, the company also added 20 ‘fun facts’ for you to read, which are attached to certain years, and relative to HTC’s key successes / moments.
Now, let us mention some key moments of HTC as a company. HTC was founded by Cher Wang on May 19, 1997, and the company is headquartered in Taiwan, though it has sales and service centers in Europe, the Americas and Asia. The HTC Kangaroo was the first device launched by the company, and in 2006, HTC introduced the first 3G-enabled Windows-running smartphone. Now, the first HTC-branded Android device was announced back in 2008, and it’s called the HTC Dream. The company won several prestigious rewards in 2009 and 2010, while the first HTC-branded Nexus phone arrived in 2010, the HTC Nexus One. This is a smartphone that many people remember with affection, and easily one of the company’s best-known devices to date. HTC was named the ‘Device Manufacturer of the Year’ back in 2011, and the HTC One M7 and HTC One M8 received the ‘Phone of the Year’ awards in 2013 and 2014, respectively.
The company introduced the ‘HTC RE’ in 2014, thus expanding its product line, and the HTC Vive VR headset arrived in 2015, it was unveiled during the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona. HTC also mentions a number of partnerships the company managed to achieve during its lifetime, including the one with Under Armour back in 2016. The HTC U11 is also listed on the company’s infographic, as this is the company’s all-new flagship, and it managed to climb all the way up to the top of DxOMark’s best smartphone camera ratings list. If you’d like to check out the full infographic HTC released, it is included below this article, and shares a number of additional facts about the company.MADISON, Wis. — Records obtained from the Wisconsin Department of Justice show, in the last four years of Republican control at the Department, taxpayers have footed the bill for more than $50,000 in promotional swag. The records also suggest under Brad Schimel, the department has minted two other sets of coins beyond the outrageous $10,000 in “Kick Ass Every Day” coins revealed previously.
“Brad Schimel has minted more commemorative coins than he has had backlogged rape kits tested,” said Scot Ross, One Wisconsin Now. “At the same time he’s begging taxpayers for more money, the Republicans have spent $50,000 that we know on swag for shameless self-promotion.”
According to records released to One Wisconsin Now, after a long series of delays by Schimel’s Department of Justice, taxpayers were socked with at least $52,907 in promotional merchandise costs between July 2013 to June 2017 that went for items like, “Pocket Notebooks,” “Backpacks” and “Travel Tumblers” for “Top-Cop” and “Non Top-Cop.”
Records obtained by One Wisconsin Now are below:Yes. While the deceit of the ring was to offer imaginations of supreme power, it did in fact, absolutely, one hundred percent, confer real power upon its wielder - just not supreme power, which not even Sauron possessed. The other answer is incorrect. There are examples of the Ring's powers - chiefly the domination of other wills, but also the understanding of "the thought behind speech" - being used in-story. And here is what Tolkien said:
But to achieve this he had been obliged to let a great part of his own inherent power (a frequent and very significant motive in myth and fairy-story) pass into the One Ring. While he wore it, his power on earth was actually enhanced. But even if he did not wear it, that power existed and was in 'rapport' with himself: he was not 'diminished'. Unless some other seized it and became possessed of it. If that happened, the new possessor could (if sufficiently strong and heroic by nature) challenge Sauron, become master of all that he had learned or done since the making of the One Ring, and so overthrow him and usurp his place.
The reason we don't see the effects of the Ring all the time is threefold:
Because wielding the Ring takes effort and practice. "Before you could use that power you would need to become far stronger, and to train your will to the domination of others", in the words of Galadriel. In fact, she says that without this training, the Ring would destroy Frodo. You have to actually claim the Ring as your own to truly use its power. Frodo and Bilbo never did this, and maybe Gollum just never had the strength. The moment Frodo claimed the Ring for his own, Sauron knew. "And far away, even as Frodo put on the Ring and claimed it for his own, even in Sammath Naur the very heart of his realm, the Power in Barad-Dur was shaken, and the Tower trembled from its foundations to its proud and bitter crown. The Dark Lord was suddenly aware of him[...] The power of the Ring is not absolute. Sauron was able to dominate and subvert the Numenoreans only with time and subtlety. And the reason Sauron had to do that? "So great was the might and splendour of the Númenóreans that Sauron’s own servants deserted him." So even Sauron wielding the Ring wasn't able to control his own servants under some circumstances.
Bilbo and Gollum are actually good examples of the power of the Ring: forcing a mortal to stay alive is tremendous. The Ring doesn't grant you courage, strength, wisdom, or magic spells. It gives you the power to dominate others, strengthens your native ability to read minds, and, if you're a mortal, forces you to stay alive - not even the Ring can fundamentally change fate decreed by Illuvatar; the Ring is already stretching The Rules quite a bit here.
The Ring granted Frodo and Sam it's chief power and purpose - domination over others - on several occasions, to subdue Gollum and to terrify Orcs. This was before Frodo even claimed the Ring.
Then suddenly, as before under the eaves of the Emyn Muil, Sam saw these two rivals with other vision. A crouching shape, scarcely more than the shadow of a living thing, a creature now wholly ruined and defeated, yet filled with a hideous lust and rage; and before it stood stern, untouchable now by pity, a figure robed in white, but at its breast it held a wheel of fire. Out of the fire there spoke a commanding voice. ‘Begone, and trouble me no more! If you touch me ever again, you shall be cast yourself into the Fire of Doom.’ The crouching shape backed away, terror in its blinking eyes, and yet at the same time insatiable desire. Then the vision passed and Sam saw Frodo standing, hand on breast, his breath coming in great gasps, and Gollum at his feet, resting on his knees with his wide-splayed hands upon the ground.
Or:
For what it saw was not a short frightened hobbit trying to hold a steady sword: it saw a great silent shape, cloaked in a grey shadow, looming against the wavering light behind; in one hand it held a sword, the very light of which was a bitter pain, the other was clutched at its breast, but held concealed some nameless menace of power and doom. For a moment the Orc crouched, and then with a hideous yelp of fear it turned and fled back as it had come.
We also have some examples of what would have happened, from Tolkien's letters. For example, what if Gollum hadn't been there at Mount Doom?
Frodo too would then probably, if not attacked, have had to take the same way: cast himself with the Ring into the abyss. If not he would of course have completely failed. It is an interesting problem: how Sauron would have acted or the claimant have resisted. Sauron sent at once the Ringwraiths. They were naturally fully instructed, and in no way deceived as to the real lordship of the Ring. The wearer would not be invisible to them, but the reverse; and the more vulnerable to their weapons. But the situation was now different to that under Weathertop, where Frodo acted merely in fear and wished only to use (in vain) the Ring's subsidiary power of conferring invisibility. He had grown since then. Would they have been immune from its power if he claimed it as an instrument of command and domination? Not wholly. I do not think they could have attacked him with violence, nor laid hold upon him or taken him captive; they would have obeyed or feigned to obey any minor commands of his that did not interfere with their errand – laid upon them by Sauron, who still through their nine rings (which he held) had primary control of their wills. That errand was to remove Frodo from the Crack. Once he lost the power or opportunity to destroy the Ring, the end could not be in doubt – saving help from outside, which was hardly even remotely possible. Frodo had become a considerable person, but of a special kind: in spiritual enlargement rather than in increase of physical or mental power; his will was much stronger than it had been, but so far it had been exercised in resisting not using the Ring and with the object of destroying it. He needed time, much time, before he could control the Ring or (which in such a case is the same) before it could control him; before his will and arrogance could grow to a stature in which he could dominate other major hostile wills. Even so for a long time his acts and commands would still have to seem 'good' to him, to be for the benefit of others beside himself.
It also granted Sam the ability to understand the
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game for a while, and we can continue to support it, and it will be important to us no matter what we do next. We have no plans for Mac or Linux, but we haven’t ruled anything out, either. We’re looking at options.
RPS: When did you start talking about what you are going to do next, as a studio?
Kasavin: We are talking about it now, but we tried not to talk about it prematurely, because our fate as a studio hinged entirely on this game. We were all very focused on this game until it was done. It seemed arrogant to think ahead of that, if we didn’t do everything possible to make it as good as possible. Now that it’s done well and things have settled, we are talking about what’s next. I don’t have anything concrete to say about that, but I would say that I think Bastion represents a lot of our values as game players and game makers, and I think these aspects, like the tight and responsive moment-to-moment experience, and the delivery of narrative in an interesting way, these are what we will want to continue over to anything else we do.
RPS: One other thing I wanted to ask – were you surprised by how popular the soundtrack has been as an independent thing?
Kasavin: Yes, we were, completely. I think we released it in August, and it’s number three on Bandcamp right now, but it has been number one for a long time. I don’t think we could have anticipated that. The music was, however, a very important element of the game during development, and we took full advantage of having a guy like Derren on the project early on. We used music to find the tone and atmosphere of the game, and the music guided the presentation in a lot of ways. Based on that we thought it would be popular, but the response to it was really cool, and far more than we anticipated. We got to extend the game via bonus tracks on there, and that extends the fiction, giving fans a little bit more.
RPS: No interview with an independent studio is really complete unless we talk a little bit about the current state of the independent scene. We do seem to be entering a new, mature phase of it now, with a bunch of studios in that first couple of years of the “indie boom” now working on sequels – it was marked at GDC this year that many of the indies were wealthier and more relaxed – what’s your take on that? How does it feel to you guys?
Kasavin: Well to me it feels great. As a studio, as people, we pushed ourselves harder than we’ve ever pushed ourselves before, and we wanted to do that to create a particular environment – the kind of environment where people could do their best work. We wanted to make it easy to spend most of your time work, rather than communicating or whatever, and that part feels really good. We got into this when “indie” as a thing was already well established, we were working at EA playing Braid and Castle Crashers, and that was really inspiring. These games are better executed than games by much larger teams, in many cases. That gave us the feeling we could do it. I think we are following in a tradition that has already started, and the result of that tradition is some really good games. Gamers are the real winners of course! But from the perspective of those people starting these studios, it’s very hard. They risk everything. It’s passion-driven, with people doing unreasonable things for the pupose of what they love.
You know, on other hand, I feel it’s never been easier to do this. All the tools, all the new distribution methods. You don’t need millions of dollars, and that’s really important.
RPS: And that risk and passion is being rewarded. That’s the most exciting thing about this stuff – people can now go and make more games like that, take more risks. Jon Blow being so successful with Braid that he thinks he’ll just got and make a PC-only first person puzzle game…
Kasavin: Yes, it’s a genuinely gratifying feeling to see one of these games do well. In our own case we were relatively highly anticipated, but it wasn’t always this game that people were excited about. In the early times it was a very crude prototype with us working out of a house. People were saying “guys, what are you doing?” And we couldn’t have made this at a big publisher… from that perspective, well, proving that these things can be successful even though they are not a military-themed shooter, that’s really great.
It’s in the disposition of people who do this to want to repeat the process – not to make a similar game, but to repeat the steps that made the game happen, which for us was a very exploratory way of making games. We’re even more excited about the future now, because our method works. It’s been validated. That’s exciting.
RPS: Thanks for your time.Hide Transcript Show Transcript
WEBVTT < bam! Can I have the hammerFormer KCCI anchor Kevin cooney used his cell phone to capturethe horrifying video. A man with a hammer trying to destroy the Robert D Ray AsianGardens.< Let me take thhammer and then we can stop and talk ok? Bam!> Kevin and hiswife KCCI Anchor Mollie cooneywere riding their bikes past thedm river landmark when they noticed the man. At first theythought he was a worker doing repairs.<And he just went back and forth hammering, And wewere yelling the police werecoming. And I pleaded with htostop.> but he kept going. Muchto the horror of otherwitnesses.<It's just kind ofsad to see this happen and very scary to watch it.> < Put the hammerdown.> eventually police arrivedand used a stun gun when the manlunged at them with the hammer. This is the angle from Kevin'sCamera. < fire andscreams> And the shot frMollies Camera. < fire andscreams>> One good and one no good youknow> Seconds later the vandalappeared to shout the phrase onegood and one no good. It's notclear what he meant.< I was justdevastated.> Ken Quinn, CEO ofthe world food prize was one oseveral leaders who helped bringthe chinese garden to Des Moinesfrom China in 2009. <Well I was watching channel 8 news at 6 andI here all of the sudden were these terrible images of this crazed person. They're breaking the beautiful sculpted pieces off and hitting themwith a sledge hammer and my heart broke> The man is now under arrest. With one bigquestion. Why did he do it? < Very very agitated once he was on the ground. just a bizzare, bizzarmoment.>
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Des Moines police used a stun gun Tuesday to stop a hammer-swinging man bent on destroying sculptures at the Robert D. Ray Asian Gardens downtown. KCCI anchor Mollie Cooney and former KCCI anchor Kevin Cooney were riding their bikes past the Des Moines River landmark when they noticed the man. At first, they thought he was a worker doing repairs. The man then began to smash sculptures and other items around the gardens. “We were yelling at him, “The police are coming! The police are coming!’ but it didn’t faze him,” Mollie Cooney said. “And I pleaded with him to stop,” Kevin Cooney said. Kevin Cooney can be heard trying to talk to the man so that he would stop. “Let me take the hammer and then we can stop and talk, OK?” Kevin said in the cellphone video. The cellphone video shows the man kept going, much to the horror of other witnesses. “It's just kind of sad to see this happen and very scary to watch it,” witness Atheena Schwers said. Cellphone video taken by Kevin Cooney shows the moment the police arrived. Des Moines officers used a stun gun on the man after he refused to put the hammer down. Seconds later, the vandal appeared to shout the phrase, “one good and one no good,” but it is unclear what he meant. Ken Quinn, CEO of the World Food Prize was one of several leaders who helped bring the garden to Des Moines from China in 2009. He said he was devastated to hear about the damage. “Well I was watching Channel 8 News at 6 and I hear all of the sudden were these terrible images of this crazed person,” Quinn said. “They're breaking the beautiful, sculpted pieces off and hitting them with a sledgehammer and my heart broke.” The man is now under arrest, but it is still unclear why he vandalized the garden. There is no word yet on any charges. The city owns the garden and may have to work with China to make repairs.An initiative to test almost 5,000 previously untested rape kits in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, has resulted in over 250 convictions, as well as unsettling information about sex offenders’ behavior, according to a press release from Case Western Reserve University.
A team of researchers at the university’s Begun Center, led by Drs. Daniel Flannery and Rachel Lovell, were given nearly $500,000 of Justice Department money to go through data collected from the county’s backlog of sexual assault kits.
On Monday, CWRU announced the results of the investigation, which are available in a series of briefs posted here. The most alarming of these suggests that serial rapists are far more common than we might have assumed—of the 243 kits studied, 51 percent were linked to serial offenders, “who generally had more extensive and violent criminal histories than one-time sexual offenders.” Among the serial offenders identified, 26 percent had previously been arrested for sexual assault and 60 percent were subsequently arrested for a sexual assault unrelated to the one being tested.
The study also found that serial offenders and one-time offenders exhibited different behavior. According to the report, offenses committed by serial rapists more often involved kidnapping, verbally and physically threatening the victims, and using or threatening the use of weapons.
“Our findings suggest it is very likely that a sexual offender has either previously sexually assaulted or will offend again in the future,” said Lovell, a senior research associate at the Begun Center, in a statement. “Investigating each sexual assault as possibly perpetrated by a serial offender has the potential to reduce the number of sexual assaults if investigations focus more on the offender than on single incidents.”
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There are currently hundreds of thousands untested rape kits (which are invasive, hours-long, and potentially traumatizing for already-traumatized victims) across the country, and most jurisdictions have no system for tracking or counting them.
Said Lovell, “The new processes we hope will emerge from our effort will better honor victims.”Bug Bounty: Earn IOTA’s testing
Dominik Schiener Blocked Unblock Follow Following Dec 6, 2016
The last few weeks have been busy with development by the Core team. IRI went up on Github and we started the refactoring; the JS Library was fully completed; the GUI Wallet is finished and ready for use; and the Python / C# / Java / C Libraries and tools are under active development.
As it is with software developments: bugs occur. Fixing them is most of the time done fairly quickly, but finding them takes up more effort. But apart from that, we want to provide a direct incentive for people (especially developers) to dig into the code and thoroughly test the tools, libraries and software that we have provided for the community.
Because of this, we at the IOTA Foundation have decided to host the very first public bug bounty program for the next 1 and a half months (45 days). What this basically means is that if you successfully report bugs to any of the listed Github repositories below, you will get paid in IOTA. For newcomers, this should be a wonderful opportunity to earn your first IOTA tokens; for veterans in the community, it is a great way to increase your stack.
So lets get into more details.
Classification of bugs and bounties
In total, the bounty payments range between $25 — $400. Obviously not every bug is the same as the other. That’s why we have different classifications for bugs and how well they pay. To keep things simple, we summarized the bounty program into the following three categories:
Minor. Minor bugs are the ones mostly caused by (neglect) from the developer. This is for example using non-instantiated variables (or wrong variable altogether), returning the wrong results and so on. Because they are relatively simple to fix, minor bugs pay between $10 — $100.
Minor bugs are the ones mostly caused by (neglect) from the developer. This is for example using non-instantiated variables (or wrong variable altogether), returning the wrong results and so on. Because they are relatively simple to fix,. Medium. Bugs that break the logic, but do not cause any serious problems (in terms of unexpected behavior). For example a non-functional API call in Core, or a library function that (unexpectedly) returns pre-execution can be classified as Medium. Medium bugs pay between $100 — $250.
. Bugs that break the logic, but do not cause any serious problems (in terms of unexpected behavior). For example a non-functional API call in Core, or a library function that (unexpectedly) returns pre-execution can be classified as Medium.. Critical. Critical bugs are the ones that cause unexpected behavior which could even lead to losses (i.e. IOTA’s or transactions being lost) or a non-functional client. Critical bugs are mostly more subtle, and as such are more difficult to find. For example race conditions or any Curl implementation (our trinary hashing function) related bugs fall under this category. Critical bugs pay $250 — $400, depending on the severity.
It should be noted that these bugs are not related to the IOTA protocol itself, which includes Curl and its logic. For these we will host a much larger bug bounty soon and generally pay between $5k — $30k, depending on the severity (especially anything related to Curl).There’s a new kind of Panic! in Bikini Bottom.
SpongeBob SquarePants bears his soul with unprecedented porousness in one of the first songs from the upcoming Broadway musical based on the gap-toothed Nickelodeon phenomenon. The stage adaptation SpongeBob SquarePants — The New Musical, which premiered to huge acclaim in Chicago last summer, is swimming toward a big opening this December at the Palace Theatre.
EW has the exclusive first listen to “(Just A) Simple Sponge,” a power ballad for SpongeBob (played by newcomer Ethan Slater) written by Panic! at the Disco frontman Brendon Urie, who himself made a big Broadway debut earlier this year with a turn in Kinky Boots. In no time at all, he’ll be back on the boards represented by his part in the score for the musical.
“Anyone who knows me is aware of my love of both Broadway and animation,” says Urie. “I’m so happy I was able bring a song to life that marries two of my favorite things for the SpongeBob SquarePants Broadway musical.”
While it’ll be swell enough to see characters like SpongeBob, Patrick (Danny Skinner), Squidward (Gavin Lee), and Sandy (Lilli Cooper) onstage in the flesh (or shells or scales), one of the musical’s biggest creative leaps is director/chief conceiver Tina Landau’s imaginative choice to recruit a dozen-plus singer-songwriters to pen the show’s genre-hopping score. Urie joins an ensemble of celebrated writers including T.I., John Legend, Cyndi Lauper, Sara Bareilles, Lady Antebellum, They Might Be Giants, and many, many more. For the full list, click here. Plus, check out the show’s brand new key art below:
Nickelodeon
As Landau told EW in 2016, each musician was tasked with writing toward a specific story beat, genre notwithstanding: “We very specifically asked all of the artists to write how they write, and not try to do what they think Nickelodeon or SpongeBob would sound like. What’s amazing is, when we hear them sung by our performers, you can tell exactly who wrote which song. We really wanted that difference.”
SpongeBob SquarePants opens on Broadway on Dec. 4, with previews set to begin Nov. 6. Long before then, the show’s original cast recording will be available Sept. 22 from Masterworks Broadway.21st Century Fox was put on the defensive Saturday by the backlash to Rupert Murdoch’s remark in an interview suggesting that he viewed the sexual harassment cases that have enveloped Fox News as “nonsense.”
Murdoch made the comment Thursday in an interview with the U.K.’s Sky News about the blockbuster $52.4 billion acquisition agreement that Fox has set with Disney.
Amid growing anger online about what appeared to be the company chairman dismissing the severity of the problems at Fox News, the parent company sought to clarify what the mogul meant. Murdoch called “nonsense” on the suggestion that the Fox News scandals have hurt 21st Century Fox’s bottom line in a material way and will convince U.K. regulators to bar Fox’s bid to buy up the remaining 61% of Sky that it does not already own.
“It’s all nonsense,” Murdoch said Dec. 14 in the interview with Sky News’ Ian King. “There was a problem with our chief executive (Roger Ailes), sort of, over the years, but in isolated incidents. Soon as we investigated he was out of the place in hours. Well, three or four days. But nothing else since then.”
Related Gretchen Carlson on How Her Roger Ailes Lawsuit Affected the Cosby Case Altice Aims to Carve Out Niche in Cable With Global-Themed i24News
Murdoch’s lack of reference to Bill O’Reilly’s ouster in April — nine months after Ailes was fired — for sexual harassment allegations has outraged women’s rights activists. Murdoch is also being blasted for adding as an aside: “It was largely political, because [Fox News is] conservative.”
A 21st Century Fox spokeswoman sought to counter the negative reaction with a lengthy explanation of Murdoch’s intentions.
“Rupert never characterized the sexual harassment matters at Fox News as ‘nonsense.’ Rather, he responded negatively to the suggestion that sexual harassment issues were an obstacle to the company’s bid for the rest of Sky,” the spokeswoman said.
“Under Rupert’s leadership and with his total support, the company exited [Fox News CEO] Roger Ailes, compensated numerous women who were mistreated; trained virtually all of its employees; exited its biggest star; and hired a new head of HR. By his actions, Rupert has made it abundantly clear that he understands that there were real problems at Fox News. Rupert values all of the hard-working colleagues at Fox News, and will continue to address these matters to ensure Fox News maintains its commitment to having a work environment based on the values of trust and respect,” she said.Space News space history and artifacts articles Messages space history discussion forums Sightings worldwide astronaut appearances Resources selected space history documents Websites related space history websites
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Lawmakers call for golden curved coins to mark Apollo 11 golden anniversary
The iconic image of moonwalker Buzz Aldrin's helmet visor will serve as the design for the back of a new U.S. coin celebrating the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, if Congress approves. (NASA) June 16, 2015 — The United States Mint may strike gold curved coins to commemorate the golden anniversary of the first moon landing, if a new bill is signed into law.
A bipartisan group of five members of Congress on June 10 introduced legislation that would direct the Secretary of the Treasury to mint the coins to mark five decades since Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins launched to the moon in July 1969. The "Apollo 11 50th Anniversary Commemorative Coin Act" (HR 2726) calls for gold, silver and half-dollar clad coins to be struck in 2019.
"The United States remains the only country to have ever landed humans on a celestial body off the Earth," stated Representative Bill Posey (FL-08), who co-sponsored the bill and was a member of the Apollo launch team in 1969. "Honoring that great feat and recognizing [the] astronauts... is what our bipartisan legislation is all about."
Joining Posey backing the bill were Frederica Wilson (D- FL), John Culberson (R-TX), Gene Green (D-TX) and Rod Blum (R-IA).
"I'm proud to cosponsor this bill with my colleagues, which celebrates one of the greatest achievements in history, not only for America, but for mankind," Green commented. "The commemorative coin will serve a reminder of what we have achieved and an inspiration to continue to strive for greatness."
The Apollo 11 patch was struck on the reverse of the Eisenhower and Susan B. Anthony dollars. (United States Mint) The act calls for the coins to be issued in four legal tender denominations: $5 gold coins - not more than 50,000 pieces, with a diameter of 0.85 inches (2.16 cm);
$1 silver coins - not more than 400,000 pieces, with a diameter of 1.5 in. (3.8 cm);
Half-dollar clad coins - not more than 750,000, with a diameter of 1.25 in. (3.2 cm);
Proof-silver $1 coins - not more than 100,000, with a diameter of 3 inches (7.6 cm). Each of the coins, regardless of metal, would feature a front (or obverse) design selected by a juried competition overseen by the Secretary of the Treasury after consulting with the Commission of Fine Arts and being reviewed by the Citizen's Coinage Advisory Committee (CCAC), which in 2014 recommended the Apollo 11 theme.
"Such a series of coins wouldn't only be historic but would enjoy commercial success as well," said Michael Olson, the CCAC member who proposed the moon landing coin, in a column for Coin World magazine last month. "It would also serve to bring much deserved recognition to NASA's past accomplishments and inspire a new generation."
Per the bill, the back of each coin would feature one of the most iconic images from the Apollo 11 mission.
"The design on the common reverse of the coins minted under this Act shall be a representation of a close-up of the famous 'Buzz Aldrin on the moon' photo taken July 20, 1969, showing just the visor and [a] part of the helmet of astronaut [Aldrin], in which the visor reflects the image of the United States flag and the lunar lander," the legislation reads.
That design would be further highlighted by the shape of the commemoratives.
"The coins minted under this Act shall be produced in a fashion...so that the reverse of the coin is convex to more closely resemble the faceplate of the astronaut's helmet of the time," the bill directs.
As proposed, the Apollo 11 coins would be curved like the 2014 National Baseball Hall of Fame commemoratives. (U.S. Mint) The Mint issued its first curved coin to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2014.
Proceeds from the Mint's sale of the Apollo 11 coins would benefit the Astronaut Memorial Foundation and Astronaut Scholarship Foundation's science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) programs, as well as the Smithsonian's "Destination Moon" exhibit at the National Air and Space Museum. The coins would be produced at no cost to U.S. taxpayers.
"We need to inspire the next generation of scientists, engineers and explorers to push the limits and take up the mantle of space exploration to Mars and beyond. So it is fitting that proceeds will fund STEM education," Culberson said.
The U.S. Mint earlier honored the Apollo 11 moon landing by using the mission's official patch as the reverse design on the Eisenhower and Susan B. Anthony dollars issued from 1971 to 1981. The Mint also struck the New Frontier Congressional Gold Medal awarded to Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins (and Mercury astronaut John Glenn) in 2011.
© 2019 collectSPACE.com All rights reserved.Kuki News via NateIn an interview with a Chinese news outlet, Kim Soeun was asked if there was a chance she and her 'WGM' partner could develop into lovers. "It could never happen, it just couldn't. We film once every two weeks and we're too busy on days we're not filming that we don't keep in contact. I think it'd be very difficult to develop feelings in such an environment."1. [+339, -23] Honestly, this isn't a matter of whether they have feelings for each other or whether they're really dating or not since, blatantly speaking, viewers will never find out. But if she reveals that to the viewers herself, what does that make the viewers who've been watching all along? What does that make Song Jaerim who set all this up for her? What she's basically saying is that she's fake and she's going to keep being fake so please watch her show. Ridiculous.2. [+272, -6] WGM PDs are shaking right now, tremble tremble tremble3. [+225, -9] WGM... a show that creates more delusions...4. [+38, -8] I don't know how to put it... but Kim Soeun is really dumb.5. [+36, -0] This interview shows you why Kim Soeun could never get popular for the past 10 years6. [+36, -6] Kim Soeun's the first person to say something like this about WGM other than someone else who said they haven't kept in contact since WGM ended ㅋㅋㅋ She turned a virtual reality show into something completely fake. I can already see Kim Soeun's agency trying their best to cover this up. She needs to watch her words.7. [+35, -8] I feel so bad for Song Jaerim... Did she have to say it like this? She couldn't beat around the bush? She's pretty and all but she seems cocky.. ㅠㅠ8. [+26, -8] I don't think Kim Soeun will get any more popularity out of this. Song Jaerim's going to burst to fame. At least he's humble. He's always trying to bring others to the spotlight.9. [+21, -4] I think Kim Soeun's agency will delete this article from the media. They should've told her to watch her mouth from the start. All of the WGM community and message boards are a mess right now telling them to take Kim Soeun off the show.10. [+19, -4] The point of the show is for viewers to be confused and excited at whether they're real or not... she went too far with this interview. She completely broke the point of the show for viewers. Now whenever it's her segment, viewers will just know for sure she's acting.Why do parrots get all the credit? Even though they can repeat anything, they still sound like parrots. But there’s another type of bird that puts Polly squawking about her cracker to shame.
Ravens can imitate a number of sounds, and they’re extremely accurate. Their voices can mimic the deep, resonant tone of a man, or a higher-pitched tone of a woman. Their voices can sound so insanely human that it’s hard to believe someone isn’t playing a trick on you.
Listen for yourself… (click play on the videos below)
Mischief the raven would like to tell you hello.
And Julian wants to know what’s up.
Julian also wants to know who’s a good bird, but no one ever tells him.
Ravens also have regional accents, like the famous Terry.
And some of them speak other languages.
Raymond is a wild bird that comes to visit his friend Merlyn and like to make weird noises, but … wait. Was that..? Was he imitating Merlyn’s laugh?
Generally this type of speech only happens with ravens that are trained and raised and captivity. But there are other wild ravens like Raymond who are freaking people out on a daily basis.
They quickly learn the sounds of their environment and use them to get what they want. For example, they’ve been known to mimic wolf and fox calls to lead them to a carcass that they’re interested in eating but aren’t capable of opening.
Bird-brain doesn’t sound like much of an insult anymore, does it? (Source)The positive relationship between hippocampal structure, aerobic fitness, and memory performance is often observed among children and older adults; but evidence of this relationship among young adults, for whom the hippocampus is neither developing nor atrophying, is less consistent. Studies have typically relied on hippocampal volumetry (a gross proxy of tissue composition) to assess individual differences in hippocampal structure. While volume is not specific to microstructural tissue characteristics, microstructural differences in hippocampal integrity may exist even among healthy young adults when volumetric differences are not diagnostic of tissue health or cognitive function. Magnetic resonance elastography (MRE) is an emerging noninvasive imaging technique for measuring viscoelastic tissue properties and provides quantitative measures of tissue integrity. We have previously demonstrated that individual differences in hippocampal viscoelasticity are related to performance on a relational memory task; however, little is known about health correlates to this novel measure. In the current study, we investigated the relationship between hippocampal viscoelasticity and cardiovascular health, and their mutual effect on relational memory in a group of healthy young adults (N=51). We replicated our previous finding that hippocampal viscoelasticity correlates with relational memory performance. We extend this work by demonstrating that better aerobic fitness, as measured by VO 2 max, was associated with hippocampal viscoelasticity that mediated the benefits of fitness on memory function. Hippocampal volume, however, did not account for individual differences in memory. Therefore, these data suggest that hippocampal viscoelasticity may provide a more sensitive measure to microstructural tissue organization and its consequences to cognition among healthy young adults.'This Was A Hate Crime,' Police Say Of Kansas City-Area Killings
(This post was updated at 1 p.m. ET.)
The man who shot and killed three people Sunday near Kansas City will face federal hate crime charges for the attacks at a Jewish community center and a Jewish retirement home, authorities said Monday.
"This was a hate crime," Overland Park, Kan., Police Chief John Douglass told reporters at a midday news conference.
Frazier Glenn Cross, also known as Glenn Miller, is already in jail. The 73-year-old man was taken into custody shortly after the attacks and is accused of premeditated murder.
Cross, as we reported earlier, has been tracked for years by organizations that monitor hate groups. They say he's a former grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan and spent time in prison for weapons convictions and other charges. Jews had long been among those he allegedly railed about.
The three people who died were:
-- Reat Griffin Underwood, 14, an Eagle Scout and member of United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood.
-- Reat's grandfather, Dr. William Lewis Corporon, a physician who had moved to the area about a decade ago to be near his grandson.
-- "Fifty-three-year-old Terri LaManno, a mother who worked at the Children's Center for the Visually Impaired."
Our original post — Suspect In Killings At Kansas City Jewish Sites Linked To KKK — has more background.
The man accused in Sunday's shootings at a Jewish community center and a Jewish retirement home near Kansas City, which left three people dead, is a 73-year-old former grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks "hate groups and domestic terrorists."
toggle caption Johnson County, Kan., Sheriff's Office
Frazier Glenn Cross, who goes by the name Glenn Miller, is accused of premeditated murder in the first degree in the shootings in Overland Park, Kan., according to information posted online by the Johnson County (Kan.) Sheriff's Office.
The poverty law center says Cross has served at least two jail terms, including "three years in federal prison after being indicted on weapons charges and for plotting robberies and the assassination of [poverty law center] founder Morris Dees."
Kansas City's KCTV adds that Cross "is a perennial candidate for office, including running in 2006 against then-U.S. Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo. He ran against Blunt in 2010 when Blunt was elected to the Senate. Cross made headlines in the 2010 campaign for his racist and anti-Semitic campaign ads. Federal law required broadcast stations to air the ads even though they did not want to put such vile rantings on their airwaves."
The Kansas City Star writes that after he was arrested Sunday, Cross "went on a rant inside the patrol car. Though Overland Park Police Chief John Douglass wouldn't say what Cross hollered, a television crew captured him on video while he was handcuffed in the back of the car. 'Heil Hitler,' Miller yelled out, and then he bobbed his head up and down."
"According to police," The Associated Press says, "the attacks happened within minutes of one another. At around 1 p.m. a gunman shot two people in the parking lot behind the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City. He then drove a few blocks away to a Jewish retirement community, Village Shalom, and gunned down a woman or girl there."
The wire service adds that:
"Authorities declined to release the victims' names pending notification of their relatives, and the identity of the person shot at the retirement community was still unknown early Monday. However, the family of the first two victims put out a statement identifying them as Dr. William Lewis Corporon, who died at the scene, and his 14-year-old grandson, Reat Griffin Underwood, who died at Overland Park Regional Medical Center. "They were both Christian, and the family thanked members of their church congregation, among other people, for their support."
Cross is due in court later today.
Update at 5:30 p.m. ET. Cross Reportedly 'Led Neo-Nazi Group'
Frank Morris, a reporter with member station KCUR in Kansas City, spoke to Sam Taylor, who heads the white supremacist threat department at the SITE Intelligence Group.
Taylor says Cross led a neo-Nazi paramilitary group in North Carolina in the 1980s and has also been "very active online," calling for genocide against Jews and raising money for violent white supremacists.1 Locate the stained areas. Often the stained areas are also home to odors caused by uric acid, bacteria and yeast colonies, so that is the place you need to concentrate your cleaning effort. To achieve a finished appearance that is uniform and odor-free, though, you will need to clean the whole carpet methodically, expending just a bit more time and effort in the badly stained areas.
2 Vacuum the area thoroughly. Be sure to remove as much loose debris as possible.
3 Pre-treat the badly stained areas. Do this just before you start the steam cleaning process. Use a single commercial degreaser/cleaning agent that will not discolor the carpet. If you are unsure of the action of the selected cleaner, test it in an inconspicuous place, say in a closet or under a couch. A carpet remnant is a perfect test ground. It is best to use a pre-treatment that is formulated to work with the cleaning solution you will use in the steam vac. The pretreatments and cleaning solutions will have been thoroughly tested to ensure that no untoward chemical reactions between the two will occur.
The pretreatments and cleaning solutions will have been thoroughly tested to ensure that no untoward chemical reactions between the two will occur. Gently work the chemicals into the badly stained spots using a moderately stiff bristle brush. Work the chemicals down into the carpet fibers, but do not overdo the scrubbing to the point that the strands start to fray or unravel.
Do not let the spot-treated carpet dry out. Instead, proceed directly to the steam cleaning step.
Stick to one pretreatment chemical. If you mix chemicals, you may get unexpected results: generation of dangerous or lethal gases, creation of harmful acids, generation of harsh caustic solutions. Do this just before you start the steam cleaning process. Use acommercial degreaser/cleaning agent that will not discolor the carpet. If you are unsure of the action of the selected cleaner, test it in an inconspicuous place, say in a closet or under a couch. A carpet remnant is a perfect test ground.
4 Steam clean the area. Steam cleaners for the home are a good investment, especially if you are a pet owner. If you do not have a machine, rent one from a local hardware store, a grocery store or home improvement center.
5 Fill the solution compartment with the cleaning solution. Most cleaning formulations will contain a surfactant which serves to break the stain-carpet fiber and odor-carpet fiber bonds and lift the offending chemicals to the surface. In addition to removing stains and odors, the cleansing agents kill bacteria and other micro-organisms and bind chemicals that are the source of odors. A properly formulated cleanser will act to loosen existing bonds by replacing them with strong bonds which float the offending chemicals to the surface where they are picked up by the vacuum action of the steam cleaner.
6 Fill the water compartment with hot water.
7 Select the CLEAN setting on your machine. The steam vac cleaner draws the solution from the tank and mixes it with water as you slowly run the machine over the carpet.
8 Follow the instructions that were provided with your cleaner. Typically, you will use methodical, overlapping strokes. Many will specify a forward and return stroke dispensing the cleanser/water mixture and a complete forward and return stroke over the same area to pick up the loosened stain and odor particles. Make sure to take your time in the cleaning process and do not get in a big hurry. It takes a while to loosen and pick up particles that have been in place for a long time. Allow the machine to do its work by moving slowly and methodically in the recommended pattern. For odor-filled carpet, dispense additional liquid so that the pad becomes saturated. This will require that you spend additional time removing the moisture from the carpet and pad. Extra drying time will also be required. It is best to plan on using air conditioning and strong fans to ensure that drying is completed as quickly as possible. Any moisture that is left will create the perfect environment for mold growth. Typically, you will use methodical, overlapping strokes. Many will specify a forward and return stroke dispensing the cleanser/water mixture and a complete forward and return stroke over the same area to pick
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see how she has stolen the hearts of those at the Two Oceans Aquarium and SANCCOB alike.” – Martine Viljoen, Two Oceans Aquarium and SANCCOB volunteer
Sex identification is not easy with young penguins as males and females look the same. When a DNA test was done, the results revealed that Harold Custard was in fact female. That’s when they added a "Miss" to her name calling her "Miss Harold Custard".
A forever home
After a few months under the care of the SANCCOB team, it was time for Miss Harold Custard to come home. It was decided that it would be best for Miss Harold Custard to remain at the Two Oceans Aquarium, so as not to put any wild colonies at risk.
At 4 months old, she demanded that we feed her before the other penguins - she can be quite a diva, but we love her anyway. She would squeak constantly until a staff member sat with her. As she got older her braying call got deeper and louder and she quickly became one of the loudest birds on the beach.
“Custard owns this aquarium. She steals the hearts of everyone that lays eyes on her. I love the extra swing she has in her waddle and I'm amazed at the attitude her tiny little body is able to contain. I feel so blessed to know this crazy character and look forward to the many years of continued love and entertainment she will provide.” – Leigh de Necker, Two Oceans Aquarium Visitor Services Guide
This little princess has stolen the hearts of many who with her and has quite a curiousity for all things human-related. Her favourite objects are clipboards, paper and pens. There are days when Aquarium staff feed the penguins and she will run up to them, avoiding the food and instead trying to steal an unguarded pen.
“Custard is a cute bird and I love the noises she makes in the morning. Her walk is like a princess and when I give her cuddles she nibbles me back. She is deep in my heart.” – Kevin Eaves, Two Oceans Aquarium volunteer
In the mornings, if she is not greeted on a one-on-one basis by a staff member, she will sulk and not interact with anyone for the entire day. But, if you give her love she will return it in abundance.
“This little girl just melts my heart. I met Miss Harold Custard back in January when she was only 4 months old and I've watched her grow into a beautiful young adult. From day one she was so sweet, lovable and full of energy. Her little bray brings the biggest smile to my face everyday! I've never wanted to kidnap anything so bad in my life...yearly visits to this baby are a must.” – Katie Zenz, former Two Oceans Aquarium volunteer
Rockhopper penguins usually walk or hop but this little one gallops and leaps - her enthusiasm for all things is clear. Even her swimming is just a teeny little bit erratic.
She is the complete opposite of her sister Clax. Clax is moody, enjoying her privacy and choosing a part of the beach for herself where she does not need to interact with other penguins often. Custard on the other hand loves being the centre of attention, readily approaching staff and visitors and quickly befriends other penguins - especially Hopper.
Miss Harold Custard has even met some celebrities, like Tracy Morgan and his family when they visited South Africa on holiday in January.
She's actually become a bit of a celebrity herself in the process - making it into South Africa;s national news.
Miss Harold Custard has a black beauty spot on her left leg which is easy to identify. She likes to stand on the rocks in the afternoons and often stands at the gate in the mornings. Be sure to say hi to this little diva on your next visit – Happy Birthday Miss Harold Custard.
“Custard is the cutest, sassiest and most lovable rockhopper penguin in the world. Everyone who gazes upon her beauty falls into a trance of pure bliss and awes. She is our ambassador and our friend and I wish her many more years of happiness with us,” – Mark Fitzgibbon, Two Oceans Aquarium Visitor Services Guide
Support SANCCOB
Without the incredible work of SANCCOB, few of the precious seabirds at the Aquarium would have survived the perils they faced. SANCCOB have ensured the survival of over 95 000 distressed birds.
In fact, almost a quarter of all the remaining African penguins are alive today because of SANCCOB!
You can help SANCCOB continue their incredible work by supporting the construction of their desperately needed seabird hospital in Cape Town - Miss Harold Custard says you can help SANCCOB instead of buying a birthday present for her!The Goddess Frig: Reassessing an Anglo-Saxon Deity
By Ethan Doyle White
Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural, Vol.3:2 (2014)
Abstract: This article critically examines the evidence for the existence of the Anglo-Saxon goddess Frig, exploring toponyms, day names, Old English textual sources, archaeology, and comparisons with continental Germanic mythologies. Challenging previous assertions that she was the consort of the god Woden and was associated with love and motherhood, it furthermore contends that this scholarly misinterpretation of the deity has had wider repercussions, affecting the way that contemporary Pagans interpret this particular divinity. Ultimately, it argues that far less can be said about Frig with any certainty than has been previously supposed, suggesting that a case can even be made that she had never existed as a deity in Anglo-Saxon England at all.
Introduction: The world of the Anglo-Saxon gods will forever remain a mystery to us, existing just beyond the reach of written history. This pagan world sits in an enigmatic realm that is in many respects prehistoric, an alien headspace far removed from our own intellectual universe. Situated within a polytheistic cosmos, clouded from us by centuries of Christian theology and Enlightenment rationalism, we can discern the existence of a handful of potential deities, who though long deceased have perhaps left their mark in place-names, royal genealogies, and the accounts of proselytizing monks. Such sources have led scholars to put together a pantheon for early medieval England, populated by such murky figures as Woden, Þunor, Tiw, and a goddess known as Frig. Though no unequivocal evidence for her existence has survived for us today, it has long been believed that this enigmatic figure has left her mark on the names of various villages and hamlets across England, in veiled Old English references to sex, and in the name of one of our own days of the week, Friday. However, despite decades of scholarship in the field of Anglo-Saxon studies, the subject of Frig has been largely neglected, and it is hoped that this contribution will go some way to rectifying this unfortunate omission.
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our weekly emailDogma, doctrine, and theology--what's the difference?
What Are Dogma, Doctrine, and Theology?
Many people are curious about the difference between dogma and doctrine. I'm asked about it surprisingly often.
It would be nice if the Church had an official dictionary I could use to answer this question, but it doesn't.
Instead, it uses terms in documents and most of the time it expects you to already know them. Sometimes it gives you a partial definition, or at least clues about what a word means, but in general it leaves the writing of dictionary-style definitions to the writers of Catholic dictionaries.
Recently I wrote a study of the terms "dogma," "doctrine," and "theology." You can read it here, but in this post I'll give you with the results in an easy-to-read form.
So let's get started...
What Is Theology?
The broadest of the three categories is theology. The name "theology" is derived from a couple of Greek words (theos and logos) which combine to mean "the study of God."
You could study God in different ways, though. You might study him based on what he has revealed in his word, which is found in sacred Scripture and sacred Tradition.
Or you could study him in other ways, such as using philosophical reasoning without divine revelation--the way that Plato and Aristotle did.
To keep the philosophical study of God separate from theology, it is customary to add a qualifier and say that theology is the study of God based on divine revelation.
That's the standard, brief definition of what theology is (see, for example, the glossary at the back of an English edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church).
You'll note that it does not say anything about who is studying God. You don't, for example, have to be the pope or even a bishop to do theology.
Some people--theologians--do it professionally, and others do it informally.
In the broadest sense, any person who is reasoning about God based on divine revelation is doing theology--though that's very far from saying that they are doing it well, as the enormous amount of theological confusion that is out there illustrates.
Precisely because of that theological confusion, God has given the Church a teaching authority--the Magisterium (from the Latin, magister = teacher).
This leads us to the next concept...
What Is Doctrine?
The term "doctrine" comes from the Latin word doctrina, which simply means "teaching."
As used today, though, the word means a bit more than that. Ideas developed by a faithful Catholic theologian may represent Catholic theology but that do not make them Catholic doctrine.
For that the intervention of the Magisterium is needed, so a basic definition of the term is that a doctrine is a proposition (or set of propositions) taught by the Magisterium of the Church.
In some cases the term "doctrine" may be used to refer to things that have been infallibly taught by the Magisterium. It may even be used as a synonym for "dogma," but it is easy to show that this is not always the case.
For example, the Code of Canon Law provides that:
Can. 749 §3. No doctrine is understood as defined infallibly unless this is manifestly evident.
All dogmas are infallibly defined, as we will see, so this reveals that there can be doctrines that are not infallible and thus that are not dogmas.
What Is Dogma?
The Greek word dogma originally meant "opinion," but it has come to mean something much more specific.
The current understanding of "dogma" arose in the 1700s (so be warned that earlier documents, such as the writings of the Fathers or Medievals like St. Thomas Aquinas tend to use the term in the broader sense of just a theological opinion).
Cardinal Avery Dulles explains the present meaning of the term:
In current Catholic usage, the term “dogma” means a divinely revealed truth, proclaimed as such by the infallible teaching authority of the Church, and hence binding on all the faithful without exception, now and forever. [The Survival of Dogma, 153].
There are two essential elements here: First, a dogma must be divinely revealed. That is to say, it must be found explicitly or implicitly in the deposit of faith that Christ gave the Church. This is found in sacred Scripture and sacred Tradition. If something is to be a dogma, it must be in one of those two places--or in both of them.
Second, a dogma must be infallibly taught by the Magisterium as divinely revealed.
This is an important qualifier, because the Magisterium is capable of infallibly defining certain things that aren't divinely revealed. According to Church teaching, the Magisterium is able to infallibly teach both things that have been divinely revealed and truths that have a certain kind of connection with them, so that they may be properly explained and defended.
Dogmatic Facts?
For example, suppose a particular pope or ecumenical council tried to infallibly define a particular teaching but that later a question arose about whether he was really a valid pope or whether it was really an ecumenical council.
If the Magisterium did not have the ability to infallibly settle that question then the status of the previous definition would be uncertain, which would defeat the point of infallibly defining it.
To resolve this kind of situation, God gave the Church the ability not only to define dogmas but also the fact that a particular man was a valid pope or that a particular council was ecumenical.
These facts were not revealed by God as part of the deposit of faith that Christ gave the Church, though. They're facts that deals with later history, after the close of public revelation.
Still, they are facts that are necessary to properly defend a dogma, and so they are called "dogmatic facts" (facts connected with dogmas).
This is just one kind of example of non-revealed things that the Church can infallibly define. There are others.
The point, though, is that the Church can infallibly define certain things that are not divinely revealed and thus things other than dogmas.
Thus for the Church to define a dogma, it must not only infallibly teach that a particular point is true but that it is a divinely revealed truth.
From Theology to Dogma
The Church is not in the habit of leaping straight to the dogma stage. It tends to define dogmas only rarely, and usually only when there is a controversy about them that needs to be settled.
Most of the time it leaves particular matters at the level of non-infallible doctrine.
Or it leaves it as a matter freely discussed by theologians but not taught by the Church--ie., at the level of a theological opinion.
Historically, the progression often works like this:
1) A theologian or theological school proposes a way of understanding the revelation God has given the Church.
2) If it deems this a valuable and important contribution to the understanding of divine revelation, the Magisterium may begin to teach this authoritatively, raising it to the level of non-infallible doctrine.
3) Particularly if a controversy over the teaching arises at some point in Church history, the Magisterium may choose to settle the matter infallibly by defining the matter.
4) The Magisterium may infallibly define the matter with or without defining that it is a divinely revealed truth, but if it does the latter then then it elevates the matter to the level of dogma.
By the Way...
Incidentally, if you're interested in this type of information, you might want to check out my Secret Information Club.
If you're not familiar with it, the Secret Information Club is a free service that I operate by email.
I send out information on a variety of fascinating topics connected with the Catholic faith.
The very first thing you’ll get if you sign up is an “interview” I did with Pope Benedict on the book of Revelation. What I did was compose questions about the book of Revelation and take the answers from his writings.
He has a lot of interesting things to say!
If you’d like to find out what they are, just sign up at www.SecretInfoClub.com or use this handy sign-up form:
Just email me at [email protected] if you have any difficulty.
In the meantime, what do you think?This photoshop says a thousand words, all of which are "help."
For Twitter user's @Bornmiserable's latest creation, he swapped photos of the real Trump with his now legendary Disney animatronic figure. The result was just as upsetting as you always imagined it would be.
@BornMiserable says it's an improvement, which I cannot independently verify as this image has turned me into stone.
"I've done several Trump Photoshops and when I saw that animatronic figure, I just thought it would make more sense to put it in place of him — just about as much of a human being as he is," @BornMiserable told Mashable.
Image: bornmiserable/twitter
Image: bornmiserable/twitter
Image: bornmiserable/twitter
When Disney world introduced the Trump animatronic two weeks ago, it was met with fairly universal horror. Critics accused the artist of modeling Trump after a Chucky Doll and/or Hillary Clinton, which is both fair and accurate.
Trump robot in the Hall of Presidents looks like a 71-year-old Chucky doll. pic.twitter.com/yLCBmhpNvG — John Cohen (@JohnCohen1) December 19, 2017
Here me out on this. Clearly Disney had Hilary's robot ready to go and then they had to try and make it look like Trump. Don't hate me. This is just a necessary and painful fact we all need to deal with. pic.twitter.com/biSirfwE59 — Shannon O'Neill (@spotastic) December 19, 2017
Frankly, I'd take the animatronic over the real one. Animatronic 2020!The Quran taken at its word is an existential crisis for closeted, gay American Muslims.
Mourners pray in Orlando. (Photo11: John Raoux, AP)
Responses on Muslim social media to violence committed in the name of Islam have become infuriatingly predictable, as we saw in Fort Worth, San Bernardino and most recently in Orlando. The knee-jerk reaction is to deny that these attacks have anything to do with true Islam, and to tar anyone who says otherwise as Islamophobic. But that defensive, oversensitive attitude is simply evasive. We need an honest conversation about Islam itself.
That’s not what we’re getting. The day after the central Florida massacre, more than 200 Muslim leaders and scholars from America and beyond issued a response titled A Joint Muslim Statement on the Carnage in Orlando. It was signed by influential figures such as Yasir Qadhi (the widely followed dean of academic affairs at the Al-Maghrib Institute), Hisham Mahmoud (a lecturer at Harvard’s Islamic Studies Program) and even Yusuf Islam (the singer formerly known as Cat Stevens).
Their statement condemns the massacre, distances it from Muslims, and stresses that we must all live in harmony. That much is predictable, and commendable. But the statement fails to give American Islam what it needs most, and what is missing from the political and social media response: intellectual honesty.
The statement reads, “Any such acts of violence violate every one of our Prophet’s teachings.” This conveniently overlooks the fact that the prophet Mohammed condemned homosexuality and called for violence against gay people. He is recorded by numerous authorities as having said, “Wherever you find people committing the sin of the people of Lot, kill the one doing it and the one to whom it is done.” Beyond that, the Islamic canon contains plentiful condemnation of homosexuality. What the post-Orlando statement proves is that the Muslim-American establishment will not dare confront the issue of literalism — whether the prophet Mohammed's teachings must be taken literally or whether they can be adapted to modernity.
And that is the very issue that the massacre in Orlando lays bare. The “this isn’t real Islam” line ends here. Orlando shooter Omar Mateen was ostensibly associated with violent strains of Islam, pledging allegiance to the Islamic State terrorist group, but these violent strains follow the same texts as do the mainstream. Sheikh Farrokh Sekaleshfar, who studies and teaches religion in Iran, has openly called for the killing of gay people. “Death is the sentence,” he said in 2013. Just this spring, he spoke at the Husseini Islamic Center near Orlando. The 200 Muslim leaders who issued the statement can wash their hands of Sekaleshfar and his conclusion all they want, but they will find themselves in the same literalism trap.
Mainstream Muslim-American imams or religious leaders believe that everything the prophet said was true. Cognitive dissonance is the fundamental psychological issue that is swept under the rug, but that needs to be a conversation in American mosques. On the topic of homosexuality, most American-Muslim scholars, such as Yasir Qadhi, will argue that in a pluralistic society such as that of the United States, we must tolerate lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans even while we believe that they live sinful lives.
More liberal American-Muslim leaders will advocate that we are obliged to fight for the LGBT community. Reza Aslan and Hasan Minhaj, after last year’s Supreme Court ruling legalizing gay marriage, followed the liberal line in An Open Letter to American Muslims on Same-Sex Marriage. They cited the Quran ("Be just, for this is closest to righteousness") and said God's mercy and compassion extends "to all people, not just those who are straight.”
But if it were really that simple, their letter would not be necessary. Their logic, unfortunately, is torn apart by any honest reading of the prophet’s words.
POLICING THE USA: A look at race, justice, media
It is obvious that Muslims as a whole are peaceful people. Although it is clear that the silent majority of American Muslims are at least opposed to homosexuality, only the most minuscule number would support something as atrocious as the Orlando massacre. In fact, 42% of American Muslims are in favor of same-sex marriage. But the conversation that needs to be had is a psychological, textual one.
The question has existential implications for what must be thousands of closeted, gay and lesbian American Muslims. I know gay Muslims who live in hiding, who endure a never-ending psychological torture. There are many indications that Omar Mateen was conflicted about his own sexuality. And yet the discussion that might have enabled him to deal with his guilt is nowhere to be heard.
We can talk all we want about Islam's relationship with America, about Islamophobia, about homophobia. But the issue is Islam itself. Can we still read the Quran and the prophet’s words literally in the 21st century? Until we can ask that question in American mosques, Islam will have an uneasy relationship with modernity.
Omar Mahmood is a USA TODAY Collegiate Network fellow. Follow him on Twitter: @UrduDervish.
In addition to its own editorials, USA TODAY publishes diverse opinions from outside writers, including our Board of Contributors. To read more columns, go to the Opinion front page, follow us on Twitter @USATOpinion and sign up for our daily Opinion newsletter.
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Jan. 14, 2015, 8:47 PM GMT / Updated Jan. 15, 2015, 1:57 AM GMT
A California woman sued FedEx, where her late wife worked for 26 years, on Wednesday for refusing to pay $400,000 in spousal benefits because it would not recognize their marriage.
Lesly Taboada-Hall, who was a driver for the company, died of uterine cancer on June 20, 2013. Six days later, the Supreme Court struck down a key part of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which barred federal recognition of gay marriage.
Some companies used DOMA to determine who qualified as a legal spouse for the purposes of paying survivor benefits.
Because Taboada-Hall died before the Supreme Court ruling, FedEx determined that her wife, Stacey Schuett, was not eligible as a spouse to receive the main pension benefit, lawyers for Schuett said. It did recognize Schuett as a spouse for smaller survivor benefits.
The couple, who had earlier registered as domestic partners, wed in Taboada-Hall’s hospital room on the day before she died. Gay marriage became legal in California because of a separate ruling on the day of the DOMA decision. A state judge later ruled that their marriage was valid.
Schuett’s lawyers say the Supreme Court ruling should apply retroactively. They sued in federal court.
“It’s not like DOMA became unconstitutional on June 26, 2013,” said Nina Wasow, one of Schuett’s lawyers. “The law was unconstitutional all along.”Ladies and gents, goblins and trolls, quills at the ready. It’s time to kick off Festive Fantasy Week in style with the Festive Fantasy Quiz 2013!
Before we start, I have one message: “Cheat and you only cheat yourself. No Google, all you sneaky sneak-thieves out there!”
Right, let’s get started. And no, it’s not multiple-choice! Mwahaha…
In total, how many members are there in the Fellowship of the Ring in The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien? In the Warcraft universe, how many playable Alliance races make their home on Kalimdor (as of the latest expansion pack)? How many Paladins does it take to screw in a light bulb? What is the symbol of House Tyrell in A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin? How many Elder Scrolls games have been made and released, to date? What are trolls in the Discworld books made out of? Fill in the blank to correctly complete the rhyme: ‘Hey dol! merry dol! ring a dong ____!‘ In The Kingkiller Chronicle series by Patrick Rothfuss, what is the object that Kvothe/Kote possesses but is not able to open? What are the names of the two fictional countries that feature in The Princess Bride? Which Dwarven clan lived in Khazad-dûm (Moria)? How many base classes were there in the Player’s Handbook 1st Edition of Dungeons & Dragons? What is the name of the rat-like race from the Warhammer Fantasy universe? In The Lord of the Rings, what is it that Bilbo claims is a ‘dangerous business’?
BONUS QUESTION – In the Harry Potter books, what is the name of the spell that is used to glue the victim’s tongue to the roof of their mouth?
Each correct answer nets you 1 point. A correct bonus answer nets you an additional 2 points. That bonus could make all the difference!
Leave your answers here as a comment or post them up on our Facebook wall. You have until Friday 20th Dec to get your answers in! The winner will be announced in the New Year and duly presented with their certificate.
Good luck everyone! And don’t forget to check back tomorrow for our Ultimate Fantasy Christmas Wishlist…
Festive Fantasy Week 2013 (#FestiveFantasyWeek)A DUP adviser accused by a party rebel of blocking cost controls on the RHI scheme has said his father-in-law runs two green energy boilers under the scheme.
John Robinson, special adviser (Spad) to current DUP Economy minister Simon Hamilton, insisted the poultry farmer signed up to the scheme before he married his daughter and stressed he had never advised anyone to join the botched state-subsidy initiative.
(See News Letter editorial link below – Robinson must stand aside at once)
Mr Robinson, a former long-standing director of communications with the DUP who is now a key figure in attempting to clear up the RHI mess, told the Press Association that neither he nor his wife had any direct involvement with the business or RHI.
He said his father-in-law joined the scheme before he started to work directly with Mr Hamilton.
On Monday, suspended DUP MLA Jonathan Bell used Assembly privilege to claim he was thwarted in his efforts to clamp down on the multi-million pound RHI overspend because two DUP special advisers “have such extensive interests in the poultry industry”.
Mr Bell, himself a former DUP economy minister, named Mr Robinson and fellow DUP special adviser Timothy Johnston – who is married to Mr Robinson’s sister.
In response, the DUP branded Mr Bell’s allegations as “outrageous, untrue and unfounded mud-slinging”.
A party statement on Monday said: “Timothy Johnston has no interests whatsoever in the poultry industry and does not benefit or have any family members who applied to or benefit from RHI.
“John Robinson has no personal interest in the poultry industry. His family home farm have chicken houses but are not part of the RHI scheme and never have been recipients or applicants.”
In response to specific queries from the Press Association on Tuesday, Mr Robinson said his father-in-law was part of the RHI scheme.
“I have never had any personal financial interest in the RHI scheme,” he said.
“At no point have I ever advised anyone to join the scheme or sought to benefit in any way from it.
“I have two brothers who are poultry farmers. They are not part of the scheme nor did they apply to the scheme.
“My father-in-law purchased two 36KW boilers for his poultry business in May 2015, they were installed in July 2015 and he applied to the scheme on August 3 2015.
“This was before I was married in October 2015. At no time did we discuss any aspect of the scheme nor was I aware of his application to the scheme.
“Neither my wife nor I have ever had any role in the business nor have we received any benefit, financial or otherwise, from the business.
“I was appointed as an adviser in the Department for the Economy in June 2016. I was not involved in any aspect of the RHI scheme prior to taking up the post.”
Mr Bell and senior DUP figures, including leader Arlene Foster, are at odds about the chain of events that led to cost controls being introduced into the widely over-budget scheme and its ultimate closure.
He was suspended from the party after making serious allegations against Mrs Foster and a number of party advisers in a TV interview before Christmas. His accusations were denied by all those he named.
The Strangford MLA’s subsequent claims in an Assembly debate on Monday came at a time when Mr Hamilton is facing growing pressure to publish the names of all the beneficiaries of the RHI scheme.
News Letter editorial: The RHI inquiry must be set up right now – no ifs, no butsIf Mayor Joy Cooper has her way, the words "In God We Trust" will be mounted above the dais in commission chambers at City Hall.
So now atheist blogger Chaz Stevens wants equal time. He is asking permission to display a banner with the motto: "In Satan We Trust."
Hallandale's mayor said she has no plans to give up the push for an "In God We Trust" plaque at City Hall.
"It's our national motto," Cooper said. "It sends a loud message that we're all united."
Arguing for separation of church and state, Stevens has made it a mission to end prayer at public meetings. He cites a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that determined prayer is allowed at government meetings provided it applies to all religions, including Satanism, Stevens argues.
Courtesy, Chaz Stevens Blogger Chaz Stevens wants to display "In Satan We Trust" plaque at Hallandale City Hall now that Mayor Joy Cooper is pushing for an "In God We Trust" plaque. Blogger Chaz Stevens wants to display "In Satan We Trust" plaque at Hallandale City Hall now that Mayor Joy Cooper is pushing for an "In God We Trust" plaque. (Courtesy, Chaz Stevens) (Courtesy, Chaz Stevens)
Now he plans to take his crusade for an "In Satan We Trust" plaque to cities that have mounted "In God We Trust" plaques on government property – including Doral in Miami-Dade County.
"Hallandale is only the tiniest tip of the iceberg," Stevens said. "We intend to go across America."
[email protected] or 954-356-4554HUNTSVILLE, AL–For the 135th straight year since Gen. Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox, representatives for the South announced Monday that the region has postponed plans to rise again.
"Make no mistake, the South shall rise again," said Knox Pritchard, president of the Huntsville-based Alliance Of Confederate States. "But we're just not quite ready to do it now. Hopefully, we'll be able to rise again real soon, maybe even in 2001."
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Pritchard's fellow Southerners shared his confidence.
"Yes, sir. The South will rise again, and when it does, I'll be right up front waving the Stars and Bars," said Dock Mullins of Decatur, GA. "But first, I gotta get my truck fixed and get that rusty old stove out of my yard."
"Lord willing, and the creek don't rise, we gonna rise again," said Sumter, SC, radiator technician Hap Slidell, who describes himself as "Southern by the grace of God." "I don't know exactly when we're gonna do it, but one of these days, we're gonna show them Yankees how it's done."
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"Save your Confederate dollars," Slidell added. "You can bet on that."
The Deep South states of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Louisiana, and Tennessee consistently rank at the bottom of the nation in a wide variety of statistical categories, including literacy, infant mortality, hospital beds, toilet-paper sales, and shoe usage. Even so, some experts believe the region could be poised for a renaissance.
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"The way things stand, things in the Deep South almost have to get better. Otherwise, the people who live there will devolve into preverbal, overall-wearing sub-morons within a century," said Professor Dennis Lassiter of Princeton University. "Either Southerners will start improving themselves, or they'll be sold to middle-class Asians as pets."
"My constituents are decent, hard-working folk," said Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC), despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, in his 22nd annual "Next Year, By God!" speech on the steps of North Carolina's capitol building. "We are a proud people who mayn't have all that much fancy-pants book-learnin', but we live and die with pride in our proud heritage and the dignity of our forebears."
Helms' speech was met with nearly 25 minutes of enthusiastic hoots and rebel yells by the 15,000 drunk, unemployed tobacco pickers in attendance.
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Though Southerners are overwhelmingly in favor of rising again, few were able to provide specific details of the rising-again process.
"I don't know, I reckon we'll build us a bunch of big, fancy buildins and pave us up a whole mess of roads," said Bobby Lee Fuller of Greenville, MS. "I ain't exactly sure where we're gonna get the money for that, but when Johnny Reb sets his mind to something, you best get out of his way."
"Oh, it'll happen, sure as the sun come up in the morning," said Buford Comstock, 26, a student at Over 'N' Back Diesel Driving School in Union City, TN. "The South is gonna rise up, just as soon as we get together and get all our shit back in one sock. Then, look out, Northerners!"
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"Yesiree," Comstock added, "one day soon, the Mason-Dixon Line will be the boundary between a great nation and one whose time done passed."CAIRO (Reuters) - Saudi-led coalition jets bombed rebel positions in Yemen’s capital Sanaa on Friday for a fourth consecutive day, residents said, in renewed fighting following the breakdown of peace talks.
Air strikes hit a presidential compound and military base in Sanaa early on Friday and wounded six farmers on a road west of the capital, said the residents.
U.N.-backed talks concluded last Saturday with no agreement on how to end a civil war that has killed more than 10,000 civilians and caused a humanitarian crisis in the Arab world’s poorest country.
Dozens of civilians have been killed in Saudi-led air strikes since Sunday, including three women working at a potato chip factory near a military base that was hit by an air strike on Tuesday, according to the United Nations.
A Gulf Arab coalition backing Yemeni forces loyal to the exiled government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi is trying to oust Iran-allied Houthi forces who control Sanaa.
Hadi was forced to flee Yemen to Saudi Arabia as Houthi forces advanced on his headquarters in Aden in March 2015.
Residents and Yemeni media reported air strikes on Friday in the Red Sea port city of Hodeida and other parts of Yemen.
The war has left half the 27 million population with no access to healthcare and around 80 percent in need of some form of humanitarian aid, according to the United Nations.
The spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Ravina Shamdasani said in a news release more than 200 people had been killed in Yemen in four months.
“Each side is responsible for the civilian casualties,” Shamdasani said.
“Before the end of July, the casualties were mostly attributable to the Houthis, whereas in the past week they have been mostly attributable to the coalition’s air strikes.”
The Houthi movement has detained 30 members of Yemen’s minority Baha’i faith, according to a member of the small Muslim sect, in a sign the war is deepening sectarian divisions.
Armed officers from the National Security Bureau, an intelligence agency controlled by the Houthis, stormed a youth convention on Wednesday and arrested boys and girls of the minority sect, which is viewed by some Muslims as heretical, said the Baha’i member, who did not wish to be identified.Australian Deputy Prime Minister Wayne Swan went on a big tirade against US Republicans, and in particular Tea Partiers for being a massive threat to the state of the economy.
The basic gist: The Tea Partiers held up the debt ceiling deal (nearly collapsing the country) and have now foisted this fiscal cliff sequestration nonsense on the economy, thus creating a new threat.
From Rod McGuirk of AP:
"Let's be blunt and acknowledge the biggest threat to the world's biggest economy are the cranks and crazies that have taken over a part of the Republican Party," Swan said.
He said "the extreme right Tea Party wing" of the Republican Party had held the national interest hostage during last year's debate over the U.S. borrowing limit despite President Barack Obama's "goodwill and strong efforts."
He said it was imperative that Congress reach an agreement to support growth and avoid a "fiscal cliff" of deep government spending cuts and higher taxes in January, which he said could push the U.S. economy back into recession.
This isn't the first time the Tea Party/Debt Ceiling fiasco was called out abroad.
During the actual fight itself, several German publications expressed horror that Republicans were threatening to put the world's most important market (the US Treasury market) into disarray, thus threatening the entire global economy.After last week's article—"Why Feminism Is the Anti-Viagra"—likened feminism to actual boner-killing, we've noticed that Psychology Today has been particularly hard on the women's movement over the past few years, blaming it for everything from unhappiness to sexual harassment
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heavy cloud sunk into a valley, which channeled it into settlements. People in the affected areas collapsed in their tracks -- at home, on roads or in the field -- losing consciousness or dying in a few breaths. In Nyos and Kam, the first villages hit by the cloud, everyone but four inhabitants on high ground died.
The valley split, and the cloud followed, killing people up to 15.5 miles (25 kilometers) away from the lake. Over the next two days, people from surrounding areas entered the valley to find the bodies of humans and cows lying on the ground.
By Aug. 23, the cloud had mostly blown away, and the silence had lifted. After being unconscious for up to 36 hours, some people revived to find, horrifically, that their family members, neighbors and livestock were dead.
The lake had changed, too. It was now shallower; plants and leaves floated in it; and its formerly picturesque blue hue had darkened into rust. What was the deadly force at Nyos? Find out next.- A hiker that fell from a cliff at Hook Mountain State Park in Nyack, New York, has been rescued.
SkyFoxHD was overhead when the man was lying on the ground near a tree. He apparently fell from one plateau to a lower one and may have landed on a tree.
Several emergency responders from the police and fire departments responded to the scene. The extent of the 25-year-old man's injuries are unclear. He was able to call for help from his cellphone. Rescuers locked on to his location via GPS before the phone battery died.
The Rockland County High Angle Rescue Team hoisted a rescue basket to the man, placed him on it, and got it down the mountain, the Clarkstown Police Department said. Police said the hiker was conscious and talked to the rescuers.
Hook Mountain State Park is part of the Palisades Interstate Park system within Rockland County.WASHINGTON -- The Senate handed President Barack Obama a major win Thursday, voting to advance his trade agenda by ending debate on a bill that would grant him the power to fast-track massive new pacts through Congress.
A number of senators objected to the process, complaining that they were unable to get votes on amendments they deemed essential to making sure that looming, still-secret deals with 12 Pacific Rim nations and Europe live up to promises of helping U.S. workers.
But 62 of their colleagues disagreed, and voted to halt debate anyway, setting up passage of the fast-track bill by the end of the week.
"I'll acknowledge that the process on the floor has not gone the way that any of us would have liked," said Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and lead sponsor of the measure. He nevertheless argued for passage, saying the nation’s “economic health and prestige are on the line here."
Fast track, formally known as Trade Promotion Authority, would allow the president to cut trade agreements with other nations, then advance them through Congress with expedited procedures.
"The TPA bill is the only way Congress can effectively assert its priorities in our ongoing trade negotiations," Hatch said. "It's the only way that we can ensure that our trade negotiators can reach good deals with our trading partners."
But other senators said there was no reason to hurry to give Obama such sweeping authority.
"We're moving to this massive bill with very little debate even on the fast-track policy. And if that's adopted and the bill -- TPP -- appears, there will be no amendments on it," said Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), referring to the fast-track rules that don't allow Congress to alter trade agreements.
"I see no reason that we have to rush this," Sessions said, adding that he has not received enough assurance from the administration that the trade deals will be good for workers.
"I sent a letter to the president of the United States asking how fast-track and the vast Trans-Pacific Partnership would impact the jobs and wages of American workers. A simple question. Would it increase or reduce manufacturing jobs and wages in the United States?" Sessions said before the vote. "Shouldn't we know that? Is that a question improper to be asked? He's refused to answer. I think the reason he's refused to answer is because the answer is not good."
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), who has led opposition to the trade deals on the Democratic side, echoed Sessions.
"Historically when we've done trade agreements in this town -- as bad as they've turned out to be for working families... at least we've had open debate where we could offer amendments," Brown said. "The last time we had the Senate debate this, there were three weeks of debate. This is about three days."
The measure's advancement marks a significant win for Obama -- and one that was far from certain, even as the Senate was voting.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the lead Democratic sponsor of the bill, said he worked through the night to try and win agreements from his colleagues, and was talking with Obama after 11 p.m. to find the way forward.
"The president is all-in on this issue. There's no other way to describe it," Wyden told reporters shortly after the vote.
Still, presidential pressure or no, the vote nearly failed while it was still a few votes shy of the 60 threshold needed. It only succeeded after about a dozen senators engaged in a tense discussion in the middle of the Senate floor, well after the time for the vote had expired.
Several senators said later that the key was Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) promising Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) to have a vote on reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank, which backs loans in places where there might not otherwise be sufficient funding to purchase products from the United States. A key beneficiary is Boeing, in Cantwell's state.
Conservatives see the Ex-Im Bank as unnecessary corporate welfare, but Cantwell, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) -- who also has Boeing facilities in his state -- and others had threatened to block the trade bill unless they got a vote. McConnell, who handed Cantwell a piece of paper during the heated floor discussions, promised to have that vote in June.
The Ex-Im drama may be moot, however. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) told reporters later that he had talked to Cantwell, but refused to commit to a vote in his chamber.
Another key to advancing fast-track was McConnell pledging to allow at least some amendments to the TPA measure to get votes, although under Senate rules that will require agreement from the rest of the members.
Wyden said he was still talking with McConnell and others about which amendments to include.
Opponents of fast-track such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) have argued that Americans should be allowed to see what's in the trade deals before Congress makes it easy for Obama to pass them.
"Post the deal. That's all it takes," Warren said in an interview with HuffPost Tuesday. "I will stop complaining about transparency if they will post a scrubbed version of the TPP, which is available now down in a secret location here in Congress. Post it now, before you ask us to vote on greasing the skids to get this thing done."
"And I do want to point out that President Bush posted the scrubbed text of the trade agreement that he negotiated months before he asked for even partial fast-track authority," Warren said.
Wyden noted that the TPA bill requires that trade agreements will eventually be posted for the public to see.
"Starting with the Trans-Pacific Partnership, that agreement will be public for 60 days before the president signs it, and for probably a couple of months after that," Wyden said. "The American people will be able to come to a town hall meeting of their House member or their senator for close to four months with the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement in their laps, and they will be able to ask questions of their elected officials before a single vote is cast."
However, with fast-track powers, Obama will have a much easier time winning those votes. The fast track mandates that agreements cannot be amended, the Senate cannot filibuster them and they must get simple majorities in each chamber to pass.
With the Senate's procedural hurdle cleared Thursday, the TPA bill is expected to pass Friday afternoon.Lenovo is one of the worst Android manufacturers when it comes to updates. Motorola devices went from extremely quick updates under Google's ownership to mostly-bad support under Lenovo. The company updated its software upgrade page today, which now states that the entire existing Phab product lineup (as well as two tablets) will not receive further software updates.
The affected devices include the original 2015 Phab, the Phab Plus, Phab2, Phab2 Plus, and Phab2 Pro. The original Phab and Phab Plus shipped with Android 5.0, but the rest are on 6.0. Lenovo also says the Tab3 7 Essential will stay on Lollipop, and the Tab3 10 Business will stay on Marshmallow (both tablets were released last year).
The exclusion of the Phab2 Pro from further updates is especially ridiculous, considering it was released less than a year ago and was the first widely-available phone with Project Tango AR. If you read our review, you'll know it wasn't a very good phone, but there's no excuse to drop support for a $500 device this soon. Not cool, Lenovo.Estimates from Aquaculture Asia Pacific suggest Indonesia became the second-largest shrimp producer in the world in 2014.
Its vannamei production was up 31% 504,000 metric tons, according to statistics cited by Shrimp News International, making it second only to China, which produced 955,000t in 2014.
Ecuador's vannamei production leapt 19%, from 286,000 metric tons to 340,000t.
Vietnam too saw its production rising, from 267,615t to 328,000t. This was at the expense of black tiger, or monodon, harvest, which fell from 292,884t to 241,000t. Indonesia too sacrificed some monodon production, falling from 178,783t to 126,000t.
Thai production continues to flounder after the effects of early mortality syndrome, falling from 250,000t to 220,000t in 2014. This is less than India, which apparently remained stable at 300,000t harvest, as well as 45,000t of black tiger.
Overall, world vannamei production rose in 2014, from 2.7 million tons to 3.05m tons. No doubt a direct result of switching ponds to vannamei, black tiger production fell from a total 743,616t to 634, 800t.
See the full table here.Nearly four years after Hezbollah fought invading Israeli troops to a standstill in south Lebanon, the militant Shiite group says it's prepared for a fresh conflict and confident of victory.
"We are ready for another war and we eagerly await it," says veteran Hezbollah fighter Abu Hadi on a drive through the Bekaa Valley. "We expect the next war to be short. The Israelis will not be able to endure what we will do to them."
Hezbollah's leadership insists it does not seek a war and that its military preparations are a defense against potential Israeli aggression. Yet, the inconclusive outcome of the 2006 war has stoked a feeling here that another war is inevitable.
War drums have been beating faster in recent weeks amid allegations that Syria has supplied Hezbollah with Scud ballistic missiles – a development that has enraged Israel, forced Lebanese leaders to seek international support, and complicated a gradual US-Syria rapprochement. On May 3, President Obama renewed sanctions on Syria for a year because of its "continuing support for terrorist organizations and pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and missile programs."
Hezbollah's strongholds in the Bekaa Valley are likely to be one of several front lines during another war with Israel – a war that threatens to be far more destructive than the one in July 2006. Hezbollah says lessons learned from that conflict have been implemented, including new battlefield tactics and the acquisition of improved weapons systems, surface-to-surface rockets, and possibly advanced antiaircraft missiles.
'Too much at stake'
Many analysts believe that the next war will not be confined to Hezbollah and Israel but will also draw in Syria and possibly Iran in a regional conflagration. Hezbollah's leaders say that it would be of sufficient scale and intensity to change the geopolitical balance in the region. "That kind of war would change every parameter in the Middle East," Hezbollah chief Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said recently.
The stakes for both sides are so great that the military preparations of Israel and Hezbollah to some extent serve as a mutual deterrent against rash action.
"I don't believe there will be [war]. I think there is too much at stake to lose for all the parties," says Michael Williams, the top United Nations official in Lebanon, after an April 28 meeting with Prime Minister Saad Hariri. "I think tensions have been high the past few days. But I hope these will lower now."
Tensions flared when Israel accused Hezbollah of having Scuds and US officials voiced alarm at the increasingly sophisticated weaponry allegedly crossing the border from Syria to Lebanon. In late April, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Hezbollah had "far more rockets and missiles than most governments in the world.... This is obviously destabilizing for the whole region," he said following talks with his Israeli counterpart, Ehud Barak.
Who needs Scuds when you have M-600s?
Syria's Scud-D rockets have a range of 435 miles, which would bring all of Israel within range of Hezbollah's strongholds in the northern Bekaa Valley.
The US has condemned Syria's "provocative behavior" in sending Hezbollah arms, but says it cannot confirm that Scuds have been smuggled into Lebanon. Lebanese, Syrian, and Egyptian officials have all dismissed the reports for lack of evidence.
Some military analysts question the claims, too, asking why Hezbollah would need Scuds, which are liquid-fueled (lengthening launch preparation time) and usually require firing from large-wheeled launchers, which would also need to be smuggled into Lebanon. Hezbollah is believed to already have Iranian-designed and Syrian-built M-600 rockets that are more concealable and quicker to fire.
"The M-600 is more accurate than the Scuds, is easier to use as it has a solid propellant motor, and is smaller and lighter," says Duncan Lennox, editor of Jane's Strategic Weapon Systems in Britain.
Hezbollah officials refuse to confirm or deny the reports, but Abu Hadi says the group has no need for Scuds. "We have many other surprises for the Israelis," he says, exhibiting the determination of Hezbollah's cadres in preparing for war.
"Take a good look around you," he says, pointing to the concrete apartment blocks of Hezbollah's stronghold in the southern suburbs of Beirut. "Next time, all this will be gone." He's not worried about his neighborhood's potential destruction. "We can always rebuild," he says. "Our dignity is more important than roofs over our heads."
'Jihad places us in a pleasant state of mind'
Most Lebanese dread another devastating war with Israel, especially as Lebanon's economy improves amid a boom in construction and tourism. Such concerns garner little sympathy from Hezbollah combatants, who say they are fulfilling a religious obligation in confronting Israel. "The atmosphere [among Hezbollah cadres] is very spiritual," says Hassan, a burly university student. "In our belief, we are waging jihad and that places us in a very pleasant state of mind."
Hezbollah's leadership refuses to discuss details of its armaments but acknowledges its military advances since 2006.
"We have... plugged some of the loopholes, and improved the good things," deputy leader Sheikh Naim Qassem told a Saudi paper recently. "Now, we certainly are more impregnable, and more at ease in... preparing to confront the possibilities of an Israeli aggression than at any previous time."
•Hear more from Hassan and Abu Hadi about Hezbollah's weapons and tactics at CSMonitor.com
Related:Is Arrow‘s Laurel about to hit the storyline bull’s-eye? Will Ward still vex the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.? What’s the skinny on NCIS‘ DiNozzo? Is a Criminal mind having trouble coping? Read on for answers to those questions plus teases from other shows.
RELATED Save the Dates! 50+ July Premieres and Finales
Can we have any scoop on Laurel Lance’s storyline for Arrow Season 3? –Anita
Oh yes, you can. We spoke with exec producer Marc Guggenheim at a Thursday night CW soiree, where he professed, “One of the things we’re most excited about is Laurel’s story. Everything that we’ve been gearing up for, for the last 46 episodes, will come to fruition” — possibly including that passing of a baton/leather jacket in the season finale. As the season opens, “She’s still in the DA’s office,” Guggenheim added, “and there will be some interactions with a new character that we haven’t announced yet…. Her fans will be really, really happy.”
Are we going to learn anything about Felicity’s past on this season of Arrow? Like possibly who her father is? –Becca
As Felicity/EBR’s fans very well know, “We have had a backstory for her for over a year now that we keep saying, ‘This is the episode where we’re going to do it,’ and we don’t,” Guggenheim shared. “But this is the year we’re going to do it. That script is getting worked on as we speak.”
RELATED Arrow EP Teases Season 3’s Big Bad, a Big ‘Date,’ Non-Oliver Flashbacks
Can you give us a hint on how Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Ward will find himself working alongside the people he betrayed? –Rachel
“Alongside” is perhaps an optimistic way of viewing things! As exec producer Maurissa Tancharoen reminds, “He did very bad things” toward the close of Season 1. That said, “He’s in our custody now, and he’s a great villain to have around.” And he WILL be around. “Ward is definitely in the mix” as Season 2 opens, says EP Jed Whedon. “Brett [Dalton] has done a great job, and we love who Ward has become.”
With Michael Weatherly having gotten in such good shape this summer for his triathlon, will this be addressed for NCIS‘ DiNozzo? –Joni
The actor’s lean, mean physique apparently will help Tony’s game. Show boss Gary Glasberg tells us he’s in the “formative stages” of crafting a new love interest for Tony, someone that NCIS’ most eligible agent (G Callen excepted) will meet through a case. “It’s time for Tony to continue to grow a little bit,” says Glasberg. “He went through a lot last year emotionally and tried to deal with Ziva’s departure as he could. And it’s time” for someone new. “We’ll be mature about it and handle it properly, and Michael’s excited about it.”
Any scoop about Supernatural, please? –6Spike
Fresh from TCA, show boss Jeremy Carver tells us that Episode 5, the series’ 200th, will be titled “Fan Fiction,” a meta bit of fun written by Robbie Thompson.
RELATED Supernatural Stars, Boss Drop Season 10 Spoilers, Talk Series’ Endless Future
Got anything on Criminal Minds’ Garcia? –Kay
Early this season, we will find out that Garcia has been struggling with shooting the nurse that tried to kill Dr. Reid in the season finale. Her solution: a trip to Texas to try to make things right. Bonus scoop: In addition to the pair of episodes Matthew Gray Gubler is helming this coming season, Joe Mantegna and Thomas Gibson also are returning to the director’s chair.
Got any Castle scoop? Like, guest cast or who’s writing 7×02? –Sandra
On the casting front, you probably have seen this fresh bit of scoop. As for the writer of Episode 2, which involves the murder of a toy mogul, that’d be a gentleman named Andrew W. Marlowe. (IOW, the premiere isn’t a two-parter per se.)
Greetings from Germany! You talked to Castle‘s Andrew Marlowe and David Amann. Soooo, is there anything else they shared about the new season in their interview? –Mandy
Greetings from America! Your new showrunner Amann teased “a really fun episode,” somewhere in the first four of the season, “that deals with what seems to be an invisible killer — and the characters take a lot of pleasure in that.”
RELATED Castle EPs Talk Finale Twist: ‘Fans Are Going to Be Happy It Wasn’t a Dream’
I need something on Person of Interest — this hiatus is killing me! –Bradley
The season premiere – which airs Sept. 23 and picks up about six weeks after the finale – is titled “Panopticon.” (I’ll sit here while you Google that….) OK, are you back? Exec producer Greg Plageman also told us that viewers will be “pleasantly surprised” by who Mad Men’s Cara Buono is playing, only adding that her character does not work for Decima.
What coping mechanisms will Elena from The Vampire Diaries be using to deal with the fact she lost Damon (seemingly) forever? –Ana
It sounds like she’ll be burying her nose in the books, of the medical stripe. As indicated by a flurry of recent castings – and likely a pure coincidence now that TVD has Grey’s Anatomy as a time slot rival — “When we come back, we’ll see that Elena is actively pursuing a degree in pre-med,” show boss Julie Plec told us. “She’s a smart girl, and Elena’s father was a doctor, so she’s trying to figure out how to help people and save people, just as her family did.” And merely as an added bonus, “We’ll meet some hot young pre-med guys and sexy doctors” as she does so.
I know it’s midseason and all, but is there any casting news for The Following yet? – Jill
As a matter of fact, casting calls have just gone out for the series regular role of Gwen, an ER doctor and single mom who’s sophisticated and calm on the outside, but can “cut loose” as needed. (Perhaps a new honey for Ryan?) The killer drama is also filling the recurring role of a charming husband and dad who’s got — wait for it – a dark side, one he’s been hiding his whole life.
RELATED TNT Renews Major Crimes and Last Ship; Falling Skies Gets Final Season
In honor of The Last Ship’s renewal, how about some scoop for us? –Teena
After chatting with Titus Welliver about his Amazon series Bosch, I sought the 411 on his role in The Last Ship’s final two episodes. “He’s a former military/law enforcement guy who’s trying to secure areas on land from the pandemic, and things are not what they seem with this character,” he shared. “What appears to be obvious is not so.” Fun fact: The TNT drama drop-by reunited the erstwhile Man in Black with Lost director Jack Bender, “which was a great treat,” he said.
Can you confirm/deny rumours that Rookie Blue Season 5 is only 11 episodes? –Etain
Rookie Blue Season 5, as always reported, runs 22 episodes. Stateside, at least, the first 11 are airing now, and the rest will come around next summer.
You never share scoops on Unforgettable. How about any little something for this loyal fan? –Debbie
You will never guess who shows up in the season finale.
Real questions, real answers. If you need the Inside Line on a favorite summer or fall show, email [email protected]! (With reporting by Vlada Gelman and Andy Swift)BOLIVIA has a navy. Merchant vessels sail the high seas under the Bolivian flag. The country celebrates March 23rd as the “Day of the Sea”. In fact, Bolivia has all the trappings of a maritime power except an actual coastline (confining its navy to lakes and rivers). It lost its littoral to Chile in a 19th-century war and has been trying to recover a piece of it almost ever since.
On May 4th Bolivia’s quest entered a new phase when the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague began hearings on its demand for Chile to grant it “sovereign access to the sea”, ie, territory that would reconnect it to the Pacific Ocean. The government commissioned 35 musicians to record a song, “Beaches of the Future”, to drum up international support.
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It faces long odds. The first hearings address Chile’s objection to the whole procedure on the grounds that the court has no jurisdiction in the matter. Only if the ICJ rejects Chile’s position, or defers a decision, will it consider Bolivia’s claim that Chile has an “obligation to negotiate” access to the sea. That, Chile will argue, is a dangerous notion. It would overturn the treaty that ended hostilities between the two countries, and thus pose a threat to the system of treaties that undergirds much international law. If that is right, more is at stake in the Dutch courtroom than Bolivia’s hankering for beachfront property.
The struggle has its origin in the exploitation of nitrates, used for fertiliser and to make saltpetre for the manufacture of gunpowder, in the Bolivian littoral, whose sparse population was mainly Chilean. Angered by an increase in Bolivian tax on nitrate miners, Chile invaded the port of Antofagasta in 1879. By the end of the four-year war it had also defeated Peru, which had allied with Bolivia, annexing its departments of Arica and Tacna (see map). In all, Bolivia lost 400km (250 miles) of coastline and 120,000 square km of territory. Peace was concluded only with a “treaty of peace and friendship” in 1904, under which Bolivia accepted the loss of its Pacific coast. In return Chile promised Bolivia “the fullest and freest” commercial transit.
Bolivia is not reconciled to the loss. The poorest country in South America, it blames its plight largely on its landlocked condition (see article). Much of Chile’s hoard of copper, its main export, lies underneath what was Bolivian soil. The commitment to free transit “is not as wonderful as Chile likes to portray,” says Eduardo Rodríguez Veltzé, a former Bolivian president who is now ambassador to the Netherlands. Although Bolivia has its own customs officials and storage in Arica and Antofagasta, it complains that Chile has created an obstacle course for exporters. It subjects Bolivian cargo to unwarranted inspections, for example. Bolivia’s constitution, enacted in 2009 under the current president, Evo Morales, calls access to the Pacific an “irrevocable right”.
That frustrated ambition has made for a relationship with Chile that is at once prickly and intimate. The two countries’ citizens can cross the border without passports, and most Bolivian goods have duty-free access to Chile’s market. Despite the obstacles, two-thirds of Bolivia’s long-distance trade passes through Chilean ports.
Yet liberal, outward-looking Chile has little rapport with the left-wing nationalists who currently govern Bolivia. Commerce lags behind its potential. Chilean companies, avid investors in neighbouring countries, have risked hardly any money in Bolivia. In turn, Bolivia has spurned big opportunities merely to spite Chile. A president who wanted to export gas through Chilean ports was forced out of office in 2003. In a referendum the following year, voters said Bolivia should use gas as a negotiating tool to gain access to the Pacific.
With the suit at the ICJ, Bolivia is trying a new tack. It insists that this is not an attempt to reopen the 1904 treaty, as Chile alleges. Instead, Chile “brought itself into a new kind of international obligation” by repeatedly offering Bolivia some sort of access to the sea after the treaty came into force, argues Mr Rodríguez. In 1975, for example, Chile’s dictator Augusto Pinochet, fearing war with Argentina and Peru, offered Bolivia a corridor in territory that had belonged to Peru. Peru vetoed that plan. It has that right under the treaty that restored Tacna to its control in 1929. No matter, says Bolivia. Chile is still bound by the obligation to negotiate that its offers gave rise to.
This line of argument leaves Chilean officials aghast. It is “unheard of”, says Heraldo Muñoz, who was Chile’s foreign minister until the president asked her cabinet to resign on May 6th (see Bello). Bolivia is not merely asking for dialogue, which Chile would enter into, but negotiations under court order “with only one outcome”. The ICJ has no business judging the matter. Both countries are parties to the Pact of Bogotá, which obliges signatories to submit disputes to international tribunals. But the pact excludes conflicts that were settled before 1948. Even if the court claims competence, Chile is confident it will not issue a judgment that would call into question borders long settled by treaty.
The ICJ is likely to rule this year on Chile’s motion to dismiss the case, or to defer a decision until it considers Bolivia’s claim. A finding for Bolivia would not end the saga. Negotiations would drag on, and could wind up back in court. No Chilean government would dare to surrender territory to Bolivia, at least not without compensation, perhaps in the form of a land swap. Even if Chile were willing, Peru could exercise its veto again.
If Bolivia and Chile cannot resolve the dispute, they could try to work around it. Chile admits that there is room for improvement in the free-transit regime. Some suggest it could offer Bolivia a lease on an enclave over which it would retain sovereignty, similar to China’s former arrangement with Britain over part of Hong Kong. But no solution short of sovereignty will satisfy Bolivia. It “will never stop claiming”, says Bolivia’s man in The Hague.
Editor's note: Chile's government has confirmed that Mr Muñoz will remain foreign minister.Some students in Hayward and Oakland will help bring lighting to third-world orphanages and schools by assembling small solar systems that will be sent overseas.
Hayward’s Tennyson High School and Cesar Chavez Middle School and Oakland High School are among 19 California schools chosen for a Solar Suitcase Program funded with a $250,000 grant.
The students will assemble the portable solar light systems, learning the basic principles of clean energy.
The systems will be donated to schools, libraries and community centers in third-world countries.
“The students will be making something of high quality that people are going to be relying on,” said Dr. Laura Stachel, of the nonprofit company We Care Solar, which created the solar suitcases. “What they do matters.”
Stachel’s husband, Hal Aronson, taught the teachers how to assemble the solar systems. Aronson has trained teachers, contractors and electricians on solar power since the 1980s.
The We Share Solar Suitcase is a solar electric system that is easy to transport and use. It includes LED lighting, a cellphone charger and outlets for 12-volt DC devices, similar to a car charger. It is powerful enough to light a small room and costs about $1,500. The system has a rechargeable battery that can store electricity.
The teachers will integrate the solar suitcase into their curriculum.
“The students learn about solar electricity and how to work with electricity,” Aronson said.
The students will learn not only how to build a solar system, but also how to hook one up, what can plug into it, how much light it will produce and the effect of weather, said Nicole Liebelt of Pacific Gas and Electric, which provided the grant.
“This is a perfect pairing of STEM education with a focus on clean energy and providing tools to let students learn about renewable energy, as well as make a lasting impact on their community and overseas,” Liebelt said.
The students also learn about energy poverty, Stachel said. More than 1 billion people worldwide do not have access to electricity.
“They learn what it is like for students to be in a library or school that, when the sun goes down, you can’t do homework easily,” Stachel said.
Students will be encouraged to make videos showing what they have learned and their commitment to sustainability, Liebelt said. Based on the videos, a small group of students will be chosen to go to Kenya with Free the Children to present solar systems to schools, libraries and community centers.
The We Share Solar Suitcase is modeled after the We Care Solar Suitcase, designed for medical facilities.
The nonprofit We Care Solar created the more sophisticated solar power system after Stachel was researching high maternal death rates in Nigeria as a graduate student at UC Berkeley.
In 2008, the obstetrician-gynecologist visited a hospital that had electricity only about 12 hours a day. That meant it could not store blood, perform emergency surgeries or use lifesaving equipment, she said.
Aronson designed four solar electric systems for the hospital, targeting the labor room, maternity ward and operating theater and powering a blood bank refrigerator. In the first year the hospital used the system, the number of deaths from pregnancy complications dropped about 70 percent, Stachel said.
As word spread, nearby clinics started asking for solar electricity as well. Aronson and Stachel needed something that was portable and easier to scale. The Solar Suitcase was designed to meet that need.
Many of the first We Care Solar Suitcases were assembled by teachers and students under Aronson’s guidance. But the company received funding to manufacture the solar systems.
“A lot of teachers really wanted to continue making Solar Suitcases,” Stachel said.
The Berkeley nonprofit agency created a kit that lets youth assemble the nonmedical We Share Solar Suitcase to provide needed lighting at orphanages and schools.
After the students from the 19 schools build the solar systems, they will be taught how to do quality control, he said. They also will write letters to the students who will be receiving the Solar Suitcases.
“Creating something that is useful gives students a deep sense of purpose,” Stachel said.
Contact Rebecca Parr at 510-293-2473 or follow her at Twitter.com/rdparr1.James K Nelson James is the editor of React Armory, and has been creating things with JavaScript for over 15 years. Read more by JamesFollow @ james_k_nelson on Twitter
There is nothing inherently wrong with having large components in a React app. In fact, for stateful components, it is absolutely expected that they’ll have a bit of size.
Fat components happen
The thing about state is that it generally doesn’t decompose very well. If there are multiple actions that act on a single piece of state, they’ll all need to be placed in the same component. The more ways that the state can change, the larger the component gets. And if a component has actions that affect multiple types of state, the component will become massive. This is unavoidable.
But even if large components are inevitable, they’re still horrible to work with. And that’s why you’ll want to factor out smaller components where possible, following the principle of separation of concerns.
Of course, this is easier said than done.
Finding the lines that separate concerns is more art than science. But there are a few common patterns you can follow…
4 Types of Components
In my experience, there are four types of components that you can factor out from larger components.
View components
For more information on view components (which some people call presentational components), read Dan Abramov’s classic, Presentational and Container Components.
View components are the simplest type of component. All they do is display information and emit user input via callbacks. They:
Distribute their props to child elements.
Have callbacks that forward data from child elements to parent components.
Are often function components, but may be classes if they need to bind callbacks for performance.
Generally do not use lifecycle methods, except for performance optimization.
Do not directly store state, with the exception of UI-centric state like animation state.
Do not use refs or interact with the DOM directly (as the DOM is state).
Do not modify the environment; they should never directly dispatch actions to a redux store, call an API, etc.
Do not use React context.
Some signs that you can factor out a presentation component from a larger component include:
Your component has DOM markup or styles.
There are repeated sections like list items.
Something in your component “looks” like a box or a section.
A section of JSX only relies on a single object for its input data.
You have a large presentation component with distinct sections.
Some examples of presentation components that can be factored out of larger components:
Components that perform layout for a number of child elements.
Cards and list items can be factored out of lists.
Groups of fields can be factored out of forms (with all updates combined into a single onChange callback).
callback). Markup can be factored out of controls.
Control components
Control components are components that store state related to partial input, i.e. state that keeps track of actions the user has taken, which haven’t yet resulted in a valid value that can be emitted via an onChange callback. They are similar to presentation components, but:
Can store state (when it is related to partial input).
Can use refs and interact with the DOM.
Can use lifecycle methods.
Often don’t have any styles or DOM markup.
Some signs that you can factor out a control component from a larger component include:
You’re storing partial input in state.
Your component interacts with the DOM through refs.
Parts of your component look like native controls – buttons, fields, etc.
Some examples of control components include:
Date pickers
Typeaheads
Switches
You’ll often find that you have a number of controls with the same behavior, but different presentation. In these cases, it makes sense to factor out the presentation into View components, which are passed in via a theme or view prop.
You can see a real-world example of connector functions in the react-dnd library.
When factoring presentation components out of controls, you may find that passing individual ref functions and callbacks to the presentation component via props feels a little wrong. In this case, it may help to pass connector function instead, which clones refs and callbacks onto a passed in element. For example:
class MyControl extends React. Component { connectControl = ( element ) = > { return React. cloneElement ( element, { ref : this. receiveRef, onClick : this. handleClick, } ) } render ( ) { return React. createElement ( this. props. view, { connectControl : this. connectControl, } ) } handleClick = ( e ) = > { } receiveRef =
|
has spent the last 15 years researching the subject, and he says the ill-fated siege was a top-secret mission to crack a Nazi code.
“At the heart of the operation was an ultra-secret pinch operation designed to capture anything and everything to do with what was called the four-rotor German Naval Enigma machine,” O’Keefe told CTV News.
The encryption machine belonging to the Nazis was used to protect communications, making it a critical tool that the Allied Forces hoped to seize.
The plan was for the technology to be extracted by a small British commando unit. Commander Ian Fleming -- the future author of the James Bond books -- was waiting offshore for the captured machine.
O’Keefe has been credited as the first historian to make the connection between Fleming and the sought-after machine.
Despite the defeat, historians say the Dieppe Raid was important for the military because it laid the groundwork for the D-Day invasion in Normandy in June 1944.
With a report from CTV’s Daniele Hamamdjian in Dieppe, FranceBountiful, Utah (CNN) -- It was two weeks after D-Day, a few miles from the bloody shores of Omaha Beach. An airstrip had been carved out of the Normandy countryside, costing the lives of 28 Army engineers at the hands of German snipers.
A lone sniper still remained in the nighttime distance.
Despite the risk, Capt. Jack Tueller felt compelled to play his trumpet.
That afternoon, his P-47 fighter group had caught up with a retreating German Panzer division. As the U.S. Thunderbolts descended on their targets, they saw French women and children on top of the tanks. After an initial fly-by, the order was given to attack anyway.
"We were told those human shields were expendable," Tueller said.
Back at the airstrip, Tueller took out his trumpet. He'd used it on many a starlit night to entertain the men of the 508th Squadron 404th Fighter Group.
"I was told, 'Captain, don't play tonight; your trumpet makes the most glorious sound,' but I was stressed," he said. He was so troubled that he was willing to take a chance the sniper wouldn't fire.
"I thought to myself, that German sniper is as lonely and scared as I am. How can I stop him from firing? So I played that German's love song, 'Lilly Marlene,' made famous in the late '30s by Marlene Dietrich, the famous German actress. And I wailed that trumpet over those apple orchards of Normandy, and he didn't fire."
The next morning, the military police came up to Tueller and told him they had a German prisoner on the beach who kept asking, "Who played that trumpet last night?"
"I grabbed my trumpet and went down to the beach. There was a 19-year-old German, scared and lonesome. He was dressed like a French peasant to cloak his role as a sniper. And, crying, he said, 'I couldn't fire because I thought of my fiancé. I thought of my mother and father,' and he says, 'My role is finished.'
"He stuck out his hand, and I shook the hand of the enemy," Tueller said. "[But] he was no enemy, because music had soothed the savage beast."
"Boy, you have strong lips"
Tueller had learned to play the trumpet as a child growing up in Wyoming. His mother, a nurse, died at 29, and his father, a bartender and alcoholic, left the next day -- leaving Jack and his brother, Bob, orphans.
They left their home in Superior to live with an aunt in nearby Evanston. She gave Jack his first trumpet, and he quickly discovered he had a musical ear.
"In 1939, I was playing in Yellowstone Park in a dance band of 22 musicians at Lake Hotel. The famous trumpet player Louis Armstrong came up to the band during intermission and said, 'You sound pretty good for white cats,' " Tueller recalled.
He asked Armstrong what advice he would give a young trumpet player. "He said, 'Always play the melody, man. Look at them, see their age group, play their love songs, and you'll carry all the money to the bank.' "
Tueller enrolled at Brigham Young University, where he met his future wife and fellow trumpeter, Marjorie.
"This beautiful brown-haired gal with luscious lips said, 'Did you play the trumpet solo at the freshman assembly?' And I said, 'Yes, ma'am, I did.' She said, 'Boy, you have strong lips.' Being a sophomore, I said, 'Would you like to try me?' She nodded, and I went over and kissed her."
In 1941, as war clouds gathered, Jack enlisted in the Army and was sent to fighter school because he was an "individualist," he said.
"I wanted to fly it, fire it, navigate it, shoot the guns."
He once flew his plane through a dirigible hangar at Moffitt Field in Sunnyvale, California. The commandant was fuming mad.
"He stood me in a brace, then he kind of smiled and says, 'We don't want to quell spirit like that... but don't do it again!'"
When D-Day arrived on June 6, 1944, Tueller was in the air, flying five missions.
"I witnessed the invasion from a ringside seat. We saw 2 million men, 10,000 ships. And we just shot at everything," he said. "We tried to help those men trying to get off the landing craft at high tide, where a lot of them were drowned.
"I remember feeling pride and sadness as I saw the bodies of 4,000 killed in two hours."
Tueller credits common sense and his first flight instructor, a crop duster, with his survival that day -- and the rest of the war.
"I learned to love low-level flying. I never came off enemy targets high. I'd lay it down a row of trees 400 knots, a foot off the ground, so all the flak would go over my head. They'd wonder where I'd gone."
Trumpet in the cockpit
Tueller managed to fly 140 missions without taking a single bullet hole to his airplane -- the name of his infant daughter, Rosanne, painted on the side.
"Everyone wanted to fly it; they thought it let a charmed life."
And on each mission, Tueller carried his trumpet in the cockpit.
"I took it in a little canvas bag attached to my parachute. I figured if I ever got shot down, it would go with me, and if I survived and got put into a prisoner of war camp, I could get an extra bar of soap from the guard."
His tour of duty ended just before his fighter group left for Belgium and the Battle of the Bulge. Three months later, his plane was shot down and destroyed. The pilot was killed.
Tueller went on to fight in the Korean and Vietnam wars, and served in the Pentagon during the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Cold War. He retired in 1966 as a colonel, having earned the Distinguished Flying Cross, almost two dozen air medals and two Legions of Merit, the nation's highest peacetime award.
Now 89, Tueller takes care of Marjorie, his wife of 68 years, who has Alzheimer's disease.
As Veterans Day approaches, he has a word of advice to veterans: "When you become a veteran, it's my opinion that you should do everything to make people realize the wonderful life that you really have."
He still has his trumpet of 70 years and still performs at schools, family get-togethers and church functions. He has a stereo system installed in the back of his family van, where he inserts a CD of big band music and begins playing the melodies of a bygone era.
"I was an unruly child," he said. "Music tamed me.... My ambition as the last action on my part as a veteran is to hit high C and fall right into the grave. What a way to go!"While hurricanes are a constant source of worry for residents of the southeastern United States, new research suggests that they have a major upside -- counteracting global warming.
Previous research from Duke environmental engineer Ana Barros demonstrated that the regular landfall of tropical cyclones is vital to the region's water supply and can help mitigate droughts.
Now, a new study from Barros reveals that the increase in forest photosynthesis and growth made possible by tropical cyclones in the southeastern United States captures hundreds of times more carbon than is released by all vehicles in the U.S. in a given year.
The study was published online on April 20, 2016, in the Journal of Geophysical Research -- Biogeosciences.
"Our results show that, while hurricanes can cause flooding and destroy city infrastructure, there are two sides to the story," said Barros, the James L. Meriam Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Duke University. "The other side is that hurricanes recharge the aquifers and have an enormous impact on photosynthesis and taking up carbon from the atmosphere."
In the study, Lauren Lowman, a doctoral student in Barros's laboratory, used a hydrological computer model to simulate the ecological impacts of tropical cyclones from 2004-2007. The earlier years of that time period had a high number of tropical cyclone landfall events, while the latter years experienced relatively few.
By comparing those disparate years to simulations of a year without tropical cyclone events, Lowman was able to calculate the effect tropical cyclones have on the rates of photosynthesis and carbon uptake in forests of the southeastern United States.
"It's easy to make general statements about how much of an impact something like additional rainfall can have on the environment," said Lowman. "But we really wanted to quantify the amount of carbon uptake that you can relate to tropical cyclones."
According to Barros and Lowman, it is difficult to predict what effects climate change will have on the region's future. Even if the number of tropical cyclones that form in the Atlantic increases, that doesn't guarantee that the number making landfall will also rise. And long-term forecasts for the region's temperature and rainfall currently show less change than normal year-to-year variability.
But no matter what the future brings, one thing is clear -- the regularity and number of tropical cyclones making landfall will continue to be vital.
"There are a lot of regional effects competing with large worldwide changes that make it very hard to predict what climate change will bring to the southeastern United States," said Barros. "If droughts do become worse and we don't have these regular tropical cyclones, the impact will be very negative. And regardless of climate change, our results are yet one more very good reason to protect these vast forests."
This research was funded in part by the National Science Foundation Coupled Human and Natural Systems Program (CNH-1313799) and an earlier grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NA08OAR4310701).It is a question that keeps some parents awake at night. Should children be allowed to take mobile phones to school? Now economists claim to have an answer. For parents who want to boost their children’s academic prospects, it is no.
The effect of banning mobile phones from school premises adds up to the equivalent of an extra week’s schooling over a pupil’s academic year, according to research by Louis-Philippe Beland and Richard Murphy, published by the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics.
“Ill Communication: The Impact of Mobile Phones on Student Performance” found that after schools banned mobile phones, the test scores of students aged 16 improved by 6.4%. The economists reckon that this is the “equivalent of adding five days to the school year”.
The findings will feed into the ongoing debate about children’s access to mobile phones. In the UK, more than 90% of teenagers own a mobile phone; in the US, just under three quarters have one. The prevalence of the devices poses problems for head teachers, whose attitude towards the technology has hardened as it has become ubiquitous.
In a survey conducted in 2001, no school banned mobiles. By 2007, this had risen to 50%, and by 2012 some 98% of schools either did not allow phones on school premises or required them to be handed in at the beginning of the day.
However, some schools are starting to allow limited use of the devices. New York mayor Bill de Blasio has lifted a 10-year ban on phones on school premises, with the city’s chancellor of schools stating that it would reduce inequality.
This view is misguided, according to Beland and Murphy, who found that the ban produced improvements in test scores among students, with the lowest-achieving students gaining twice as much as average students. The ban had a greater positive impact on students with special education needs and those eligible for free school meals, while having no discernible effect on high achievers.
“We found that not only did student achievement improve, but also that low-achieving and low-income students gained the most. We found the impact of banning phones for these students was equivalent to an additional hour a week in school, or to increasing the school year by five days.
“Therefore, de Blasio’s lifting of the ban on mobile phones with a stated intention of reducing inequalities may in fact lead to the opposite. Allowing phones into schools will harm the lowest-achieving and low-income students the most.”
The research was carried out at Birmingham, London, Leicester and Manchester schools before and after bans were introduced. It factored in characteristics such as gender, eligibility for free school meals, special educational needs status and prior educational attainment. “Technological advancements are commonly viewed as increasing productivity,” the economists write. “Modern technology is used in the classroom to engage students and improve performance. There are, however, potential drawbacks as well, as they could lead to distractions.”He’s Back!… Anti-American Kneeler Colin Kaepernick Gets Football Offer (Details)
Guest post by John S. Roberts at Right Observer:
Ugh. Yes, it’s true. Colin Kapernick has received a job offer to play quarterback once again. Here are the details…
From Downtrend:
GQ’s “Citizen of the Year” and the winner of the Sports Illustrated “Muhammed Ali Legacy Award” (which he was handed by cop-hating diva Beyoncé) may have just scored the biggest honor of all. A real, live offer to play quarterback for a football team AND to be handed the starter’s job.
More per Richmond:
Rapper Jim Jones, best known for his single “We Fly High,” has purchased a stake in the Richmond Roughriders indoor football team. At a news conference at the Richmond Coliseum on Thursday, Jones invited former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick to join the Roughriders team for its coming season. Kaepernick was the first to kneel during the playing of the national anthem to protest police brutality. He has not yet been signed by an NFL team in the 2017 season. “He can come here and keep his skills sharp, set some records,” said Jones. “Help put this team on the map.” Jones got his first exposure to the Roughriders and indoor football last year, when he performed at halftime as the team won the Arena Pro Football League title at the Richmond Coliseum.
More from Undefeated, who proclaim Kaepernick an ‘American hero’…
Why Kaepernick? Why now? The story of his emergence as a symbol of protest is a well-timed snapshot of a world in which reasoned debate has dissolved into a screeching band saw of argument and discord. We’re constantly told we live in polarizing times, but it’s not the poles that are in dispute. We need a word that describes the complete absence of middle ground. As soon as Kaepernick’s intentions were revealed — nobody noticed until he had sat through at least two preseason anthems — an entire ideology was ascribed to him. He was anti-American, anti-military, and in the most pustular of the internet’s lower intestines, it was suggested he was radicalized by a Muslim girlfriend. The issue, it seems, was never the issue; it was his suitability to be the one addressing it. He grew up as an adopted, biracial son of a wealthy white family. He had every advantage. He went from being a Super Bowl quarterback to a $12 million backup, and that word — backup — was fired with malice, meant to sting, as if the worth of a message can be gauged by playing time.
Why?
Will Kaepernick bring people to the stadium? If so, is it cool to have an anti-American “leader” at the helm of a franchise?
The answer should be NO!After the Jungle refugee camp in Calais closed last year, 750 “vulnerable minors” were granted sanctuary in the UK as part of a deal struck with France. Concern was raised at the time that a number of them appeared to be over 18. Tony Smith, former director-general of the UK Border Force, said: “I am not confident all the vulnerable minors brought over from Calais were children. In fact, I am confident some of them were not and were actually adult economic migrants posing as children. “Some would have sworn on their mothers’ lives they were only 16 even though they had a beard and were balding. “If they can get away with an age they will because minors are treated much more favourably than adults. If they can get away with claiming they are a nationality which is more favourable to getting asylum, like a Somali or Syrian, then why not claim that? There is a huge amount of deception in immigration.”
HUMPHREY NEMAR Dozens of adult migrants posed as children to get into Britain - fresh claims
Some would have sworn on their mothers’ lives they were only 16 even though they had a beard and were balding Tony Smith
His comments heap further embarrassment on the Home Office which was criticised at the time for failing to check that those arriving were who they claimed to be. Mr Smith said: “I have seen cases where blatantly grown adults have been treated as minors, but that’s not my decision, it’s put in the hands of an independent adjudicator.” Those claiming to be children were asked for evidence to establish their age. If there were no documents to support the claim, an assessment was carried out which included looking the individual up and down in a bid to make an informed judgment.
Migrant 'children' from 'Jungle Camp' arrive in the UK Wed, October 19, 2016 Migrant 'children' from the 'Jungle Camp' in Calais arrive in the UK to be reunited with relatives. Play slideshow 1 of 26
Officials admit they “knowingly transferred” a small number of adults for “humanitarian reasons” or who were under 18 at the time of the assessment but turned 18 before their transfer. Tory MP David Davies was vilified for suggesting that some “child” migrants looked over 18 and should be required to undergo medical checks to back up their claims. He said: “It was obvious to anyone with a grain of common sense that people who are prepared to jump into moving lorries to get to the UK would be perfectly prepared to lie about their age.
NICK EDWARDS One of the migrants brought over from France arriving at the Home Office immigration centreWho are the “just about managing” and why are they Jams? We might consider the million households identified by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) thinktank this week as in income crisis, meaning they can’t afford to pay two or more essential bills at any one time. They struggle with council tax, energy and water demands. Rent arrears were less common but hardly unknown: for many low-income tenants the very act of signing on to universal credit is a virtual guarantee of rent arrears.
Even if you manage to pay the rent, this can be at a price. The Food Standards Agency estimates that almost 4 million UK adults experience food insecurity, which means they don’t eat regularly or healthily because of a lack of money. These are “Jams” too (or perhaps more accurately, not really managing). And what about the 1.6 million people who, according to a recent National Audit Office study, disconnect their energy supply at least once a year because they can’t afford to top up prepayment meters?
The conventional government view is that this familiar juggling act performed by poorer Jams is their own fault. If only they earned more, had better money management skills, could cook, wore a second woolly jumper in winter, or held off giving birth to excessive numbers of children. Poverty, it is suggested, is a deficit of life skills caused by laziness and benefit dependency, fixable principally by work and the supposedly character-building withdrawal of social security support.
And yet the IPPR finds that two-thirds of households in income crisis have at least one adult in work; employment may help, but it doesn’t always solve a problem. One in six adults who worry the food cupboard will be empty before the next pay cheque arrives are in work. This is no surprise. According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, a record 7 million people in poverty are in working families. It found the causes transparently structural: lack of money, driven in part by the crushingly expensive and insecure rents in private housing.
So how to help? We still await a social justice green paper (known under previous management as the “Life Chances” paper), with its promised aim of addressing the root causes of poverty and disadvantage. In its continuing absence, this week we got the first of a series of initiatives designed to tackle “the problems that prevent families from getting on in life”. Its worthy, if painfully modest, aim is a £30m programme to reduce parental conflict. If you are not already underwhelmed, consider that ministers also promise an expansion of the disturbingly inadequate troubled families programme.
Consider instead what ministers are actively doing to make things harder for the Jams. Also this week (this list is not exhaustive) we see the introduction of the two-child limit to child tax credits (pitching 250,000 children into poverty, 70% from working families); the £30 a week cuts to some employment and support allowance payments (an incentive to find work, supposedly, for people who have been found unfit to work); a renewed freeze to benefit rates (making it harder for people to afford sufficient food, as Brexit-related inflation sends prices soaring); and a further local housing allowance rates freeze (making rents even more crushingly unaffordable).
“I don’t want any child to be defined by the circumstances of their birth,” the work and pensions secretary, Damian Green, declared this week, seemingly unaware that the multibillion social security cuts he is helming confer the scarring and restrictive legacy of poverty on millions of children from low-income households. What’s more, these cuts (like the slashing of universal credit work allowances, and giving away billions in tax breaks for the wealthy) are inherited practically untouched from George Osborne. It’s feeble stuff. If Theresa May is serious about rebalancing society in favour of ordinary working people, she is going a funny way about it.Family Guy used to be the animated show to watch. However, many have accused creator Seth MacFarlane of getting desperate for viewers during the past couple of seasons. The calls for Family Guy to be canceled have been going on since 2013. WhatCulture was one of the sites that criticized the show.
“But, having been running for almost a decade since its initial cancellation, is it time to call it quits for real? Has the show lost its edge and – most importantly – its humor, and does MacFarlane even care anymore?”
The article gives reasons why Family Guy should be canceled, including the much-heard criticism that the jokes stopped being original and the belief that Seth MacFarlane seems to be just phoning things in. Since 2013, the show has relied on shocking stunts that have upset even longtime Family Guy fans.
This past weekend, a trailer for the 16th season of Family Guy debuted. Needless to say, it’s quite eye catching. In the preview clip, we see Meg and Chris brutally attacking the entire school after some social justice warrior kids tried to get them taken out of the school canteen after Brian wrote an insensitive tweet. There are other Family Guy preview clips, including one of Peter looping on a roller coaster while eating his own vomit, a man pretending to be a waiter while trying to “go down” on Peter, and a clip including the late Adam West.
Needless to say, the clip inspired some mixed responses in the comments section after the YouTube preview video.
“I want it to end soon. most of the current episodes aren’t good. and future ones will be terrible, I just want it to end while it’s alright,” claimed YouTube commenter ScoffSlaphead72.
Mila Kunis plays the controversial character "Meg." [Image by Mark Davis/Getty Images]
“The show just gets more desperate each season. It’s really time to pull the plug,” said MarioLoverforu.
However, there were also some commenters who thought the clips were funny. A lot of them seemed to like that the show was really taking on SJW culture. Others thought that based on the clips, there would certainly be a Season 17 on the way as well.
The response on Twitter has been mixed as well.
#familyguy is just getting worse and worse. Season 16 looks awful. JUST STOP IT ALREADY! — Eric Boella (@ericboella) July 28, 2017
Family Guy just isn't funny anymore. The new season looks like crap. — Prince Rules (@PrinceMyBaby3) July 28, 2017
Some think creator Seth MacFarlane just doesn't care about the show anymore. [Image by Ethan Miller/Getty Images]
Meanwhile, according to Entertainment Weekly, the late Adam West will appear in five more episodes.
“Adam West may have died earlier this month, but his legacy — and tenure — as Mayor of Quahog will live on during the next season of Family Guy,” says columnist Dan Snierson, who adds that West, the Batman star of the 1960s, has played a recurring role as Mayor Adam West in Family Guy.
In the same article, Family Guy executive producer Steve Callaghan says West’s death came as a complete shock, even though the star was in his late 80s.
“But, the thing about Adam West is that every time he would come to record, he was just vital and healthy and had so much energy and happiness — no one that you would ever thing wouldn’t be with you much longer.”
Callaghan says the recording sessions with Adam West were enjoyable and went beyond work; they would always catch up on their personal lives. West was so versatile that Callaghan was able to give him a variety of lines.
Season 16 of Family Guy will premiere on Sunday, September 25. Although the show’s acclaim has decreased, one can bet that Season 16 certainly won’t be the last.
[Featured Image by Steven Senne/AP Images]So small, so fragile. Here’s another amazing photo of Metro Vancouver by Commander Chris Hadfield aboard the International Space Station. This time, it’s a night shot – and it’s definitely a rare shot for this time of year considering the dense cloud cover we usually get.
Chris Hadfield is Canada’s most decorated astronaut and is the first Canadian commander of the International Space Station. These photos were taken early on Easter Sunday morning and posted through his twitter account:
Tonight’s Finale: Vancouver, twinkling brightly early on Easter Sunday morning. twitter.com/Cmdr_Hadfield/… — Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) April 5, 2013
A bonus night photo of Victoria by Commander Hadfield:
Victoria, capital of BC, finely-veined in the early Easter Sunday morning. twitter.com/Cmdr_Hadfield/… — Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) April 5, 2013
Written by Kenneth Chan, the Deputy Editor at Vancity Buzz. Follow Kenneth on Twitter at @kjmagine.
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DH Vancouver Staff Daily Hive is the evolution of Vancity Buzz, established in Vancouver in 2008. In 2016, the publication rebranded and opened newsrooms in Calgary, Toronto, and Montreal. Send story tips to @DailyHiveVan @DailyHiveVancouver Daily Hive is the evolution of Vancity Buzz, established in Vancouver in 2008. In 2016, the publication rebranded and opened newsrooms in Calgary, Toronto, and Montreal. Send story tips to [email protected]
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.Former NAACP chairman Ben Jealous announces his campaign for governor of Maryland on May 31. (Brian Witte/AP)
The Maryland arm of Our Revolution, a national progressive group led by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), wants to endorse former board member Ben Jealous in the 2018 Maryland governor’s race without interviewing any of the other declared or likely candidates.
Leaders of Our Revolution Maryland say they asked all the candidates to participate in a questionnaire and forum, but were turned down by everyone except Jealous and are moving forward with their endorsement process.
Chairman Bob Muehlenkamp sent an email to Our Revolution supporters Friday that said chapter leaders unanimously want to support Jealous in his quest to defeat several other Democrats and challenge popular incumbent Gov. Larry Hogan (R) — a contest that should be a key test of the strength of the backlash against President Trump in Maryland.
The Maryland group would also work to get Sanders’s national organization to endorse the Baltimore civil rights leader, the email said.
“We will use this gubernatorial election to continue to build the independent grassroots political movement Bernie Sanders is leading so we can elect progressive candidates up and down the ballot,” Muehlenkamp wrote. “This will also be the next step in Our Revolution Maryland nominating Ben for the endorsement of Our Revolution National, which will make available massive organizing power and other resources.”
Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders speak in Boston at an Our Revolution rally in May. Maryland gubernatorial candidate Ben Jealous served on the board of the organization before launching his candidacy, and Maryland leaders of the group want to endorse him. (Zach D Roberts/Sipa USA via AP)
Aides to some of Jealous’s rivals for the nomination said they were not happy with Our Revolution’s actions, with at least one comparing the endorsement process to the way the Democratic National Committee coalesced around Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential bid, without regard for Sanders’s surging popularity.
“A lot of Bernie Sanders’ supporters — and I was a Bernie Sanders supporter — were unhappy with the lack of transparency in the DNC process,” said Walter Ludwig, a spokesman for the gubernatorial campaign of state Sen. Richard S. Madaleno Jr. (D-Montgomery), who like Jealous is a progressive hoping to draw support from liberal Democrats. “This is no more transparent.”
Aides to several other declared or likely candidates declined to comment on the record, to avoid a potential rift with Jealous’s supporters. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, however, they said they found it strange that Our Revolution wanted to endorse so early in the process, before all the expected candidates had launched their campaigns.
They also questioned why the group sent questionnaires to multiple hopefuls, even though its own former board member was running. Kevin Harris, a spokesman for Jealous, said Jealous resigned from the state and national boards of Our Revolution before starting his gubernatorial campaign.
A senior aide to one rival said Our Revolution did not respond when his team reached out to the group in June to get a better sense of how its forum and endorsement process would work. The campaign ultimately decided that its candidate should not participate in the forum, the aide said.
Andrew Mallinoff, campaign manager for Prince George’s County Executive Rushern L. Baker III, said the campaign requested more time to fill out the lengthy questionnaire and asked for the forum to be held later in the summer. He said he does not recall getting a response from Our Revolution. Baker announced his candidacy June 21, three days before the Our Revolution forum.
Muehlenkamp said his group sent an email to candidates on May 19, and its members followed up with all of those who did not respond.
“The only person who filled out the questionnaire and said he would attend the forum was Ben Jealous,” Muehlenkamp said.
He said that Jealous is “obviously better known by more of our active supporters... but many of our people know the other candidates too” and wanted to provide each candidate an opportunity to share his agenda.
Harris said Jealous has not received an official endorsement and “it’s up to [Our Revolution] to run the process how they see fit.”
Josh Hicks contributed to this report.The NFL has denied a report that the New York Giants filed a complaint regarding the use of deflated footballs by the Pittsburgh Steelers during last week's game between the teams.
FOX's Jay Glazer reported Sunday that the Giants tested two of the Steelers' balls during the game and found them to be under weight. According to Glazer, the Giants submitted the footballs to the NFL for additional testing and are awaiting a ruling.
The NFL says that's not the case.
"The officiating game ball procedures were followed and there were no chain of command issues. All footballs were in compliance and no formal complaint was filed by the Giants with our office," the NFL said in a statement, according to USA TODAY Sports' Tom Pelissero.
This had the appearance of "Deflategate: Part 2" when the news first broke, but now it appears that expectation may have been vastly overblown.A class action lawsuit against a Fairview berry processor was filed Wednesday afternoon in Portland, marking the latest litigation against Townsend Farms in connection with a hepatitis A outbreak.
The complaint was filed in Multnomah County Circuit Court on behalf of Leslie M. Straka, a woman in Eugene. It says she consumed Townsend Farms Organic Antioxidant Blend several times in May and June before learning about the outbreak.
Straka received a hepatitis A vaccine on June 5 to prevent infection and suffered emotional distress over worries that she might get sick, the complaint says. The vaccine, if given within two weeks of exposure, prevents the virus from taking hold.
More
The lawsuit seeks to represent everyone else in Oregon like Straka who paid for medical care but did not get sick. The suit was filed by Portland attorney David Sugerman, who's working with Bill Marler, a Seattle food safety litigator. His law firm, Marler Clark, has filed complaints against Townsend Farms in Arizona and California, on behalf of people who got sick. A Houston firm has filed a similar suit in California as well. And Marler Clark is filing class action complaints in Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah and Washington.
The outbreak grew to 99 people on Wednesday, according to the
. So far, no cases have been identified in Oregon. But the outbreak has grown daily it
nearly two weeks ago.
Costco, which sold nearly 333,000 packages of Townsend Farms Organic Antioxidant Blend across the country, pulled the item off its shelves and notified customers. It also took the unusual step nearly a week ago of offering free hepatitis A vaccine to its customers who consumed the mix within 14 days.
The Townsend Farms mix was also sold by Harris Teeter stores on the East Coast under its own label but so far only patients who bought the product at Costco got sick, according to the CDC.
The lawsuit accuses Townsend Farms of negligence and seeks the creation of a fund to pay for medical costs for Straka and others who received vaccinations or immune globulin shots. That fund would also reimburse Costco for its expenses, pay health insurers and state and federal governments for the cost of the investigation.
Health officials suspect the outbreak was caused by pomegranate seeds from Turkey. The product also included cherries from Washington state and berries from Chile and Argentina.
-- Lynne TerryIntroducing the ‘Spellbook of Modern Web Dev’
Travis van der Font Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jun 14, 2017
Dexter Yang has created a Github documentation project called, Spellbook of Modern Web Dev, organized as an online book. It is quite massive and lots of resourceful links for learning modern JavaScript web development.
Yang labels it as “A Big Picture, Thesaurus, and Taxonomy of Modern JavaScript Web Development” which is exactly what it is. It’s a collection of most commonly used links and learning resources than Yang sents to every new web developer on his full-stack web development team
The Spellbook of Modern Web Dev currently contains 2000+ links to projects, tools, plugins, services, articles, books, sites, and more. A nice collection worth checking out and bookmarking nonetheless.
Thank you for your curating, Yang!
#HAPPYCODINGThe Orlando Magic made news Thursday morning by officially announcing that they have agreed to a contract extension with general manager Rob Hennigan. The extension keeps Hennigan in Orlando through the 2017-18 season as the Magic's head man. Per team policy, no terms of the deal were announced.
The extension comes as no surprise, as it was reported near the end of March that the team was trying to come to terms to extend the 33-year-old general manager.
Coming to terms with Hennigan now makes the most sense for the Magic. With a head coaching search, and an ever so important offseason ahead of them, they couldn't allow their general manager to be in a "lame duck" situation, with his previous contract set to run out at the conclusion of next season.
While the results on the floor may not be what Hennigan and co. have wanted --most notably this past season when they expected to take a step forward but didn't-- giving Hennigan time to let his plan run it's course is a must.
Magic CEO Alex Martins had this to say regarding Hennigan."Under the leadership of Rob, we feel that we are positioning ourselves to be able to contend in a long-term, sustainable fashion. We are proud of the work that Rob and our basketball operations department has done to this point and we look forward to taking the next steps in the process."Getty Images
The Ravens reportedly wanted to trade up to the fourth pick in the draft on Thursday night so they could draft cornerback Jalen Ramsey, but their attempt was unsuccessful and Ramsey wound up being drafted fifth by the Jaguars.
There’s not much need to explain why Baltimore would be interested in Ramsey, who is the top defensive back in the draft and some feel he’s the best overall player in the class. It likely didn’t hurt Baltimore’s interest that their top current cornerback is having surgery on his foot.
Ravens cornerback Jimmy Smith missed eight games in the 2014 season because of a Lisfranc injury that required him to have screws surgically installed in his foot. Jeff Zrebiec of the Baltimore Sun reports that Smith, who didn’t look all the way back to form in 2015 while starting every game, will be having another procedure to get the screws removed and that he’s
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character in RoboCop (1987).
Attended the funeral of Ronald Reagan in 2004, whom he considered a great hero.
Honored by the Congressional Award in Washington, DC on June 25, 2002 with the Horizon Award. The Horizon Award is a special recognition from the Joint Leadership of the United States Congress and the Congressional Award Board of Directors. The Horizon Award is presented to individuals from the private sectors who have contributed to expanding opportunities for all Americans through their own personal contributions, and who have set exceptional examples for young people through their successes in life.
Was good friends with WWE Hall of Famer André the Giant
Was seriously considered for the role of "Dr. Manhattan/Jon Osterman" in one of the many failed attempts at adapting Alan Moore's "Watchmen" into film. Ultimately, director Zack Snyder cast Billy Crudup for the 2009 adaptation.
Was considered for the role of Harry Stamper in Armageddon (1998).
Was considered for the role of President James Mitchell in Air Force One (1997).
Before he became a household name, Schwarzenegger appeared with bodybuilding buddies Franco Columbu and Frank Zane on the sleeve of Grand Funk Railroad's 1974 album "All the Girls in the World Beware!!!" Band member faces were cleverly superimposed on their muscle-bound bodies.
Appeared on the cover of GQ magazine three times: July '86, May '90 and June '93.
Trophies won as athlete: 1965 Mr. Europe Jr.. Held in Germany. 1966 Best Builed Man of Europe/Mr. Europe/International Powerlifting-Championship/. All 3 events held in Germany. 1967 NABBA Mr. Universe Amateurs. Held in London. 1968 NABBA Mr. Universe Proffesional. Held in London. 1968 National Championship Weightlifting. Held in Germany. 1968 IFBB Mr. International. Held in Mexico. 1969 IFBB Mr. Universe Amateurs. Held in New York. 1969/1970 NABBA Mr. Universe Proffesional. Both times held in London. 1970 Mr. World. Held in Columbus, Ohio. 1970-1975 5 times in a row IFBB Mr. Olympia. Held in New York 1970/1973/1974, Paris 1971, Essen 1972, Pretoria 1975. 1980 For the 6th time IFBB Mr. Olympia. Held in Sydney, Australia.
In his body building days, he once bench pressed as much as 450 pounds.
While in office as governor, a Burger King promotion poster for the triple whopper stated "it's so big and beefy it just might run for governor".
Parents feared he was gay when he was a teenager because he worshipped bodybuilders. His mother Aurelia phoned a doctor because she thought her son was 'turning south' due to all the pictures of oiled up males on his bedroom walls.
In 1968 Joe Weider brought Schwarzenegger to Los Angeles and gave him $100 a week to write articles for his magazines that endorsed Weider products. Weider died at age 93 in March 2013.
Inducted into the National Fitness Hall of Fame in 2005 (inaugural class).
Is now the Republican Governor-elect of California [October 2003]
(around Christmas) Broke his leg when skiing with his family in Sun Valley, Idaho, USA. [December 2006]
Refused to take the salary for Governor of California. Uses private jet at his own expense. [December 2003]
Copenhagen, Denmark: Giving out the Sustainia Award, which recognizes outstanding performance within the area of sustainability. Also attended a book signing for his new autobiography. [October 2012]
Sworn in as Governor of California. [November 2003]
Reelected as Governor of California [November 2006]
Running for Governor of California on the Republican ticket. [August 2003]
Release of the book, "Fantastic: The Life of Arnold Schwarzenegger" by Laurence Leamer. [2006]
First introduced to wife-to-be Maria Shriver by NBC's Tom Brokaw at a charity tennis tournament in 1977.
As of the release of The Last Stand (2013), he will have a total on-screen kill count of 509.
WWE Hall of Famer.
Personal favorite of his own films is Kindergarten Cop (1990).
Friend and Predator (1987) co-star Jesse Ventura each went on to become, coincidentally, the 38th Governors of California and Minnesota.
It was revealed in 2011 that he fathered an illegitimate son with the Schwarzenegger/Shriver family's housekeeper Mildred Patricia Baena. Schwarzenegger didn't know he fathered Baena's child until the child was a toddler and looked more and more like him. Joseph Baena was born only five days after Maria Shriver gave birth to her fourth child by Schwarzenegger, Christopher, therefore the children basically grew up alongside each other in the same home. Schwarzenegger revealed his illegitimate child to his wife during a marriage counseling sessions. The issue led to the couple's separation but as of 2016 they have yet to divorce.
Was considered to play Doctor Octopus in James Cameron's canceled Spider-Man movie.
(July 30, 2011) In his honor, the "Arnold Schwarzenegger's Birth House Museum" was officially opened in his hometown of Thal (Austria) in the actual house that had been home to him and his family. Some of the mementos on display include his childhood bed, motorcycle, replica of the desk he used as Governor of California, etc.
Induced into the International Sports Hall of Fame in 2012 (inaugural class).
Was mentioned in the song "Jump Around" by House of Pain
In 1989, when longtime family friends Clint Eastwood and Sondra Locke broke up and Locke sued Eastwood for fraud, Arnold and Maria refused Locke's request to take her side publicly.
Has worked with the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an anti-hate organization for decades. [August 2017]
Donated $100,000 to an anti-hate charity after violent clashes between white supremacists and anti-racism groups in Charlottesville, Virginia. [August 2017]
During filming of Total Recall (1990), he noticed that Michael Ironside was constantly on the phone between takes. When he broached the subject with Ironside, he was told the he was phoning his sister and that she was currently suffering from cancer. Arnold immediately brought Michael to his trailer and they had an hour-long 3-way conversation with Ironside's sister about what exercises she should do and what kinds of foods she should be eating. Ironside has never forgotten Schwarzenegger's kindness and neither has his sister.
An animatronic of his head attached to caterpillar tracks was used in a PPI awareness advert.
Quit Celebrity Apprentice after one season.
He is a vegan.
Personal Quotes (552)
I was always interested in proportion and perfection. When I was 15 I took off my clothes and looked in the mirror. When I stared at myself naked, I realized that to be perfectly proportioned I would need 20-inch arms to match the rest of me.
[Interview in "Starlog" magazine in 1991, explaining his reluctance to do sequels to most of his successful films from the '80s] There's so little time to do all the things I want to do that I can't see any reason to get bogged down in sequels.
Everything I have ever done in my life has always stayed. I've just added to it... but I will not change. Because when you are successful and you change, you are an idiot.
I know that if you leave dishes in the sink, they get sticky and hard to wash the next day.
I would rather be Governor of California than own Austria.
I love the Hong Kong style of action movies, but that only looks good for small guys. The reason why the whole style was developed over there was because those guys were very puny guys - they're not powerful-looking guys, they're also not powerful guys. There's no weightlifting champion coming out of Hong Kong - maybe in the bantam division or the lightweight division or something like that, but normally you don't have really strong men coming out of there... they had to learn a technique that small people can do that are as effective as the big guy's strength. So that's where the martial arts came from.
In the beginning I was selfish. It was all about, "How do I build Arnold? How can I win the most Mr. Universe and Mr. Olympic contests? How can I get into the movies and get into business?" I was thinking about myself... As I've grown up, got older, maybe wiser, I think your life is judged not by how much you have taken but by how much you give back.
[during his campaign for California governor, about his history of "misbehavior"] Where I did make mistakes, or maybe go overboard sometimes... I regret that. This is a different Arnold.
[on his fight scenes with the female T-X in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)] How many times do you get away with this - to take a woman, grab her upside down and bury her face in a toilet bowl? The thing is you can do it, because, in the end, I didn't do it to a woman - she's a machine. We could get away with it without being crucified by who knows what group.
[on his decision to run for governor of California] It was the most difficult decision in my life - except the one in 1978 when I decided to get a bikini wax.
[after being pelted with an egg at a political rally] This guy owes me bacon now... you can't have egg without bacon.
[responding to criticism during a televised debate] I just realized I have the perfect part for you in "Terminator 4."
[victory speech after having won election as Governor of California] I will not fail, I will not disappoint you, I will not let you down.
The worst I can be is the same as everybody else. I hate that.
There's a lot of people who want me to get out of acting and want me to run for governor. I think it's mostly movie critics.
You have to remember something: Everybody pities the weak; jealousy you have to earn.
I took more abuse in Predator (1987) than I did in Conan the Barbarian (1982). I fell down that waterfall [40 feet] and swam in this ice-cold water for days and for weeks was covered in mud. It was freezing in the Mexican jungle. They had these heat lamps on all the time, but they were no good. If you stayed in front of the lamps, the mud dried. Then, you had to take it off and put new mud on again. It was a no-win situation. The location was tough. Never on flat ground. Always on a hill. We stood all day long on a hill, one leg down, one leg up. It was terrible.
[referring to Democrats at a political rally in Ontario, California, in 2004] If they don't have the guts to come up here in front of you and say, "I don't want to represent you, I want to represent those special interests, the unions, the trial lawyers"... if they don't have the guts, I call them girlie men.
[at the 2004 Republican National Convention] Speaking of acting, one of my movies was called True Lies (1994). It's what the Democrats should have called their convention.
President [ George Bush ] knows you can't reason with people that are blinded by hate. But let me tell you something: Their hate is no match for our decency, their hate is no match for the leadership and the resolve of George Bush.
[Talking about his Conan the Barbarian (1982) director]: John Milius used to call himself the dog trainer. Guess who were the dogs?
[From an interview about his reaction to reading the original The Terminator (1984) screenplay] I have read a lot of action adventure scripts, and this definitely was one of the best. I knew that I wanted to play the part of the Terminator as soon as I started reading.
[About being taken seriously] I don't care. The important thing to me is that I'm doing work that people enjoy out there, that the movie makes good money, that the studio makes the money back, and that I'm having a great time at what I'm doing. I don't even consider myself serious. So how do I expect people to take me serious? I think this whole Hollywood thing has to be taken much looser... it's just entertainment.
"There were various stepping-stones in my career. One of them was Conan the Barbarian (1982), because it was the first time I did a film with that kind of budget and I had the title role. The next big stepping-stone was The Terminator (1984). With "The Terminator", I think people became aware of the fact that I didn't really have to take my shirt off or run around and expose my muscles in order to sell tickets. After I did "The Terminator" and we had seen it be more successful than the Conan films, people then sent me a variety of different kinds of scripts - all in the action-adventure genre, but they were not muscle movies or Viking movies or pirate movies or anything like that.
[Talking about playing the Terminator] I had to act like a cyborg, which meant I couldn't show any kind of human fear or reaction to the fire, explosions, or gunfire that was going off around me. That can be difficult when you're walking through a door with its frame on fire, trying to reload a gun, and at the same time thinking in the back of your mind that people have accidents doing these kinds of stunts and that it might be my turn.
[About more sequels to The Terminator (1984)] I don't necessarily want to leave the magic of the Terminator movies behind, and who says we have to? According to what we know about the future, there were hundreds of Terminators built. The story of the Terminator could go on forever.
[From an interview expressing concern over making Conan the Destroyer (1984) less brutal than its predecessor, Conan the Barbarian (1982)] I think it's a mistake. I know Sylvester Stallone made an extra $20 million because he got a PG rating for Rocky III (1982), but it's a matter of how much you want to stay within the character's reality. Can you slaughter people and never see blood? Is it possible? You must have battles. That's part of life, war, and the world of Conan.
[Talking about director Richard Fleischer ] The first day Fleischer came to see me work out, he told me, "Arnold, could you put on some more muscles?" I couldn't believe it! It turned out that Fleischer thought [ John Milius '] decision to keep Conan clothed throughout the first film was a mistake. Fleischer believes that people want to see my body much more often than they did the first time around, so they will. I spend most of my time in Conan the Destroyer (1984) fighting off people while I'm dressed in a loincloth.
[About the dog accident while making Conan the Barbarian (1982)] One of them hit me too soon. It caught me off guard and I went right over the ledge. I fell ten feet and landed on my back. I was covered with scratches and bruises. It was probably a pretty good beginning for this movie, though. It set the tone for the whole time we were there. This was going to be fun... but dangerous.
[Talking about director John Milius ] "There never would have been a Conan movie without him.
[on Warren Beatty ] There are some people who are close to him that say he is just starving for attention, and that's the way he gets attention. Other people said, "Look, he's not working and he just feels like he should maybe get involved in politics". Instead, I just think that maybe he is jealous that I did jump in. I find it silly, because I respect his work.
Well, I think because a lot of people don't know why I'm a Republican, I came first of all from a socialistic country which is Austria and when I came over here in 1968 with the presidential elections coming up in November, I came over in October, I heard a lot of the press conferences from both of the candidates, [ Hubert H. Humphrey ] and [ Richard Nixon ], and Humphrey was talking about more government is the solution, protectionism, and everything he said about government involvement sounded to me more like Austrian socialism. Then when I heard Nixon talk about it, he said open up the borders, the consumers should be represented there ultimately and strengthen the military and get the government off our backs. I said to myself, "What is this guy's party affiliation?" I didn't know anything at that point. So I asked my friend, "What is Nixon?" He's a Republican. And I said, "I am a Republican". That's how I became a Republican."
[on refusing to grant clemency to condemned killer Stanley Tookie Williams ] After studying the evidence, searching the history, listening to the arguments and wrestling with the profound consequences, I could find no justification for granting clemency. The facts do not justify overturning the jury's verdict, or the decisions of the courts in this case.
[After undergoing heart surgery in 1997] We made, actually, history, because it was the first time ever that doctors could prove that a lifelong Republican has a heart.
As a kid - as a kid I saw socialist - the socialist country that Austria became after the Soviets left. Now don't misunderstand me: I love Austria and I love the Austrian people. But I always knew that America was the place for me. In school, when the teacher would talk about America, I would daydream about coming here. I would daydream about living here. I would sit there and watch for hours American movies, transfixed by my heroes, like John Wayne. Everything about America seemed so big to me, so open, so possible.
I have no sexual standards in my head that say this is good or this is bad. Homosexual - that only means to me that he enjoys sex with a man and I enjoy sex with a woman. It's all legitimate to me.
I didn't think about money. I thought about the fame, about just being the greatest. I was dreaming about being some dictator of a country or some savior like Jesus.
like 5'6" or something like that - which is ridiculous. I can assure you this is not the case. People look up to me, and not just because I do a lot of work in the community. I mean, most people really look up to me.
I'm 6'2". I've heard rumors that I'm really much shorter in real lifeyou this is not the case. People look up to me, and not just because I do a lot of work in the community. I mean, most people really look up to me.
California will not wait for our federal government to take strong action on global warming. We won't wait for the federal government. We will move forward because we know it's the right thing to do. We will lead on this issue and we will get other western states involved. I think there's not great leadership from the federal government when it comes to protecting the environment.
Money doesn't make you happy. I now have $50 million but I was just as happy when I had $48 million.
[in a 1987 interview] I have to give the audiences what they enjoy seeing while I try to bring in a little something new, with different movies, different time periods and all those things. But what's important is to entertain the people -- everything else means nothing.
[on his late friend and role model, body builder Reg Park ]: Reg was a dear friend, an extraordinary mentor and a personal hero. Other than my parents, there may be no single person who had more to do with me becoming the person I am today than Reg. He was like a second father to me. It was Reg who impressed upon me how hard I would have to work if I wanted to achieve my dreams. I'll always remember him making me do calf-raises with 1,000 pounds at 5 o'clock in the morning.
[on Terminator Salvation (2009)] I think it's cool to continue on with the franchise, in case I want to jump over again and get into the acting after I'm through here (as Governor of California).
There are such high standards and now there are always new standards being set for action. You see that with Iron Man (2008) and with The Dark Knight (2008) and that other film this summer, um, Wanted (2008). That was an excellent movie! There was this train coming down from a bridge, falling, and they're fighting inside the train car. Jesus, that is unbelievable that you can do that. To have the imagination to write it and the talent to shoot it and make it real on the screen. It's a whole new dimension.
With Batman and Terminator, those big movies, there's a certain expectation and if you don't live up to it, if the movie is not a 10, then the business will be soft. If Terminator Salvation (2009) is pushing it forward, it will be breaking records all the time. If director McG has the T4 and the kind of shots that has the audience thinking, 'Now how did he do that?' -- then it is 'Terminator' and you can blow everyone away and every record at the box office.
[on Terminator Salvation (2009)] I hope they do well, and I hope it is a huge hit. I do hope it creates a spectacle on the screen. That is what James Cameron created.
[on watching Will Ferrell movies] In those you howl for two hours and you feel like you get a six-pack of ab muscles from all the laughs!
[on Terminator Salvation (2009)] I wasn't sure who the Terminator was. I don't know if there is one or if he's the star or the hero. These are the things that determine the success and how strong the movie will be.
I know California is supposed to be a place where dreams come true, but my life has gone way beyond the dream. My dream was to come to America, become the greatest bodybuilder of all time and do what Reg Park had done by going into Hercules movies. And if that worked out, I was going to build a gym business and then live happily ever after. Then all of a sudden I shot right by my dream. I stopped doing the strong man stuff, did the Terminator movies and became the highest-paid actor in Hollywood. I got $30 million for Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003), you know.
[on the death of Michael Jackson ] Michael was a pop phenomenon who never stopped pushing the envelope of creativity. Though there were serious questions about his personal life, Michael was undoubtedly a great entertainer and his popularity spanned generations and the globe.
[on the death of Patrick Swayze Patrick Swayze was a talented and passionate artist who struck a memorable chord with audiences throughout the world. He played a wide range of characters both on stage and in movies and his celebrated performances made the hard work of acting look effortless - which I know from experience is not easy. As a fan and as an actor, I admired Patrick and I know that he will be dearly missed. On behalf of all Californians, Maria and I send our deepest condolences to Patrick's family, friends and fans.
I am here to spend. I love to spend Hollywood's money! (June 1993).
[on Sylvester Stallone in The Expendables (2010)] It is a great inspiration for people to see someone at his age still at the top of his game -- acting, writing, directing, doing his own stunts and fight scenes -- I mean, what an amazing talent. And for him to still be so athletic and be able to rip off his shirt and have a six-pack is just unbelievable.
[on the death of Tony Curtis Tony Curtis was a Hollywood icon, a great performer and artist and devoted family man. I saw his extraordinary talent and ability to inspire generations of Americans firsthand on the set of Christmas in Connecticut (1992)' and will always remember our times together.
[on a return to movies when his term as Governor of California ends] I have no idea. So it depends if someone comes with a great script or a great idea...you know, would I still have the patience to sit on the set and to do a movie for three months or six months? All of those things, I don't know, but I did have a meeting with James Cameron, we talked about some very important things.
The meaning of life is not simply to exist, to survive, but to move ahead, to go up, to achieve, to conquer.
(On the power of visualizing your goals) When I was very young, I visualized myself being and having what it was that I wanted. The mind is really so incredible. Before I won my first Mr. Universe, I walked around the tournament like I owned it. The title was already mine. I had won it so many times in my mind that there was no doubt I would win it. Then, when I moved on to the movies, the same thing. I visualized myself being a successful actor and earning big money. I could feel and taste success. I just knew it would happen.
[on the passing of Elaine Kaufman] Elaine was an early supporter of my acting career and would often call to let me know when an influential writer or producer came in so I could stop and schmooze.
[on Terminator Salvation (2009)] The last one was awful. It tried hard, not that they didn't try, the acting and everything - it missed the boat.
[on visiting Venice, California] This place is insane. You never have to smoke a joint. You just go on a bicycle ride in the morning, inhale, and you live off everyone else.
[on Predator 2 (1990)] A predator in a city is a bad idea.
[on his career as a bodybuilder] I had a very clear vision of where I wanted to go. You realize you have to pay no attention to the naysayers. When you learn those lessons in sports, you can apply those lessons for the rest of your life.
[on his Governor's salary] I didn't take a penny of my salary during my terms. After all, it was petty cash compared to what you make in the movies.
You can't have a life full of successes. In bodybuilding, I tried bench-pressing 500lb many times and failed. That's how you get there. You have to be daring.
They're writing right now Terminator Genisys (2015). There have been some writers on it for the last year-and-a-half and they could not pull it off. We have told them over and over that they are going in the wrong direction, now they've finally got rid of those writers and they've got new really quality writers. Now they're going in the right direction. I think this year the script will be finished and we will be able to go into pre-production.
[on the death of his mentor Joe Weider ] He advised me on my training, on my business ventures, and once, bizarrely, claimed I was a German Shakespearean actor to get me my first acting role in -- Hercules in New York (1970) even though I barely spoke English. He was there for me constantly throughout my life, and I will miss him dearly.
[his father] A lot of sons would have been crippled by his demands, but instead the discipline rubbed off on me. I turned it into drive.
To this day, I'm more comfortable when there's someone to schmooze with until I fall asleep.
When you grow up in a harsh environment, you never forget how to withstand physical punishment, even long after the hard times end.
If you wanted a girl, you had to make an effort to have a conversation, not just drool like a horny dog.
I associate glasses with intellectuals.
I came to America, won Mr. Universe, and now I'm in the movies.
Most bodybuilders don't have very interesting insights or routines.
In America, unlike Europe, there weren't a million obstacles to starting a business.
After coming to California, I posed in the heights above Malibu. Bodybuilders like this spot because the ridges in the distance seem little and your muscles look bigger than the mountains.
The applause of a crowd made me stronger.
If you get muscles, you can go to the beach and pick up girls.
Americans love foreign names.
I wanted to be rich very quickly.
Monstrous, futuristic, what I envisioned America as all about.
Something that seems impossible at the start can be achieved.
[on sweat] It's a great way to lose body fat.
Nights without sleep don't mean you can't perform at a high level the next day and days without food don't mean you'll starve.
I aimed to be a leader someday.
If you let ego show through, you're put in your place.
[on journalists] They see everything from the outside.
Staying on top of the hill is harder than climbing it.
Its great to have someone to go home to.
When you have a relationship in a foreign language, you have to be extra careful not to miscommunicate.
I couldn't believe how difficult learning a new language could be. Pronunciations were especially dangerous.
[Mr. Universe, Mr. World and Mr. Olympia] Winning all three would be like unifying the heavyweight title in boxing: it would make me the undisputed world champion. Mr World was by far the biggest bodybuilding event I'd ever seen.
In bodybuilding I was king of the mountain, but in everyday LA I was just another immigrant struggling to learn English and make a life. I was glad to be away living my own life.
I always saw myself as a citizen of the world.
The more popular bodybuilding grew in prisons, the more guys would get the message to behave.
Winning narrowly didn't make me feel good; I wanted my dominance to be clear.
[after his father had a stroke] It was painful and upsetting to see a man who had been so smart and so strong lose his coordination and his ability to think. He died not long after.
[his nephew Patrick] He became my pride and joy.
Real estate was the place to invest. The math of real estate really spoke to me.
I like to always wander in like a puppy.
Bodybuilders look in the mirror as they train. You need to be your own trainer.
If millions of people came to see my movies someday, it was important that they know where the muscles came from.
I wanted to promote bodybuilding, both so that more people would take part and to benefit my career. If I wanted to promote bodybuilding to a new audience, I'd have to find my own way.
[on bodybuilding] It needed fresh blood.
I find joy in the gym because every rep and every set gets me one step closer to my goal.
I liked getting swept up into a cloud of celebs.
[on Jack Nicholson, 'Warren Beatty', and Roman Polanski ] They all had such enormous passion for their profession.
Having women in the gym made us train harder.
I had no idea that reading from a script means you're supposed to act out the role.
[personal motto] Presentation, presentation, presentation.
When somebody sets the bar so low, you can't go wrong.
[endorsing bodybuilding publicly] It was a boost for bodybuilding in America; suddenly the sport had a face and a personality.
In an entertainment interview, you could just make up stuff!
In bodybuilding, you try to suppress emotions and march forwards with determination; in acting its the opposite.
To live your life as an actor, you can't be afraid of someone stirring up your emotions.
Europe was always far less puritanical than the United States.
Sometimes its hard to explain to your toddler what you do at the office.
I've been retired from bodybuilding since 1980 but I'll always stay involved.
[during his open-heart surgery] Maria (Shriver) put a brave face on a scary situation.
I get goosebumps when Nelson Mandela talks about inclusion, tolerance and forgiveness.
[on Maria Shriver ] If I hadn't been her style and she hadn't been mine, we never would have ended up together. Maria meshed with everything that I was, what I stood for, and what I was doing. I got addicted to her. Maria was such a forceful personality that she would just run over guys. She wanted to be unique and different.
I was a self-made man.
In politics, when disputes arise and camps form, you have to grasp what's happening and move very quickly.
I could go on for hours about what draws me to Maria (Shriver) but still never fully explain the magic.
Love stories are built around people's idiosyncrasies.
[on Conan the Barbarian] There was no stunt double because it would have been difficult to find someone with a body like mine.
Dino (De Laurentiis) had a reputation for getting things done. He was very powerful in that way, and people in Hollywood knew it and didn't mess with him.
[on Conan the Barbarian (1982)] I'd never done a love scene on camera and found it really strange.
My character and his stolen Harley were a perfect combo of cyborg and machine in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991).
Our first major decision as a couple (he and Maria Shriver ) was to find a house and call it our place.
When people come to me with a movie concept or a script, I always ask "What is the poster? What is the image? What are we trying to sell here?"
Danny DeVito is a master of comedy, loves stogies, and cooks pasta on the set-no wonder he made such a great twin.
Ivan Reitman took a chance on me as a comic hero.
Sylvester Stallone,
Bruce Willis and I had great fun opening Planet Hollywood restaurants around the world.
Total anonymity is almost impossible in Hollywood.
The outside world looked at our relationship (he and Maria Shriver) in a simple-minded way, as a juicy success story. According to this way of thinking, Maria becomes part of my trophy collection.
[on Maria Shriver ] She brought a great foundation of knowledge and was a great partner to work with because we both grew.
When you start out, its all about one to one contact.
I'd always advanced by starting with a clear vision and working as hard as possible to achieve it.
For Maria (Shriver) to go out and be in front of the camera was a real declaration of independence.
[on Maria Shriver ] She was the ideal woman for me.
Writing something is different from saying it.
I was Conan, and millions of dollars were being spent to make me shine. For the first time, I felt like the star.
[on Oprah Winfrey ] She was talented and aggressive, and you could tell she believed in herself.
An aspect of being a Kennedy cousin (Maria Shriver) was that you were never completely free. Since there were so many cousins, the number of command performances were high.
Every one of the killings in Conan (the Barbarian) was well shot and extraordinary.
(John) Milius always pushed the envelope. Conan (the Barbarian) has stunts that have since been outlawed from movies. The bloodshed in Conan seems tame by today's standards. At the time, the film introduced a whole new dimension of violence on screen. Actors had five quarts of blood strapped to their chests, the same amount in the human body. Whenever it was spilled, Milius shot it against a light background to get the full carnage.
I was really annoyed by the way that powerful studio executives kowtowed to the members of the ratings board.
I saw myself as a businessman first.
[on Ronald Reagan] He was wonderful at painting ideas in ways that everyone could understand.
My definition of living is to have excitement always; that's the difference between living and existing.
If you want to fight prejudice you have to have tolerance centers everywhere.
I was amazed to see how negative most of the people in Hollywood remained toward Reagan during his presidency. He represented the values that had brought me to America. The US was the greatest country with the best opportunities and now that it was my home, I wanted to keep it that way and make it even better. After the turmoil and gloom of the 1970s, Americans voted for Reagan because he reminded them of their strength.
[the outrageous and conservative sides to his personality] I wanted to feel comfortable in both worlds.
There has to be investment in the public good.
I'd have made more money if Jimmy Carter still occupied the White House.
You do a movie or a book, you promote the hell out of it, you travel the world as if its your marketplace, and in the meantime, you work out and take care of business and explore even more.
When I learned about The Terminator (1984), I loved the idea that he was a machine that never had to sleep.
For me, the question was always how to fit in all the stuff I want to do. I seldom saw my life as hectic, the thought rarely crossed my mind.
I'm not a religious person.
I never like to cut things from my life; I only add.
I'd felt like an American from the time I was 10 years old.
[his first thought when he met James Cameron ] A skinny, intense guy.
I never went to a competition to compete; I went to win.
I wasn't sure I was free from prejudice; I'd made prejudiced comments.
When you promote a movie, you want to win over everybody. If you give political speeches, you are bound to turn off somebody.
I considered the US my permanent home.
I kept quiet about politics whenever I visited Austria. I never wanted to be perceived as some wise guy coming back and telling people what to do.
I always believed in shooting for the top, and to become an American is like becoming a member of the winning team.
[his first thought about The Terminator (1984)] Strange name.
Poses are the snapshots, and the routine is the movie.
Bodybuilding is a lot like politics; you go from town to town, hoping word will spread.
[on bodybuilding competitions] You can't just pose on stage like a robot and then walk off; people will never get to know your personality.
At the top of the ladder, there was always room for one more. The more people who stay on the bottom, the more crowded it
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-first in a pond, the two people on board were OK, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
FAA spokesman said the Columbia LC41 rolled off the runway about 10:15 a.m. after landing at the airport.
An aerial view of the scene showed the white plane with its nose in a pond by the airport.
In a brief email, Rebecca Rosenblatt said that the plane landed in the levy area and everyone on the plane was "accounted for and OK."
The plane is registered to the CEO of Weber Logistics, a Southern California company. The flight plan showed it was headed to the San Carlos airport. The company website said it has locations throughout Northern and Southern California, including Los Angeles and San Diego, as well as offices in Phoenix and Las Vegas.Washington (CNN) The State Department has sent a recommendation to the White House that Cuba be removed from the State Sponsors of Terrorism List, paving the way for the White House to announce its intent to de-list Cuba as early as Thursday, two administration officials tell CNN.
In making the recommendation, the State Department has certified Cuba has not provided support to terrorist groups within the last 6 months.
JUST WATCHED No U.S. embassy in Cuba... yet Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH No U.S. embassy in Cuba... yet 01:47
President Barack Obama ordered the review of Cuba's place on the list after announcing a historic diplomatic breakthrough with Havana in December and pledged to act quickly once he received the recommendation from the State Department.
The White House has made clear it wanted to make the announcement before Obama attends the Summit of the Americas later this week with Cuban leader Raul Castro, and ordered the State Department to speed up the process.
Read MoreA program on NicoNico Live Broadcasting announced on Friday that singer Luna Haruna will perform the ending theme song for the upcoming anime Sword Art Online II. Haruna previously performed the ending theme "Overfly" for the second season of Sword Art Online.
In related news, Haruna will appear at New Jersey's AnimeNEXT convention from June 6-8.
Sword Art Online II will premiere in July. Yoshitsugu Matsuoka will reprise his role as the main protagonist Kirito from the Sword Art Online anime series. Miyuki Sawashiro will also reprise her role as Sinon from the Sword Art Online: Infinity Moment PSP video game.
Tomohiko Ito will again direct the series at A-1 Pictures, and Shingo Adachi will again adapt abec's original character designs for animation. The series will adapt volumes five and six from Reki Kawahara's original novel series. Eir Aoi is returning to perform the series' opening theme.
Haruna's other anime performances include the ending theme for the second season of Fate/Zero the ending theme song for Monogatari Series Second Season.Feb. 5, NYU Skirball opened its doors, leading people from the streets of New York City to the theatre of London for a screening of the stage play Corionlanus, Shakespeare’s most visceral work. Although the production was National Theatre’s (with Josie Rourke directing and starring Tom Hiddleston and Mark Gatiss), this performance that they filmed took place in the Donmar Warehouse, where they used to store bananas. It’s a small performance space with far less seats than the National Theatre, creating a different sort of Rome than the arenas one may be used to, but that’s okay because Coriolanus is a different sort of Roman story.
The seats at the Skirball Center are three quarters full. Let’s blame the snow. The audience is made up of equal part NYU students earning credit for their theatre or English courses and senior citizens, but the little old ladies gossiping about Tom Hiddleston’s pretty boy looks in line for the bathroom at intermission are just as nerdy as the college kids. You could tell we had more fans of the cast in than fans of Shakespeare. Everywhere your ear turned, you heard, “He’s in Sherlock, which one is he?” and gasps at the sight of Benedict Cumberbatch, Andrew Scott, and Christopher Eccleston in the opening previews for other National Theatre plays.
Women and men alike swooned over Tom Hiddleston, and fair enough, he was named sexiest man in the world by MTV, after all, but Coriolanus gives him the opportunity to really show his acting chops. Coriolanus waxes and wanes between being a cocky brat, mimicking the people in his city he disrespects, and a spit-screaming orator. Face covered in rather realistic blood in the opening battle scene, Hiddleston’s eyes are fire. This is helped by the camera’s ability to do close ups, which you might not otherwise get if you’d seen it at the National Theatre. It catches every jaw flex, eye twitch, and welling tear. The audience has a right giggle watching his complex expressions after his enemy gives him a smooch and confesses to having fantasies about him. Coriolanus is usually played by an older man, but having someone as young as this play him, you do not doubt for a moment that he is Rome’s best fighter and bravest man. It is the youth who are spry and feel immortal. At intermission, the general consensus of the hubbub is that Hiddleston has transcended his pretty boy appeal and is actually a fine actor indeed.
The big draw for me was Mark Gatiss, who’s written and acted in both Sherlock and Doctor Who. While Hiddleston struts about in a battle vest (and temporary translucent gown), Gatiss swooshes around in a long brown coat and scarf, making snotty little quips. He is Coriolanus’ friend, a “humorous patrician,” Menenius. Not a single joke slips by the audience, and perhaps they are just excited to see him, but they titter at every line, comedic or otherwise, or new facial expression.
However, the best acting has to be of Deborah Findlay, who plays Coriolanus’s mother. She is proud her son has returned from battle with so many scars, each one standing for another enemy life he took, though Coriolanus wishes nothing more than to hide the scars and never talk of them again. When he is banished for being disrespectful toward Roman citizens, she unleashes hellfire on the tribune, causing Brutus to shrink back into the corner. It takes real presence to play a character who is able to move the unshakable man to not take his revenge on Rome after he’s steeled himself against his friend, wife, and son. Ultimately, she is defeated by circumstances beyond her control. (If that’s spoilers, you’ve had the last 400 years to read the play!)
Visit NTLive.com for more events like this one.
AdvertisementsMyanmar authorities have beaten and arrested Rohingya Muslims who refused to register with immigration officials, AP reported.
Witnesses told the news agency that authorities raided the villages of the Rohingya - defined by the UN as the world's most persecuted minority - to force them to admit they are illegal immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh.
The move comes after the government publicly offered citizenship to the Muslim minority, in exchange for registering their identities as Bengali.
According to residents, those who refused to register suffered the consequences.
"We are trapped," Khin Maung Win said, adding that authorities started setting up police checkpoints outside his village, Kyee Kan Pyin, in mid-September. These checkpoints are preventing people from leaving even to buy food in local markets, or take children to school.
"If we don't have letters and paperwork showing we took part — that we are Bengali — we can't leave," he said.
According to Chris Lewa of the Arakan Project, which aims to promote the recognition of basic rights to the Rohingya, residents reported incidents of violence and abuse in at least 30 villages from June to late September.
In some villages, the names of influential residents were posted on community boards along with verbal warnings that they would face up to two years in jail if they failed to convince others to take part in the registration process.
Other Rohingya said officials forced them to sign the papers at gunpoint, or threatened that they would end up in camps if they didn't comply.
Villagers have also been kicked and beaten with clubs and arrested for refusing to take part.
Violence against Rohingya Intensified
Violence against Myanmar's Muslims has intensified over the past two years, incited by extremist monks and the anti-Muslim '969' campaign, which urges Buddhists to stop interacting with the Rohingya and boycott their businesses.
More than 230 people have been killed in religious violence in Myanmar since June 2012 and more than 140,000 have been displaced.
A New York Times short documentary broadcast last June showed how Myanmar authorities confine the Rohingya to "quasi-concentration camps" or to their own villages, with reduced/minimal access to medical care and education.
In January, Burmese police set fire to at least 70 Rohingya homes in the village of Du Char Yar Tan, where at least 48 Muslims were said to have been killed by a Buddhist mob.Bellator MMA is once again returning to the Kansas Star Casino in Mulvane, Kan., for Bellator 159 on Friday, July 22.
Combat Press has confirmed with the promotion that the event will feature a bantamweight match-up between Darrion Caldwell and Joe Taimanglo, as well as a lightweight bout between Melvin Guillard and David Rickels.
Caldwell enters the event riding the momentum of a first-round stoppage of Joe Warren at Bellator 151 in March. The win moved Caldwell’s record to 9-0, with four wins coming via submission. The 28-year-old has won six straight inside the Bellator cage.
The far-more experienced Taimanglo will also look to remain hot as he seeks his fourth straight win. The Guam native will be stepping into the cage for the 30th time, with 16 of his 22 career wins coming before the final bell. He topped Sirwan Kakai on the scorecards at Bellator 151.
The Kansas native Rickels will be returning to the sight of his last victory at Bellator 150 against Bobby Cooper. Prior to the win over Cooper, “The Caveman” fell short in his quest for revenge against former titleholder Michael Chandler. The 27-year-old Rickels will enter the contest with 17 professional victories, 11 of which have come under the Bellator banner.
Guillard, meanwhile, is still in search of his first victory inside the Bellator cage. The UFC and WSOF veteran most recently fought in February, where he was knocked out by Derek Campos. Prior to that, he dropped split decisions to Brandon Girtz and WSOF champion Justin Gaethje. Guillard’s current three-fight losing skid is the first of his lengthy 52-fight career.
Bellator 159 will air live on Spike TV. More bouts for the event are expected to be revealed in the coming weeks.Image caption Suzie Imber will now get a recommendation to join the European Space Agency
A Leicester scientist has said she is "excited" she could "end up in space" after winning a BBC Two show.
Suzie Imber, 33, was revealed as the best candidate for space on "Astronauts: Do you have what it takes?" on Sunday.
The University of Leicester associate professor said the experience was "incredible" but "really tough".
Dr Imber, who triumphed over 11 other people, will now get a recommendation to join the European Space Agency.
Image caption Former astronaut Chris Hadfield (r) was the first Canadian to walk in space
Former astronaut Chris Hadfield and his team put the candidates through a series of gruelling tests as part of the show, to find out who had the qualities to be an astronaut.
Dr Imber, associate professor of planetary science at the university, said: "Staying focused and being able to cope with the degree of testing over a time period was hard.
"It was really hard to prepare for tests, like the ability to take my own blood.
"And being strapped into a capsule and lowered into water, so it fills up, and then spun around so you have to hold your breath and feel disorientated."
Image caption Dr Imber beat 11 other candidates, including engineers and pilots
The scientist has been interested in space from a young age and her current research looks at Mercury's magnetosphere.
Dr Imber said she was "utterly shocked and surprised" when her name was announced.
"The process has taught me that you don't have to be the best at everything," she said.
"You have to be consistently good over a broad range of skills and perhaps that's why I might have got a slight edge on the others.
"[Winning] has made me more excited and enthusiastic to apply, and who knows, it's possible that I could one day end up in space."
Dr Imber added she made "incredibly valuable life-long friendships" with those she met on the six-week programme.
Image copyright University of Leicester Image caption Suzie Imber is also a good climber as can be seen here on Denali, the highest mountain in North America
Professor Paul Boyle, president of the university, said: "For an intrepid explorer, who is used to scaling mountains, she has surpassed herself by achieving new heights of success.
"She has done herself, her family and loved ones and the university very proud indeed.
"We hope she continues to go from strength to strength in her application to become an astronaut."Senran Kagura: Shinovi Versus Is Releasing For PC On June 1, 2016
By Sato. May 24, 2016. 10:15am
XSEED Games announced today that former PS Vita-exclusive beat ‘em up title Senran Kagura: Shinovi Versus is headed to PC via Steam as an HD makeover on June 1, 2016.
According to the press release, the possibility of releasing on additional PC platforms will be explored in the coming months. The PC version will include all DLC from the PlayStation Vita version of the game to go with higher resolution texture and 60fps framerate.
Here are some details on the game:
Senran Kagura: Shinovi Versus takes the ninja schoolgirls introduced to the world via SENRAN KAGURA Burst and pits them against one another in an all-new standalone story. Through a 3D lens, players will now be able to revisit the rivalry between the students of the Hanzō National Academy and their sworn enemies at Hebijo Clandestine Girls’ Academy, the latter of which have gone underground and formed a mercenary group known as Homura’s Crimson Squad. Both sides must also contend with two new sets of enemies: the students from the exceptionally strict Gessen Girls’ Academy, as well as the new generation of Hebijo students who seek to dominate all rivals. Each of the four schools gets its own unique narrative, and the original Japanese voice-overs pair with full English subtitles to bring each girl’s distinct personality and storyline to life. Fan-favorite elements such as massive mid-air combos, Secret Ninja Techniques, and clothes-ripping action will now be presented in full HD and with a 60fps framerate in this Windows PC update of Senran Kagura: Shinovi Versus. In addition, all previously released DLC from the game’s “PS Vita” release — including extra characters, costumes, weapons, and more — will be included from the start, fully unlockable through gameplay. With over 20 playable characters, each featuring her own diverse fighting style and palette of special skills, players will have to master a vast array of abilities as they set forth upon the Path of the Shinobi. Players can also compete in three online multiplayer modes each designed for up to four players, including Death Match, Strip Battle (try to unclothe opponents), and Understorm (a race to grab the most undergarments falling from the sky).
Senran Kagura: Shinovi Versus will release on June 1, 2016 for PC. It will be available for 10% off its regular list price of $29.99, €27.99, and £22.99 for the first week after launch.Sami Khedira is still weighing up his next move but has interest from Manchester United and Chelsea.
United have maintained an interest in the Germany international since failing to sign him in August 2013. His representatives have spoken to Schalke on a number of occasions but the fifth placed Bundesliga side have been struggling to come up with a suitable financial package while he also has concerns about the strength of their squad. They have been scouting for alternatives should he turn them down.
Although Khedira said last month: 'I love Real Madrid and it'll be hard to leave this club - I'll give all I've got until the last moments of my contract, let nobody doubt that', Real will not now offer him a new deal.
Sami Khedira is being courted by several clubs including Manchester United and Chelsea
Khedira has not played as often as he would have liked at Real Madrid since last summer's World Cup
They are also looking to sell Spain international Asier Illaramendi with Real Sociedad, Liverpool and Arsenal all interested in a cut-price £18million deal.
Khedira was a target for Arsenal and his free agent status will give him more options but his salary of £190,000 a week at 28-years-old is not so easy to accommodate. Niggling injuries have also helped limit him to just 17 appearances for Madrid since the World Cup.
United have also discussed the possibility of reviving their interest in Paris St Germain's energetic midfielder Blaise Matuidi if a deal can be struck. Dortmund's Ilkay Gundogan and Mats Hummels remain on their list too.
Manchester City striker Stevan Jovetic hopes to have a clearer idea later on Wednesday of whether he will be able to join Inter Milan.
His representatives are meeting the Italian club's officials to outline what proposals can be put forward to City. The Montenegrin is desperate to join Inter but there are doubts whether they can match City's valuation particularly with Yaya Toure also in their thoughts. Their initial proposal for Jovetic is likely to be a loan with a view, something City are not keen on.
Inter are prepared to sell to fund their rebuild with former defender Nemanja Vidic among the candidates to go.
Inter Milan are keen to thrash out a deal for Stevan Jovatic (left) and are also keen on Yaya Toure (right)
City may yet offer him as part of their ambitious bid for Raheem Sterling although Liverpool insist they will not sell. Chelsea remain interested in Sterling also.
James Milner remains a free transfer option for Liverpool but, as reported in Sportsmail at the weekend, he has yet to determine where he will go with offers from Arsenal, Everton, Roma, Inter Milan and two Spanish clubs also on the table. He has not ruled out staying at City with the amount of game time pivotal to his decision.
Sunderland have agreed deals to bring in Manchester City youngsters Cameron McCulloch, a goalkeeper, and Josh Maja, a striker, from Manchester City U18s.
Juventus and Monaco are understood to have held discussions this week about the possibility of a deal for Radamel Falcao. The striker is expected to return to the Principality from his loan at Manchester United at the end of the season. Juventus tried to sign him last summer but could not afford the financial package. They want to revamp their strike force with Carlos Tevez looking to return to Argentina with Boca Juniors and Fernando Llorente expected to be sold.
Radamel Falcao's Manchester United nightmare could be coming to an end as Juventus consider a move
Newcastle United are considering the merits of Fulham striker Ross McCormack for the summer.
Newcastle are working on a deal for QPR's Charlie Austin and have checked on the likes of Danny Ings, Aleksandar Mitrovic, Alexandre Lacazette and Moussa Konate.
Steve McClaren is expected to take over the reins at Newcastle in the summer and was keen to take McCormack to Derby during the January transfer window. Mccormack was signed for £11m and Fulham would want the bulk of their money back for a player who has still managed 15 goals in a struggling side.
Fulham plan major changes in the summer and want to bring in some big signings to push for promotion but will also need to balance the books should suitable offers come in.
Ross McCormack has had an impressive season despite Fulham's struggles in the Championhip
Stoke are discussing a summer deal for Barcelona B forward Mohamed el Ouriachi.
The 19-year-old left winger, known as Moha, has turned down a new deal at Barca and is ready to follow former Barcelona players Marc Muniesa and Bojan Krkic to the Britannia.
Moha's agent Raul Verdu said: 'We thank Barca for the deal they offered the player and the efforts they have gone to try to renew his contract. But another proposal was really interesting on both a professional and economic level. Moha has the option of joining the first team squad at Stoke and that was irresistible.'
Moha, a Spain youth international, rejected the chance to join Real Madrid in 2011.
Mark Hughes is also interested in signing Daniel Wass from Evian and will discuss a permanent deal for Victor Moses of Chelsea as he looks to inject pace into his squad. Sunderland's Lee Cattermole remains a midfield target too.
Mohamed el Ouriachi is ready to follow former Barcelona players Marc Muniesa and Bojan Krkic to Stoke
Valencia and Monaco are monitoring Chelsea winger Gael Kakuta.
Currently impressing on-loan with Rayo Vallecano, Kakuta is still has one year left on contract at Chelsea. The 23 year-old is available for around £3million with Udinese and Atalanta are also interested.
Blackburn manager Gary Bowyer is due to hold crucial talks with owners Venky's about how to work around the club's transfer embargo. Bowyer has been hemmed in by financial restrictions yet still managed to lead Blackburn to the brink of play-off qualification and the FA Cup quarter finals. His work has been recognised at other clubs considering managerial changes but he is keen to finish what he has started by taking Blackburn up to the Premier League next season.
Rovers have been under embargo since January after falling foul of the Football League's new financial fair play regulations. Key to discussions in India will be whether they accept bids for Rudy Gestede and Jordan Rhodes with Southampton, Crystal Palace, Middlesbrough and Hull interested at the right price.
Jordan Rhodes (left) and Rudy Gestede (right) have been linked with moves away from Blackburn Rovers
Wigan goalkeeper Ali Al Habsi is being monitored by Premier League sides as Wigan look to slip out of the Championship into League One. The experienced Oman goalkeeper is free in he summer and has returned to fitness this season with some good performances despite his team's demise.
Liverpool have been among the many clubs to have posted scouts at the DW Stadium this season although they have checked on their loanees Jerome Sinclair and Sheyi Ojo also.
Liverpool have been looking at Sporting keeper Rui Patricio after being told Norberto Neto would join Juventus but may need a low budget option too.
Everton are posied to make David Henen's loan from Olympiakos permanent after the teenager impressed. Everton are looking at bringing in a new goalkeeper, centre-back and two strikers for next season.Last week, a leak in a storage tank at the America's largest radioactive dumpsite expanded substantially, sparking concerns that other tanks are on the verge of failing, too. This fear may have already been realised. Rumours are flying that a second of Hanford's 28 double-shelled radioactive waste tanks is exhibiting early signs of failure. King-5 News, which broke the story of the expanded waste leak at Hanford site's AY-102 storage tank, is now reporting evidence of a second tank breach, citing anonymous sources familiar with the situation. The tank in question, AY-101, is the same age and has the same design as AY-102, which began leaking in 2011. Both tanks, along with ten others at the Hanford facility, share a construction flaw identified by the Department of Energy several years back as a potential risk factor for failure.
Hanford is a legacy site that produced plutonium for the world's first nuclear bomb, and for almost 60,000 more nukes during the Cold War. Its last nuclear reactor was switched off in 1987, and a year later, it was taken over by the US DOE, the Washington State Department of Ecology and the EPA for long-term environmental remediation. Due to the site's ageing infrastructure and lack of modern environmental monitoring equipment, that remediation process has been slow, dangerous and fraught with failure.
Today, 200.6 million litres of toxic sludge from the dawn of the nuclear age still sit in decrepit tanks at Hanford, waiting for the US government to build a remediation plant. In the early 2000s, evidence of widespread leaking prompted the DOE to transfer the bulk of the waste from 148 single shell tanks built in the '40s and '50s to 28 larger, double-shelled tanks built in the 1970s.
The hope was that the double-shelled tanks would prove more robust, but in 2011, AY-102 sprung a leak. Last week, as the final drops of radioactive waste were being transferred out of the busted tank into others, facility workers noticed that the leak had expanded substantially. The result: an accumulation of 20cm of radioactive waste between the inner and outer hull. Both the Washington State Department of Ecology and the DOE told Gizmodo that this was an anticipated result of draining the tank.
But now, King-5 News reports that another double-shelled tank has recently exhibited some dangerous signs:
Sources tell KING 5 that alarms went off last week to alert staff of the presence of "hot" (radioactive) particles trapped in filters of the tank's continuous air monitor (CAM). The sources say this is the first time readings of this sort have been detected in AY-101, leading people very familiar with the tank to believe the tank is beginning to fail.
The environmental watchdog group Hanford Challenge issued a press release today claiming that is own sources within the facility have confirmed elevated radiation levels outside of AY-101's inner shell, which shouldn't occur if the tank is airtight.
"According to people who work there, this is a very good indicator of failure," Tom Carpenter, the executive director of Hanford Challenge and former director of the Nuclear Oversight Campaign for the Government Accountability Office told Gizmodo. "Now, it may be a small leak, but it doesn't matter. If the tank fails, they have to immediately pull together a plan to empty that tank."
And that would be a big problem for Hanford, which doesn't have enough room in its 26 remaining tanks to accommodate the extra waste. The facility would need to install new tanks, a process that could take several years. Alternatively, it would need to vastly accelerate plans for a long-term remediation facility, currently scheduled to come online in 2036.
DOE tank manager Tom Fletcher told the AP that visual inspections of the tank have found no evidence of a leak, but that air samples showed elevated levels of radioactivity between the tank's inner and outer hull. DOE officials are currently looking into the matter.Barcelona's international scout Ariedo Braida was at the Bundesliga game between Schalke 04 and Bayer Leverkusen on Friday, as first revealed by BILD.
According to the German newspaper, Braida was present to cast an eye over two potential Barça signings: Leon Goretzka and Jonathan Tah.
Asked about Goretzka, Braida said: "Without doubt he is a great player. But it's too soon for Barcelona."
Therefore, Goretzka, who scored a free-kick fior Schalke in the game, does not look to be close to a move to Camp Nou.
He is out of contract next summer, though, and could instead be set for a move to Bayern Munich, with an announcement on his future expected in January.
Braida also said: "I travel all over the world in search of the best talent. But our demands are so high..."
Here's the cutting from Fussball BILD:
La visita de Braida | FUSSBALL BILDPosted 06 February 2017 - 12:25 AM
ARMAGEDDON XVIII: 2017
Now Recapping on Page 2
Date:
Saturday, 24 June 2017
Time:
9:00 AM to 4:00+ PM
(Arrive around 9AM; people like to chat and prep beforehand. First round will start by 9:45AM.)
Location:
Stanton Elementary School
725 S Vencino Dr
Glendora, CA 91740
Remember, using these locations is a privilege, not a right. Use the golden rule: Don't Be A Dick.
FAQ
Where and when?
The war is 24 June 2017, from 9:00 to whenever (usually 4:00, but later is not impossible and is in fact a little likely). Location data is available above.
Darts?
Slugs and safer darts only. No metal is preferred but I understand that to maximize attendance while keeping it safe I need to keep this restriction more open. If you do make slugs, use #6 washers and not #8 washers. Use Ryan McNumbers' excellent guide available here if you plan on making slugs. If you use larger ammo, like megas or similar, keep them soft-tipped by the same guidelines as above.
If you are using silicone dome darts, they must be soft tips. Last year people were shooting rocks. Keep total dart weight under 1.3g, too, if you're shooting 1/2" darts.
You are also free to use stock-style darts, obviously. China Darts as reviewed by Cheerios are fine. No FVJ/FVN/whatever type of darts have a rock hard rubber/vinyl tip. The tip of the dart needs to be soft.
Who?
Everyone is welcome to come, veterans and newcomers alike. I'm not going to outright ban people younger than 13, but if you plan on bringing someone who is, you are responsible for them all day and you are especially responsible for them remaining safe (hydrated and wearing eye protection). I will be running this war with the assistance of others (including, but not limited to, Zorn and Apollo256).
What isn't allowed?
With dart restrictions, there isn't as much of a need for blaster regulations. Don't bring Titans shooting micro darts because that's just ridiculous. I and other war council advisors will spot-ban things if you are lasering dudes from a million miles away.
Blaster rules:
HOMEMADE AIRGUNS: Case-by-case basis. It is highly recommended that you talk to me beforehand (send me a PM or something). I'm very understanding.
TITANS: You may use them if they fire missiles (stock or Draconis or whatever) or balls. They must not be firing darts, of any size.
LBB/4B/UMB/SIMILAR: You may use them if they have the functional stock OPRV.
SUPER SOAKERS/SIMILAR: Do not bring them. If they shoot darts, they're too powerful. If they shoot water, people get mad.
SCEPTORS: If you want to use a Sceptor, make it colorful. Make it look as little like a paintball gun as possible. Wrap the tank in denim or something. If you replace the tank or pump, the OPRV must be kept at the same pressure and the tank volume may not be made any larger (stock is about 800cc).
SUPERMAXX 2000/5000/9000: Do whatever. It's fine. I hope you don't blow up your tank.
MELEE WEAPONS: Don't bring anything larger than these (Mashoongas).
SHIELDS: Hits on shields count as hits on you if you plan to use them. I'm nostalgic enough to say that Manta Rays count as actual shields against 1/2" darts, though.
Anything else?
1.) To stop a round for safety reasons, yell out the word "HOLD". If you hear someone call "HOLD", STOP PLAYING IMMEDIATELY. At any time during a round, anyone can call "Hold", which will temporarily stop that round. Players should repeat the call of Hold so that all other players hear, until the round stops completely. If a pedestrian is walking through the field, if a player is injured or if there is some other threat to personal safety, you are obligated to call hold. You can call a hold to pause the game and sort out some issue that is not a matter of personal safety, but do not abuse it.
2.) No barrel taps allowed. Barrel taps are how you absolutely gouge someone with a brass barrel and take out a chunk of skin. Barrel taps are how you break the barrel and bushing off your blaster. You can shoot them from point-blank, or you can ask them to take the hit. Don't touch them with your blaster.
A few important pieces of information: I don't anticipate there being a problem with the war site, but if there is, this is the address of the place we will be going as a back-up:
Ole Hammer Park
362 N Live Oak Ave
Glendora, CA 91741
There is also a school next door named Cullen Elementary we might try as well if we are over in the area.
Ole Hammer Park 362 N Live Oak Ave Glendora, CA 91741 There is also a school next door named Cullen Elementary we might try as well if we are over in the area. Be sure to check the weather forecast before the war. It looks like the heat wave in SoCal will break before the weekend happens, which is good; they estimate it'll have a high of ninety on Saturday, which is consistent with previous years. Be sure to bring (and re-apply) sunscreen and a lot of water. There are drinking fountains on-site.
There are no available bathrooms at the school. If you need to use the bathroom, there are restaurants two blocks away with available facilities.
If you need to reach someone the day of the war, for whatever reason, your best shots are posting here in this thread or using the Facebook event or reaching out to the NerfHaven page on Facebook. PMs probably will not work.
What gametypes?
Expect to play some carpe testiculum and related gametypes. There will probably be some quick-run deathmatch as well, to suit those people like Gears with a bloodlust that knows no bounds. Last year, speed rounds and freeze tag were big hits, so those will make another appearance. There will be minimal team captain team picking to keep downtime short.
Anything else?
Bring lots of water. I'll probably end up picking up a pallet of water bottles as backup but it does get hot and you will probably be running around so expect to need to drink something.
Bring lots of sunscreen, because no one wants a sunburn now or skin cancer later.
There are a lot of places to eat nearby. Traditionally, people eat at The Hat for lunch, which is conveniently about four blocks away from the war site.
Bring comfortable shoes. You will be running around.
If you have specific questions or concerns, PM me, or post them here, or whatever.
***
Attending:
Ice Nine
Zorn's Lemma
JLego
Groove
Zaxbys
Langley
Cannonball
Baghead
Apollo456
Cheerios
Ryan201821
KaneTheMediocre
Daniel Beaver
SeeingRed777 + Jamar + 2
Lam + some friends
Bert81
X-Ecution
alpha99025 + 1
CaliforniaPants
shmmee + some
Avatar of Woe (Brian)
Korned
Maybe:
Sublimedom777
Gears
Draconis
Hoongfu
Flyingchicken
Spoon
Mysterio
Juandabomb333
Silly
A Trillion Other People
Edited by Ice Nine, 28 June 2017 - 01:50 PM.0 SHARES Facebook Twitter Google Whatsapp Pinterest Print Mail Flipboard
Republicans are using spending cuts as a weapon and condition for extending unemployment benefits to millions of Americans who have lost their jobs. Republicans claim they want to cut spending by $5 billion to $6 billion each month, and on the surface it sounds like a good idea to reduce the national deficit.
At the same time though, Republicans are fighting to extend the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans that helped create the record debt we are drowning in. When Republicans gave tax cuts to rich people, they knew they were not funded, and had to let them expire after 10 years.
Republicans campaigned on fiscal responsibility and smaller government, and used the poor teabaggers to garner votes and take control of the House. But they belie their belief in fiscal responsibility when they insist on giving unfunded tax cuts to the wealthy.
Enter the poor, unemployed, and working-class Americans. Republicans and teabags label unemployment benefits an entitlement just like they call Social Security and Medicare welfare. Their goal is to privatize Social programs so Wall Street can prosper, and take away unemployment benefits to help pay for tax cuts for the wealthy.
If the Bush tax cuts expire, the wealthiest 2% of Americans will see their tax liability increase by 3%, and their net worth would not decrease. Republicans are terrified that the wealthy will stop contributing to conservatives if they don’t give them something in return. Unfortunately, now that Republicans control the House, they can sacrifice unemployed Americans in return for favors from the rich.
The outrage is that so many Americans are unemployed because corporations are allowed to outsource jobs so their profits can soar, and since the multi-national corporations get tax breaks, it is a double insult. Add in the fact that under Republican rule, owners of those corporations will continue getting tax cuts, and the outrage is blinding.
Republicans deserve credit for fooling Americans with their fiscal responsibility meme, and for convincing Americans to elect them so they can increase their donors’ corporate wealth. It is still mind-numbing to see poor, lower middle-class, and retired Americans supporting Republicans who are burying them in poverty.
Republicans obviously really don’t care about Americans or America. They pander to the rich and persecute the rest of America and feel no remorse whatsoever. They tried to block financial reforms that protect working-class Americans, and tricked teabaggers into doing the dirty work of protesting that government regulations were an intrusion into their private lives.
Now they are holding unemployed workers hostage to get more benefits for the wealthiest Americans who received unfunded tax cuts for the past ten years, and many poor people support their efforts. There is a
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Constitution) [9] [10]
David Gatchell (Independent)
James Higdon (Independent)
Michel Joseph Long (Independent)
Troy Stephen Scoggin (Independent)
Jacob Maurer (Write-In)[11]
Predictions [ edit ]
Polling [ edit ]
Poll source Date(s)
administered Sample
size Margin of
error Bob
Corker (R) Mark
Clayton (D) Other Undecided Issues and Answers Network Inc. October 16–21, 2011 609 ±4% 59% 21% 4% 15%
Hypothetical polling Poll source Date(s)
administered Sample
size Margin of
error Bob
Corker (R) Phil
Bredesen (D) Other Undecided Public Policy Polling February 9–13, 2011 500 ±4.4% 41% 46% — 12% Poll source Date(s)
administered Sample
size Margin of
error Bob
Corker (R) Jim
Cooper (D) Other Undecided Public Policy Polling February 9–13, 2011 500 ±4.4% 50% 32% — 22% Poll source Date(s)
administered Sample
size Margin of
error Bob
Corker (R) Harold
Ford, Jr. (D) Other Undecided Public Policy Polling February 9–13, 2011 500 ±4.4% 55% 32% — 14% Poll source Date(s)
administered Sample
size Margin of
error Bob
Corker (R) Bart
Gordon (D) Other Undecided Public Policy Polling February 9–13, 2011 500 ±4.4% 52% 29% — 19% Poll source Date(s)
administered Sample
size Margin of
error Bob
Corker (R) Al
Gore (D) Other Undecided Public Policy Polling February 9–13, 2011 500 ±4.4% 53% 38% — 9% Poll source Date(s)
administered Sample
size Margin of
error Bob
Corker (R) Tim
McGraw (D) Other Undecided Public Policy Polling February 9–13, 2011 500 ±4.4% 50% 28% — 22%
Results [ edit ]
United States Senate election in Tennessee, 2012[16] Party Candidate Votes % ± Total votes 2,321,477 100.0% N/A Republican hold
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]Last May, Louras’ secret plan came to light in the Boston Globe, which said: “Louras made no apologies for excluding the public from the planning. If the proposal had been floated earlier, the mayor said, the debate would have become ‘about them’ — meaning the Syrians, their culture, and possible links to terrorism — instead of whether the city had the means to accommodate the refugees.”
Yes, and they couldn’t possibly have had a public discussion about whether the migrants had possible links to terrorism. That would have been “Islamophobic.”
Well, now, even in Vermont — Vermont! — this arrogant and authoritarian mayor has received his comeuppance: he has been voted out. Bravo, Rutland voters.
“In Referendum on Refugees, Rutland Mayor Loses Reelection Bid,” by Mark Davis, Seven Days, March 7, 2017 (thanks to Creeping Sharia):The government of China is engaged in espionage overseas, thought to be directed primarily through the Ministry of State Security (MSS). It is suspected of employing a variety of tactics including cyber spying to gain access to sensitive information remotely and physical agents (HUMINT). China is believed to be engaged in industrial espionage aimed at gathering information to bolster its economy, as well as monitoring dissidents abroad such as supporters of the Tibetan independence movement and Falun Gong.[1]
Method of operation [ edit ]
It is believed that Chinese espionage is aimed at the preservation of China's national security through gaining commercial, technological, and military secrets.[2][3][4][5] It is generally believed that Chinese intelligence agencies operate differently from other espionage organizations by employing primarily academics or students who will be in their host country only a short time, rather than spending years cultivating a few high-level sources or double agents.[6][7][8] Much information about the Chinese intelligence services comes from defectors, whom the PRC accuses of lying to promote an anti-PRC agenda.[9][10][11][12] One known exception to this rule is the case of Katrina Leung, who was accused of starting an affair with an FBI agent to gain sensitive documents from him. A U.S. judge dismissed all charges against her due to prosecutorial misconduct.[13][14]
The United States believes the Chinese military has been developing network technology in recent years in order to perform espionage on other nations. Several cases of computer intrusions suspected of Chinese involvement have been found in various countries including Australia, New Zealand, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, India and the United States.[15][16][17]
In 2009, Canadian researchers say they have found evidence that Chinese hackers had gained access to computers possessed by government and private organizations in 103 countries, although researchers say there is no conclusive evidence China's government was behind it.[18] Beijing also denied involvement. The researchers said the computers penetrated include those of the Dalai Lama and Tibetan exiles.[19]
Intelligence activity worldwide [ edit ]
Africa [ edit ]
Ethiopia [ edit ]
In January 2018, Le Monde reported that the headquarters of the African Union, which had been constructed by the China State Construction Engineering Corporation, had had its computer systems compromised between 2012 and 2017, with data from AU servers being forwarded to Shanghai.[20][21][22] The building's computer system was subsequently removed and the AU refused a Chinese offer to configure the replacement system. Le Monde alleged that the AU had then covered up the hack to protect Chinese interests in the continent.[20]
China and the African Union have rejected the allegations.[23] Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn rejected the French media report, saying that he doesn't believe it.[24] Moussa Faki Mahamat, head of the African Union Commission, said the allegations in the Le Monde's report were false. "These are totally false allegations and I believe that we are completely disregarding them."[25]
Asia [ edit ]
Cambodia [ edit ]
Since at least April 2017, TEMP.Periscope, an advanced persistent threat based in China, has been hacking Cambodian organizations related to the 2018 general election.[26] Targets included the National Election Commission, the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, the Senate of Cambodia, and the Ministry of Economy and Finance.[26] The APT engaged in spear phishing against Monovithya Kem of the Cambodia National Rescue Party, sending messages which impersonated the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights.[26]
Hong Kong [ edit ]
According to Falun Gong media The Epoch Times[27] and Pan-democracy political groups,[28] China has been sending spies into Hong Kong harassing dissents and Falun Gong practitioners. In 2012, according to Oriental Daily, a Chinese security ministry official has been arrested in Hong Kong for suspicion of acting as a double agent for the United States.[29]
India [ edit ]
India has quietly informed companies to avoid using Chinese-made telecommunications equipment, fearing that it may have spy capabilities embedded within it. Also, India's intelligence service, Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) believes that China is using dozens of study centers that it has set up in Nepal near the Indian border in part for the purposes of spying on India.[30][31] In August 2011 a Chinese research vessel disguised as a fishing trawler was detected off the coast of Little Andaman, collecting data in a geostrategically sensitive region.[32][33]
The "Luckycat" hacking campaign that targeted Japan and Tibet also targeted India.[34][35] A Trojan horse was inserted into a Microsoft Word file ostensibly about India's ballistic missile defense program, allowing for the command and control servers to connect and extract information. The attacks were subsequently traced back to a Chinese graduate student from Sichuan and the Chinese government is suspected of planning the attacks.[36]
Chinese hackers linked to the Third Technical Department of the People’s Liberation Army have launched extensive and sustained hacking campaigns against the Central Tibetan Administration, based in Dharamshala.[37]
Japan [ edit ]
According to a report by Trend Micro the "Luckycat" hacker group is engaged in cyber-espionage on targets in Japan, India and Tibet. During the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami and nuclear meltdowns at Fukushima, the hackers inserted a Trojan virus into PDF attachments to emails being circulated containing information about radiation dosage measurements.[34][38] Investigation into ownership of the command and control servers by Trend Micro and The New York Times linked the malware to Gu Kaiyuan, through QQ numbers and the alias "scuhkr".[36][39] Mr. Gu is a former graduate student of the Information Security Institute of Sichuan University in Chengdu and wrote his master's thesis on computer hacking.[40] James A. Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, believes the attacks were state-sponsored.[36]
The Philippines [ edit ]
FireEye President Travis Reese has stated that the Chinese-sponsored Conference Crew, founded in 2016, has engaged in cyber-espionage against the Philippines, targeting diplomatic and national security information.[41]
Singapore [ edit ]
Huang Jing (黄靖), an academic at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, was expelled from Singapore, reportedly for working as an agent of influence for Chinese intelligence services.[42][43]
SingHealth medical data was hacked by suspected Chinese hackers around July 2018.[44]
South Korea [ edit ]
FireEye claims that two hacker operations tied to the Chinese military, dubbed Tonto Team and Stone Panda/APT10, have attempted to hack the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other targets related to the deployment of THAAD.[45][46]
China is reportedly engaged in economic espionage against South Korean technology companies, including Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix.[47]
Sri Lanka [ edit ]
In Sri Lanka, Jayalalithaa Jayaram – head of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam – stated that Chinese laborers working in parts of the country devastated by the Sri Lankan Civil War were infiltrated with Chinese spies on surveillance missions targeted at Tamil Nadu, India.[48]
Taiwan [ edit ]
The PRC and ROC regularly accuse each other of spying.[49][50]
Presidential aide Wang Jen-ping was found in 2009 to have sold nearly 100 confidential documents to China since 2007; Military intelligence officer Lo Chi-cheng was found to have been acting as a double agent in 2010 for China since 2007; Maj. Gen. Lo Hsien-che, electronic communications and information bureau chief during the administration of former President Chen Shui-bian, has been suspected of selling military secrets to Mainland China since 2004.[51]
In 2007 the Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau stated that 500 gigabyte Maxtor Basics Personal Storage 3200 hard drives produced by Seagate Technology and manufactured in Thailand may have been modified by a Chinese subcontractor and shipped with the Virus.Win32.AutoRun.ah virus.[52][53] As many as 1,800 drives sold in the Netherlands and Taiwan after August 2007 were reportedly infected with the virus, which scanned for passwords for products such as World of Warcraft and QQ and uploading them to a website in Beijing.[54]
In May 2017, Major Wang Hung-ju, a retired military police officer assigned to the National Security Bureau, was indicted on charges of spying for the People's Republic of China.[55]
Army Major General Hsieh Chia-kang, deputy commander of Matsu Defense Command, has been accused of providing intelligence to China, having been recruited by retired army colonel Hsin Peng-sheng.[56]
Zhou Hongxu (周泓旭), a graduate of National Chengchi University's MBA program, has been accused of attempting to recruit an official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the purposes of providing intelligence to China.[57][58] Zhou was reportedly instructed by China's Taiwan Affairs Office to enroll in the university in order to make friends and develop a spy ring.[58] Zhou reportedly solicited classified documents, offering trips to Japan and United States dollars in payment.[58][59]
In January 2018, it was reported that the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office is investigating if classified information regarding the Airborne Special Service Company was passed on to Zhou Hongxu (周泓旭), who was already convicted for violating the National Security Act.[60] In March 2018, a retired colonel was charged with breaching the National Security Act by the Kaohsiung District Prosecutors’ Office, which alleged that the colonel shared classified personal information and planned to develop a spy ring in Taiwan.[61] In April 2018, Hung Chin-hsi (洪金錫), a Macau-born businssman, was accused of developing a spy ring in the Ministry of Justice, on behalf of China.[62] Captain Zhen Xiaojiang (鎮小江) was convicted in 2015 of recruiting Taiwanese military officers as part of a spy ring on behalf of China, including Army Major-General Hsu Nai-chuan (許乃權).[63] Zhen sent intelligence regarding Taiwan's radar installations and Dassault Mirage 2000 fighters to China.[63] He was deported to Hong Kong in July 2018.[63]
Economic espionage [ edit ]
The Wall Street Journal reported that Taiwan has been "ground zero" for economic espionage related to integrated circuit fabrication.[64] In a review of ten prosecutions for technology-related thefts in Taiwan, WSJ found that nine of those cases involved technology transfer to China.[64] An employee of Nanya Technology Corp. allegedly stole designs for dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) on behalf of Tsinghua Holdings.[64] Hsu Chih-Peng, an engineer for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., allegedly stole microchip designs after being solicited by the Chinese government-owned Shanghai Huali Microelectronics Coration.[64]
According to Taiwanese prosecutors, engineer Wang Yongming (on behalf of Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit) engaged in espionage to steal Micron Technology microchip designs via the Taiwanese company UMC.[65] Micron alleges that UMC hired Micron's engineers, asking them to steal files on advanced memory chips.[65][64] The files Wang allegedly stole were said to be production secrets, including testing procedures related to metallization, and the DR25nmS design protocol.[64]
Vietnam [ edit ]
According to the security research firm FireEye, Chinese hackers are suspected of targeting Vietnamese government and corporate targets.[66] The hacking group, designated Conimes, phished the targets and delivered malware via a pre-2012 version of Microsoft Word.[66][67]
Europe [ edit ]
According to the cyber-security firm Area 1, hackers working for the People's Liberation Army Strategic Support Force compromised the COREU network used for communication by the European Union, allowing for the theft of thousands of low-classified documents and diplomatic cables.[68]
Belgium [ edit ]
Belgian Justice Minister Jo Vandeurzen accused the Chinese government of electronic espionage against the government of Belgium, while Foreign Minister Karel De Gucht informed the Belgian Federal Parliament that his ministry was hacked by Chinese agents. The espionage is possibly linked to Belgium hosting the headquarters of NATO and the European Union.[69]
The Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Leuven was also believed to be the center for a group of Chinese students in Europe conducting industrial espionage, operating under a front organization called the Chinese Students' and Scholars' Association of Leuven.[70][71] In 2005 a leading figure of the Association defected to Belgium, providing information to the Sûreté de l’Etat on hundreds of spies engaged in economic espionage across Europe.[72][73] The group had no obvious links to Chinese diplomats and was focused on getting moles into laboratories and universities in the Netherlands, Britain, Germany, France and Belgium.[74] The People's Daily, an organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, dismissed the reports as fabrications triggered by fears of China's economic development.[75]
Finland [ edit ]
According to the security research firm F5, Chinese hackers launched widespread attacks against Finnish Internet of things computers prior to the 2018 Russia–United States summit in Helsinki.[76][77]
France [ edit ]
There have been several incidents of suspected Chinese spies in France. This includes Shi Pei Pu, a Chinese opera singer from Beijing who convinced a French diplomat that he was a woman, and spied on France.[78]
French media also portrayed Li Li Whuang (李李), a 22-year-old Chinese intern at car parts maker Valeo, as an industrial spy.[79] Both the French prosecution and Valeo refuted media claims of spying and the case was later considered to be a psychosis.[80][81] Li Li was ultimately convicted of violating the confidentiality clause of her contract and served two months in prison, but was allowed to continue her doctoral studies at the University of Technology of Compiègne.[82]
Two French intelligence operatives, identified only as Henri M and Pierre-Marie H, were accused of communicating classified information to China.[83] Henri M was reportedly the Beijing station chief for the Directorate-General for External Security.[83][84]
According to reporting by Le Figaro, the General Directorate for Internal Security and Directorate-General for External Security believe that Chinese spies have used LinkedIn to target thousands of business and government officials as potential sources of information.[85]
Germany [ edit ]
According to reporting in Süddeutsche Zeitung, China has been soliciting information from members of the Bundestag, including offering €30,000 for insider information from one parliamentarian.[86]
Between August and September 2007 Chinese hackers were suspected of using Trojan horse spyware on various government computers, including those of the Chancellory, the Ministry of Economics and Technology, and the Ministry of Education and Research.[87][88] Germans officials believe Trojan viruses were inserted in Microsoft Word and PowerPoint files, and approximately 160 gigabytes of data were siphoned to Canton, Lanzhou and Beijing via South Korea, on instructions from the People's Liberation Army.[89]
The Federal Ministry of the Interior estimates that Chinese economic espionage could be costing Germany between 20 and 50 billion euros annually.[90] Spies are reportedly targeting mid- and small-scale companies that do not have as strong security regimens as larger corporations.[91] Berthold Stoppelkamp, head of the Working Group for Economic Security (ASW), stated that German companies had a poor security culture making espionage easier, exacerbated by the absence of a "strong, centralized" police command.[92] Walter Opfermann, a counter-intelligence expert for the state of Baden-Württemberg, claimed that China is using extremely sophisticated electronic attacks capable of endangering portions of critical German infrastructure, having gathered sensitive information through techniques such as phone hacking and Trojan emails.[93] In November 2018, German prosecutors in Cologne charged a former employee of Lanxess for engaging in industrial espionage on behalf of a Chinese copycat company.[94]
Germany suspects China of spying both on German corporations and on Uyghur expatriates living in the country.[95][96] In 2011, a 64-year-old German man was charged with spying on Uighurs in Munich between April 2008 and October 2009.[97][98] Munich is a center for expatriate Uyghurs, and in November 2009 members of the Federal Criminal Police Office arrested four Chinese nationals on charges of spying on Uyghurs. In 2007 Chinese diplomat Ji Wumin left Germany after being observed meeting with individuals engaged in surveillance of Munich Uyghurs, and German investigators suspect China is coordinating espionage activities out of its Munich consulate in the Neuhausen district.[99]
In 2017, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) published information alleging that Chinese intelligence services had created fake social media profiles on sites such as LinkedIn, using them to gather information on German politicians and government officials.[100][101] The Verfassungsschutz had previously warned that Chinese intelligence officers are making use of social networking sites such as LinkedIn and XING to recruit informants.[102] Lu Kang of the Ministry of Foreign Affais denied the allegations.[103]
Lithuania [ edit ]
Lithuanian intelligence agencies have claimed that China is engaged in an "increasingly aggressive" campaign of espionage, which includes "attempts to recruit Lithuanian citizens".[104] Darius Jauniskis, Director of the State Security Department of Lithuania, has cautioned against a potential threat posed by Huawei telecommunications equipment.[104]
Norway [ edit ]
Hackers working as part of APT 10, on behalf of the Chinese government, hacked Norwegian business software provider Visma, reportedly to gain access to the information on the company's customers.[105] Beginning on August 30, 2018, APT10 used a malware program dubbed Trochilus and accessed a backdoor, and then proceeded to use WinRAR and cURL to exfiltrate data from Visma to a Dropbox account.[106]
Poland [ edit ]
In May 2009, Stefan Zielonka, a Polish cipher officer working for the Military Information Services, disappeared. He is suspected of providing the Chinese or Russian governments with Polish and NATO cryptography information.[107][108] Zielonka's body was later retrieved from the Vistula river, although investigators remain uncertain as to whether Zielonka was attempting to defect or committed suicide, or whether the body retrieved actually was Zielonka's.[109]
In April 2018, a former member of the Parliament of Poland for Samoobrona, Mateusz Piskorski, was charged with espionage on behalf of Russia and China.[110][111]
In January 2019, the Huawei sales director for Poland, identified as Weijing Wang (a.k.a "Stanislaw Wang") was arrested, along with a former senior agent of the Agencja Bezpieczeństwa Wewnętrznego, on suspicion of espionage.[112][113]
Russia [ edit ]
In December 2007, Igor Reshetin, the Chief Executive of Tsniimash-Export, and three researchers were sentenced to prison for passing on dual-purpose technology to the Chinese. Analysts speculated that the leaked technology could help China develop improved missiles and accelerate the Chinese space program.[114][115] In September 2010, the Russian Federal Security Service detained two scientists working at the Baltic State Technical University in Saint Petersburg. The two are charged with passing on classified information to China, possibly through the Harbin Engineering University.[116][117]
Switzerland [ edit ]
According to reports in Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Chinese intelligence services have attempted to recruit Swiss university staff and researchers using LinkedIn.[118][119]
Sweden [ edit ]
Babur Maihesuti, a Chinese Uighur who became a Swedish citizen was arrested for spying on the Uighur refugee communities in Sweden, Norway, Germany and the United States, and ultimately sentenced for illegal espionage activity.[120][121][122] In April 2018 Sweden charged Dorjee Gyantsan, a 49-year old Tibetan refugee, with spying on Tibetan dissidents and refugees in Sweden between July 2015 and February 2017.[123] Gyantsan is accused of collecting information on Tibetan refugees in Sweden, and then pass that information on to Chinese officials in Finland and Poland.[123] Gyantsan was arrested upon returning from Warsaw, carrying $6,000 in cash.[124][125]
United Kingdom [ edit ]
UK officials, including experts at its MI5 intelligence agency, are fearful that China could shut down businesses in the nation with Chinese cyber attacks and spy equipment embedded in computer and telecommunications equipment.[126][127] MI5 has reportedly monitored Chinese espionage against Rio Tinto Group computers.[128]
According to Robert Hannigan, former Director of the Government Communications Headquarters, Chinese hackers have engaged in economic espionage against British universities and engineering companies, on behalf of the Chinese government.[129]
North America [ edit ]
Canada [ edit ]
Newspapers have estimated that China may have up to 1,000 spies in Canada.[130][131] The head of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Richard Fadden in a television interview was assumed to have implied that various Canadian politicians at provincial and municipal levels had ties to Chinese intelligence. In an interview, he claimed that some politicians were under the influence of a foreign government, but he withdrew the statement a few days later. It was assumed by Chinese groups in Canada, and others, that he was referring to China because in the same interview he stressed the high level of Chinese spying in Canada, however Fadden did not say specifically which country these politicians were under the influence of. His statement was withdrawn a few days later.[132]
In 2005, Canadian businessman Joe Wang stated his belief that threatening letters he received after broadcasting programs about alleged human rights abuses in China were from the Chinese consulate; one of the envelopes contained boric acid.[133]
In 2012 Mark Bourrie, an Ottawa-based freelance journalist, stated that the State Council-run Xinhua News Agency asked him to collect information on the Dalai Lama through their Ottawa bureau chief, Dacheng Zhang, by exploiting his journalistic access to the Parliament of Canada.[134] Bourrie stated that he was asked to write for Xinhua in 2009 and sought advice from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), but was ignored. Bourrie was asked to collect information on the Sixth World Parliamentarians' Convention on Tibet at the Ottawa Convention Centre, although Xinhua had no intention of writing a story on the proceedings. Bourrie stated that at that point "We were there under false pretenses, pretending to be journalists but acting as government agents."[135] Xinhua collects extensive information on Tibetan and Falun Gong dissidents in Canada, and is accused of being engaged in espionage by Chinese defector Chen Yonglin and Reporters Without Borders.[136]
On December 1, 2013, Lloyd's Register employee Qing Quentin Huang was arrested and charged with violating the Security of Information Act, for allegedly communicating classified information on the federal shipbuilding strategy to China.[137][138] Huang reportedly contacted the Chinese Embassy in Ottawa in an attempt to pass on secrets, which was detected by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, who in turn alerted the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.[138]
Between 2006 and 2010 Yang Wang, a Chinese immigrant to Canada, admitted to providing intelligence to the Ministry of State Security, including on the activities of Falun Gong.[139]
Around June 2014, the National Research Council was reportedly penetrated by Chinese state-sponsored hackers.[140]
United States [ edit ]
China is suspected of having a long history of espionage in the United States against military and industrial secrets, often resorting to direct espionage, exploitation of commercial entities, and a network of scientific, academic, and business contacts. Several U.S. citizens have been convicted for spying for China. Naturalized citizen Dongfan Chung, an engineer working with Boeing, was the first person convicted under the Economic Espionage Act of 1996. Chung is suspected of having passed on classified information on designs including the Delta IV rocket, F-15 Eagle, B-52 Stratofortress and the CH-46 and CH-47 helicopters.[141]
The U.S. Department of Justice investigation into the fund-raising activities had uncovered evidence that Chinese agents sought to direct contributions from foreign sources to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) before the 1996 presidential campaign. The Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C. was used for coordinating contributions to the DNC.[142][143]
China's espionage and cyber attacks against the US government and business organizations are a major concern, according to the seventh annual report (issued September 2009) to the US Congress of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.[144] "Although attribution is a problem in cyber attacks, the scale and coordination of the attacks strongly indicates Chinese state involvement," said commission vice chairman Larry Wortzel. "In addition to harming U.S. interests, Chinese human and cyber espionage activities provide China with a method for leaping forward in economic, technological, and military development." The report cited that the number of cyber attacks from China against the US Department of Defense computer systems had grown from 43,880 in 2007 to 54,640 in 2008, a nearly 20 percent increase.[145][146] Reuters reported that the Commission found that the Chinese government has placed many of its computer network responsibilities under the direction of the People's Liberation Army, and was using the data mostly for military purposes.[147] In response, China slammed the report as "full of prejudice," and warning it could damage China-US relations. "We advise this so-called commission not to always view China through tinted glasses," Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said.[148]
In 2008 the Chinese government was accused of secretly copying information from the laptop of Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez during a trade mission to Beijing in order to gain information on American corporations.[149][150] The allegations were subsequently dismissed by Qin Gang, a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China.[151]
In November 2005 the United States arrested four people in Los Angeles on suspicion of being involved in a Chinese spy ring.[152]
Taiwanese-American scientist Wen Ho Lee (born in Nantou, Taiwan 21 December 1939) was accused and investigated on the grounds of espionage in 1999 but was acquitted of all charges except for mishandling classified data.[153]
In response to these and other reports of cyberattacks by China against the United States, Amitai Etzioni of the Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies has suggested that the United States and China should agree to a policy of mutually assured restraint with respect to cyberspace. This would involve allowing both states to take the measures they deem necessary for their self-defense while simultaneously agreeing to refrain from taking offensive steps; it would also entail vetting these commitments.[154]
In June 2015, the United States Office of Personnel Management (OPM) announced that it had been the target of a data breach targeting the records of as many as four million people.[155] Later, FBI Director James Comey put the number at 18 million.[156] The Washington Post has reported that the attack originated in China, citing unnamed government officials.[157] James Comey said: "It is a very big deal from a national security perspective and from a counterintelligence perspective. It's a treasure trove of information about everybody who has worked for, tried to work for, or works for the United States government."[158]
Oceania [ edit ]
Australia [ edit ]
Defence Secretary Dennis Richardson has stated that China is engaged in extensive espionage against Australia, and included surveillance of Chinese Australian communities.[159] Australia believes that the Chinese government have been spying on Australian businesses.[160][161] A male Chinese student from Fujian was granted a protection visa by the Refugee Review Tribunal of Australia after revealing that he had been instructed to spy on Australian targets in exchange for an overseas scholarship, reporting to the Ministry of State Security.[162] Reported targets included Chinese students with anti-Communist sentiments and Falun Gong practitioners.[163][164]
Nicola Roxon, the Attorney-General of Australia, blocked the Shenzhen-based corporation Huawei from seeking a supply contract for the National Broadband Network, on the advice of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation.[165] The Australian government feared Huawei would provide backdoor access for Chinese cyber espionage.[166][167]
The Chinese government is suspected of orchestrating an attack on the email network used by the Parliament of Australia, allowing unauthorized access to thousands of emails and compromising the computers of several senior Australian politicians including Prime Minister Julia Gillard, Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd, and Minister of Defense Stephen Smith.[168][169]
Sheri Yan and Roger Uren were investigated by ASIO on suspicion of spying for China.[170] Oren, former Assistant Secretary responsible for the Asia section of the Office of National Assessments, was found to have removed documents pertaining to Chinese intelligence operations in Australia, and kept them in his apartment.[170] Yan was suspected of undertaking influence operations on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party, and introducing Colonel Liu Chaoying, a military intelligence officer, to Australian contacts.[171][170][172]
Hackers either working for or on behalf of the government of China are suspected as being responsible for a cyber-espionage attack against an Australian defense company.[173][174] Designated APT Alf by the Australian Signals Directorate, the hackers stole approximately 30 gigabytes of data on projects including the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the P-8 Poseidon, the C-130 Hercules and the Joint Direct Attack Munition.[173] APT Alf used a remote access tool dubbed "China Chopper".[173]
In 2017, Chinese hackers infiltrated the computers of Australian National University, potentially compromising national security research conducted at the university.[175][176] In 2015, Chinese hackers infiltrated the Bureau of Meteorology.[175]
New Zealand [ edit ]
Jian Yang, a member of the New Zealand House of Representatives, was investigated by the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service as a possibly spy due to his links to Chinese military and intelligence schools.[177] Yang reportedly failed to declare that he had taught at the Air Force Engineering University or the Luoyang People's Liberation Army University of Foreign Languages, which are commonly used as training grounds for Chinese intelligence officers.[178][179] Yang has denied the allegations that he is a spy.[180][181]
South America [ edit ]
Experts believe that China has recently increased its spy capabilities in South America, perhaps with help from the Cuban government.[182]
Peru [ edit ]
The computer security firm ESET reported that tens of thousands of blueprints were stolen from Peruvian corporations through malware, which were traced to Chinese e-mail accounts. This was done through an AutoCAD worm called ACAD/Medre.A, written in AutoLISP, which located AutoCAD files, at which point they were sent to QQ and 163.com email accounts in China.[183] ESET researcher Righard Zwienenberg claimed this was Chinese industrial espionage.[184] The virus was mostly localized to Peru but spread to a few neighboring countries before being contained.[185]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]It’s one of the photos of the year: Nigel Farage laughing like a jackass next to Donald Trump in the blinged-out lift at Trump Tower.
On Twitter, the writer Matt Haig quipped: “Look at these two young earnest revolutionaries plotting the downfall of the global elite from their humble golden elevator.”
In 2016, Trump’s presidential victory took the longstanding culture war phenomenon of “elitist anti-elitism” to a bizarre new level.
During the campaign, he positioned himself as the anti-establishment candidate, a human wrecking ball smashing the American elite into pieces. Yet he did so while boasting of his wealth and his fame and his luxury lifestyle, without any sense of disconnect whatsoever.
The 'latte libel' is a brilliant conservative strategy. The left cannot counter it with facts alone | Alex Frankel Read more
When Donald Trump Jnr told the press that the presidency would be a “step down” for his dad, he was reiterating a central theme of the Trump push: the notion that The Donald represented the antidote to “Crooked Hillary” and her establishment backers as much because of as despite his billion dollar bank balance.
Already, we’re witnessing the reverberations in Australia.
Almost immediately after the election, former MPs Mark Latham and Ross Cameron announced they’d teamed up with the Spectator’s Rowan Dean for a Trump-flavoured talk program on Sky. The show would, they said, be called Outsiders – an antidote to “an out-of-touch, inner-city leftist class”.
Think about that for a second. A newspaper editor and two ex-politicians (drawing the usual huge pensions from the public purse), sufficiently well-connected that they can make a few calls to Murdoch’s men and get themselves on air.
Somehow, though, they’re “Outsiders”.
Latham’s at least put some effort into his anti-elitist shtick, devoting his taxpayer-funded retirement to paint himself as a humble western suburbs bloke relentlessly persecuted by mean feminists and politically correct leftists and goodness knows what else.
You can’t say the same about Malcolm Turnbull. The prime minister remains the quintessential silvertail: a Sydney Grammar boy, barrister, Goldman Sachs partner and tech millionaire.
Yet after Trump’s win, Turnbull, too, began sticking it to The Man. On the ABC’s 7.30 program, he responded to tough questioning by decrying the “elite media” and its preoccupations.
How is this possible? How did anti-elitism become such an easy rhetorical strategy that even Malcolm Turnbull can employ it?
The “one weird trick” for rightwing demagogues works like this.
You tap into the immense discontent bubbling away in every developed nation, and you direct that simmering anger against the pillars of the status quo (the media, the parliament, the education system and so on), infusing your denunciation with a dose of whatever strain of bigotry prevails at that particular moment. The press is biased toward Muslims! The schools fail heterosexual students! The hospitals are in crisis because of immigrants!
Now comes the crucial part.
Your charges might be nonsensical but with luck you’ll draw liberals and the left into your snare. Rightly appalled by your racism, they’ll respond with a defence of the institutions you’ve impugned. The press isn’t biased at all! The schools are great and there’s nothing wrong with the nation’s hospitals.
Bam!
Suddenly, the charge of liberal elitism looks credible.
You’ve successfully lured progressives into taking responsibility for a status quo that most of the population, at some level or another, despises. Your opponent might think he’s standing up xenophobia but most voters will only hear an outraged leftist defending the health system that condemned poor old Auntie to wait for hours on a trolley.
Of course, the problems in the hospitals really pertain to funding cuts rather than immigration – but that doesn’t matter. You’ve manoeuvred liberals so that, instead of voicing aspirations for change, they’ve identified themselves with a hated business-as-usual.
The Trumpite slogan “Make America Great Again” offers the perfect real-world example. In his rallies and press conferences, Trump implied (or simply asserted) that Mexicans and Muslims were responsible for the nation’s decline. Clinton shot back by declaring that America was already great – and so the trap was sprung.
Rather than persuading the public that immigrants weren’t to blame for low wages, the Democrats sounded like they saw nothing wrong with declining living standards. Clinton thus
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although this 6TB model represents the best value for money. There's no need for any mains cables either, just plug and play, and USB 3.0 will keep things transferring speedily. The price is kept low by the fact this is a standard HDD, so read speeds won't be as fast as the SSD hard drives like the Samsung. If you get a 6TB drive... that'll probably store between 80-100 PS4 games, so you'll never need to worry about space again.
Adata SD700 SSD
4. Adata SD700 SSD - 512GB
A durable, high-spec SSD hard drive going cheap
Capacity: 512GB | Storage Type: SSD
Tough and very well made
Incredible read-speeds
Currently on offer
Less storage space than regular HDDs
If you're keen to get an SSD, to take advantage of the incredible read and copy speeds they give you (this one manages up to 440MBps read and write speeds, which is FAST), this Adata SD700 is the one to buy right now. The 256GB version is normally sub $80 / £80, which is great, but you can currently get the 512GB model for about 30% off the normal price. Here's the link to the best offer. The Adata drive has one of the sturdiest casings of all HDDs, and it's actually waterproof, dust-proof and shock-proof. So, if you're carrying your HDD around to work or your friends' houses... this tough little cookie will store everything very safely. It's fairly light too, not that most HDDs on this list weight much, but it's another benefit to consider. Sure, you can get more storage with regular HDDs, but this is a great price for an SSD.
Samsung SSD T5 500GB
5. Samsung SSD T5 500GB
Technically the best PS4 external hard drive you can buy... but it's expensive!
Capacity: 500GB | Storage Type: SSD
SSD means faster loading
Adds an extra 500GB of storage
Expensive compared to HDD
Yes, it's expensive, but this is technically the best PS4 external hard drive we've tested. The difference in price is down to the fact this is an SSD (solid state drive), which essentially means it does everything faster. That means quicker loading times for you, and faster transfer speeds between drive and PS4. It's different for PS4 but SSDs generally offer 3-4 times the read-speed (although don't expect to such a huge difference with game loading), and 3-4 times the file transfer speed over standard HDDs. They're more reliable, with a lower read fail-rate, although this is a pretty marginal benefit. It's silent too, as there are no moving parts in SSD hard drives. If you're spending this much money, it's worth considering the 1TB model and the 2TB model... although you can expect an eye-watering increase in price. As a rough guide, you'll get between 12-15 full-sized games on here, if you assume download sizes to be between 30GB-50GB. If you throw in DLC and updates for persistent online games like Destiny 2, Elder Scrolls Online etc then you may want to start thinking about 1TB. The SSD makes a difference overall, but you really pay for it.
Best PS4 internal hard drives
1. Seagate FireCuda 2.5" 2TB SSHD
The best internal HDD you can buy
Capacity: 2TB | Storage Type: SSHD
Four times the size of the standard PS4 hard drive
SSD-like performance
More expensive than traditional HDD
If you want even more storage, Seagate's FireCuda 2.5" 2TB drive is ideal for quadrupling the space on your PS4 and it ups the speed too with its hybrid drive functionality. It's a case of balancing up how much you think you'll really appreciate the speed boost but the FireCuda is ideal in terms of size and is priced competitively for a SSHD drive. While it's not fully solid state, you'll definitely notice the difference in speed so if you're not too worried about your budget, the 2TB FireCuda is one of the best PS4 hard drives around. Say hello to storing endless videos of your Fortnite Battle Royale near-misses.
2. Seagate 2TB Laptop HDD ST2000LM007
Loads of storage for a great price
Capacity: 2TB | Storage Type: HDD
Quadruples storage vs. PS4 stock HDD
Great storage-to-dollar ratio
5400 RPM spindle speed
Not an SSD
If maxing storage and affordability is a bigger priority than improving access speed, you’re not going to do better than Seagate’s 2TB Laptop HDD. This drive gives your PlayStation 4 quadruple the storage capacity that it came with, which should keep you knee deep in PlayStation Plus games well into the foreseeable future. The main downside with this drive is that unlike Seagate’s 1TB SSHD, this drive is a traditional hard drive spinning at 5400 RPM, which is the same speed as the stock PS4 hard drive. This means that, while you’ll have plenty of space for games, they’re not going to load or install any faster.
3. Seagate 1TB Gaming SSHD ST1000LM014
Best balance of price and performance
Capacity: 1TB | Storage Type: SSHD
SSD-like performance without the SSD price
Doubles storage capacity over stock PS4 HDD
5400RPM spindle speed
The Seagate 1TB Gaming SSHD offers some of the improvements granted by a full SSD (shorter load times, faster installs, etc) without the enormous markup. The caveat, of course, is that since this SSHD does also rely on a physical disk spinning at 5400RPM, the improvements may not be as dramatic as with a traditional SSD. In practice though, this isn’t that huge of a concession to make for the money you’re saving, as different games will/won’t take advantage of your drive’s enhanced capabilities on a case-by-case basis. Regardless, this drive will double your storage capacity and in many cases increase performance, which are great benefits to walk away with for less than $100/£100.
4. Samsung 850 EVO 1TB
State-of-the-art speed
Capacity: 1TB | Storage Type: SSD
Full SSD
More reliable than traditional HDD/SSHD
An expensive option
No guarantee of dramatic results
From a technical standpoint, solid state drives are superior to hybrid and traditional disk drives in every way. Read/write speeds are much, much faster, power consumption is lower, and since solid state drives have no moving parts, they’re immune to many of the common ailments that so often malign disk drives. SSDs are fast, efficient drives that provide huge theoretical performance boosts while simultaneously reducing the number of possible complications over time. The catch, of course, is in the cash.
SSDs have the worst storage-to-budget ratio of any type of drive, meaning that you’ll pay a lot more money for a lot less storage. In a PC, this is usually an acceptable trade due to the proven performance enhancements associated with an SSD. In a PlayStation 4, however, these enhancements are less of a guaranteed constant. They definitely exist, but the degree to which they exist will change on a game-by-game basis. Only you can decide whether the cost of entry is worth the peace of mind that comes with having the highest potential for performance. The Samsung 850 EVO is a great choice and for the ultimate PS4 hard drive upgrade you can also pick up a massive 2TB version of the Samsung 850 EVO... or even a 4TB version if money is no object!
5. Western Digital Black 6TB WD6001FZWX
Massive storage... with some drawbacks
Capacity: 6TB | Storage Type: HDD
Tremendous storage capacity
Faster than stock PS4 HDD
Additional accessory required
Slower than SSHD or SSD
The WD Black 6TB is your gateway to nigh unheard-of amounts of storage, provided that you’re willing to drop some coin and increase the size of your console. The WD Black is a 3.5” HDD, which means it’s the type of drive normally found in a desktop computer, rather than the laptop-sized 2.5” drives the PlayStation 4 was designed for. This means that it won’t actually fit inside the PlayStation, and will instead have to live on the hood of the console in an external enclosure -- specifically, the Nyko Data Bank. This enclosure wraps over the top of the console and routes its SATA/power connections through the PS4’s 2.5” drive bay, allowing for the installation of a 3.5” drive.
PlayStation 4s with a model number below CUH-1200 can accommodate drives up to 4TB in capacity, while PS4s with a model number above CUH-1200 can handle up to 8TB. We selected the WD Black 6TB over an 8TB drive as a comfortable compromise between capacity and price, but if cost is no object, the Seagate Enterprise 8TB is also a tremendous hard drive. Regardless, this endeavor is primarily recommended for those who plan on buying and simultaneously installing several hundred games. The average consumer, while sure to appreciate the luxury of such an enormous drive, can likely get by without it.
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Some online stores give us a small cut if you buy something through one of our links. Read our affiliate policy for more info.Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin is having a hell of a time keeping her satanic groups straight, and the mix-up may require her to make a rather awkward apology.
The Republican governor on Monday condemned a planned "Black Mass" scheduled for September 21 at the city-owned Oklahoma City Civic Center, blasting the notion that "New York City'satanists' would travel all the way to Oklahoma to peddle their filth here."
"This 'Black Mass' is a disgusting mockery of the Catholic faith, and it should be equally repellent to Catholics and non-Catholics alike," Fallin said in a statement. "It may be protected by the First Amendment, but that doesn't mean we can't condemn it in the strongest terms possible for the moral outrage which it is. It is shocking and disgusting that a group of New York City'satanists' would travel all the way to Oklahoma to peddle their filth here. I pray they realize how hurtful their actions are and cancel this event."
But it seems that the shocking, disgusting and morally-outrageous filth in question was not being imported from New York City, but was actually home-grown filth from the great state of Oklahoma.
On Tuesday the Satanic Temple of New York City demanded that Fallin apologize for her statement, saying that they have nothing to do with the planned Oklahoma City Black Mass.
In fact, they say they aren't endorsing the event at all because the event's actual organizers aren't "acting responsibly."
"We have nothing to do with this event whatsoever," Satanic Temple spokesperson Lucien Greaves told Oklahoma City's KFOR-TV.
"For the Governor to display such a complete failure of due diligence, to the point of erroneously focusing public ire on us, is unconscionable. We're disgusted. We have sown a great deal of good will in Oklahoma and this seems to be a deliberate attempt to undermine that. I feel the Governor owes our organization an apology."
The governor's statement follows similar statements from Catholic Archbishop Paul Coakley, who fears that a Black Mass–which he says will feature "urination, nudity and other unspeakable acts"–will allow dark powers to percolate through the streets of Oklahoma City.
"The Satanic ritual that is scheduled to be performed at our Civic Center is to invoke those dark powers, which I believe are very real and call them into our city, into our community." said Coakley, who says that civic facilities should be reserved for "positive" events.
The Oklahoma City Black Mass (great seats still available!) is being organized by Adam Daniels–a self-described "high priest" of the satanic group "Dakhma of Angra Mainyu" who has organized three similar events in the Civic Center since 2010.
Daniels (aka "The Dark Lord") is also a registered sex offender who was convicted of having a sexual relationship with a female prisoner while he worked as a guard at an Oklahoma prison.
Oklahoma City Civic Center officials say that they rented the facility out to Daniels' group for five hours at $420. The officials had previously noted that they can't deny use of the facility to any group based on their content, even if others find it offensive.
They also noted that nobody actually attended Daniels' previous Black Mass–something that Greaves says is likely to change this time thanks to the combined marketing efforts of hand-wringing elected officials and the local Catholic diocese.
Unfortunately, Catholics and local officials seem only too happy to give them all of the publicity they like. If they instead let the event pass without feigning superstitious outrage, I'm confident it would be an underwhelming, under-attended event.
While the Satanic Temple of New York City say that they have nothing to do with next month's naked piss fest, they have made their presence known in Oklahoma in the recent past by working to get a monument to Ol' Pitch erected in the state capitol building.
Image via Singout.orgMorally ambivalent
By Anonymous, Submitted on 2018-09-25
This is a hard book to rate. The writing is well done and the story is compelling. I have a deep respect for the author. He has developed a nuanced view of the Gospel and seems to carry nothing but forgiveness and love in his heart when he has ample reason the feel otherwise.
But it is hard to know what moral to draw from the book. Active members of the church will likely feel this is a bold story of acceptance and repentance. Friends or family of gay church members will find an example in Toms parents that shows them they can continue to openly and fully love others even if they don't understand them. These groups will celebrate this book. And they should. The fact that deseret book can publish such a story signals a big step forward.
But what about a person who feels torn between their love of the church and the reality that they themselves are gay? Tom goes to great lengths trying to avoid being held up as an example of the best way to handle this situation. But for many people, he is the only example they are aware of. Is a gay Mormon to follow his example and persue a long term same sex relationship? If so, they will likely find themselves not only excommunicated for thier behavior, but their children will be ostracized from the church as well.
Put another way: the protagonist of this story appears to be Toms family, who loved him despite not understanding him and despite what their environment suggested they should do. But who is that antagonist? It appears to be the church itself. It is the church who continues to uphold the policies that caused the problem for Tom in the first place.
For my part I give 5 stars to Tom for writing a thought provoking and beautiful book. I give 1 star to the church owned deseret book who would publish such a book without a fair and proportionate acknowlegement of the church's role in causing so much pain to this wonderful man. The fact that I would possibly reccomend this book to active lds members with gay relatives but would not reccomend it to gay Mormons themselves speaks volumes about which sheep the church is interested in shepherding.Althought they are targeted less frequently than women, Indian men are also victims of molestation.
L ast week a male friend of mine told me that he felt sexually harassed.
He thought I had reacted quite casually. It raised a storm -- when men face harassment, it's just not the same. It doesn't make headlines. "Why is it atrocious when a woman feels harassed and almost a joke when a man gets molested?" he asked me angrily. Quite naturally, I began wondering about it.
Molestation
This friend of mine had gone to get an Ayurvedic massage at a medically certified massage centre somewhere in South India. Everything was fine until the masseur began fondling his genitals.
"He came close to my groin a few times and then finally held my penis and started stroking it. I didn't know how to react -- I kept wondering if it was normal procedure. I was damn uncomfortable," he told me.
© www.lovematters.info is a journalistic website about love, sex, relationships and everything in between.
Disclaimer: The opinions and conclusions expressed in this article are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of rediff.comThat’s it then. The end of 112 years of playing in the football league. Leyton Orient gone. Not many people will care. We never won anything of note. Ever. All those Spurs and particularly Arsenal fans who bleat about how tough it is for them up there in LaLaLand will barely notice. Don’t get me started on West Ham, squatting in their big fancy (free gift from the tax payer) stadium next door like the massive bloke on the train who takes up two seats and uses up all the oxygen.
We were never fashionable and in recent years there didn’t seem much point to the Os being in Leyton at all, with all the historic fans who used to turn up ten or twenty thousand at a time now living out in Essex, somewhere. Harlow Orient. That would have made sense. It still would, somehow, if the club can ever be saved by the fans, for the fans. Maybe there is a way out of the financial mess. Other clubs have been revived and returned. But let’s be honest, we were never great at comebacks. Three nil down with five minutes to go? Time to head for the pub, not dream dreams. They almost never came true.
Mine started in 1978, which was cruel. Our finest moment in living memory, as it turned out. My own memory says we won the FA Cup quarter-final against high-flying Boro in extra time with an overhead kick from outside the box, by Peter Kitchen. It’s not entirely true, but I was only 10 years old.Call it the smartphone-shopper's dilemma: If you want a state-of-the-art model like the HTC One M8 or the Samsung Galaxy S5, be prepared to shell out $600 to $700 -- or get in bed with a carrier for another two years in exchange for a subsidized price.
Last year, Google introduced a third option in the form of the Nexus 5, a powerful but unlocked phone starting at $349. Not only was the hardware more affordable, but you could take it to just about any carrier for contract-free service.
Following that same model, here comes the OnePlus One, a bleeding-edge unlocked phone starting at $299. But can a China-based startup really compete with the likes of Google?
Surprise: It does compete effectively with Google -- and with HTC, Motorola and Samsung. The One delivers virtually unrivaled bang for the buck, and although it's not without a few rough edges, it may just be the smartphone Android fanboys have been waiting for.
However, before I get into the details, there's a major caveat: At press time, you need an invitation to place an order. To come by one of those, you need to know someone who has already bought one (early invitees receive additional invitations to hand out). According to the website, there's another possibility: You can try "entering contests and promotional events hosted on our OnePlus Forums or social media channels." Alas, I couldn't track down any of either.
A company rep promised ramped-up production and easier-to-come-by invites as of early July, but wouldn't share any details about a traditional ordering process.
I tested my unit with H2O Wireless, an AT&T mobile virtual network operator (MVNO). Although the One supports both GSM and WCDMA bands, here in the U.S. it's compatible with only AT&T and T-Mobile (and their various MVNOs). Sorry, Sprint and Verizon Wireless fans: It doesn't work with their CDMA networks.
Design
Though svelte and curvy, the One probably won't win any beauty contests, especially if it's competing with the silvery metal likes of an HTC One M8. Even so, I can't help comparing it to the Millennium Falcon: It's got it where it counts.
With its 5.5-in. Gorilla Glass 3 display, the One falls squarely into phablet territory, a term I despise but must apply here. It positively dwarfs an iPhone 5s and yet it's surprisingly thin, with a depth of only 0.35 in. I found the tapered 6-x-3-in. body comfortable to hold, and always expected to feel more heft when I picked it up. At 5.7 oz., the One is incredibly light for its size.
Its non-removable back plate, however, may be the ugliest I've seen on a smartphone. The "sandstone black" color is more of a dark, depressing gray (think: floor mat), and the surface has an almost cloth-like roughness. OnePlus plans to offer cases for the phone, including a couple of snazzy-looking yellow and orange numbers, but they're not available yet. My guess is you'll want one -- and not just for protection.
The power button gets a little lost along the right edge, as it's located roughly two-fifths of the way down from the top and is practically flush with the bezel. Your index finger may light on it when you grip the phone in your left hand, but I still found myself searching for the power button much of the time. On the opposite edge, the volume rocker is similarly slim and hard to locate by touch.
Speaking of hard to find, the One includes three capacitive buttons below the screen. But they're small and non-standard in layout, with the Back button on the right and Menu on the left. Worse still, they're nearly impossible to see owing to barely-there backlighting. I could find no setting for making them brighter. Thankfully, you can toggle an onscreen navigation bar that gives you the "correct" layout and bigger, brighter buttons -- but it does eat into your screen estate a bit.
(There's an ironic upside to this: The three capacitive buttons make the phone a bit easier to operate one-handed, though anyone buying a model with a 5.5-in. display should recognize the inherent difficulties of that proposition.)
The One's other design elements are unremarkable, including a headphone jack on the top edge, a micro-USB port flanked by speakers on the bottom and a camera lens embedded into the upper rear. There's also a multicolor LED, used for notifications, to the left of the earpiece.
Features
On paper, this phone dresses to impress. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 quad-core processor powers CyanogenMod 11S, a distribution of Android 4.4 that offers more customization options out of the box than you get from vanilla Android. It's also stocked with 3GB of DDR3 RAM and, oddly, your choice of 16GB of storage ($299) or 64GB ($349). There's no 32GB option, nor is there a micro SD slot. For most users, the choice is obvious: Spend the extra $50.
The phone offers Bluetooth 4.0, dual-band Wi-Fi and NFC.
The IPS LCD screen is a behemoth, of course, but razor-sharp at 1920 x 1080 pixels and 401 pixels per inch. Screen quality can be a subjective thing, but I found the colors vibrant and pleasing, especially in games like Asphalt 8, and was especially impressed by how visible the display remained under bright sunlight (so long as you crank the brightness to maximum).
However, viewed alongside an iPhone 5s with the Kindle app running on both, it's clear which screen delivers brighter whites. Would you find the One's slightly yellow-tinged display disappointing in day-to-day use? I didn't, and I read a lot of stuff on the Web. Just be aware it's not the whitest LCD out there.
One example of the aforementioned CyanogenMod goodness: You can adjust screen brightness by swiping left or right along the omnipresent status bar. Another: Double-tapping the screen wakes the phone (a nice workaround for that hard-to-find power button) and drawing a "V" -- even when the screen is off -- toggles the dual-LED flashlight.
Camera
Those LEDs also provide the lighting for the One's rear camera: the impressive-sounding Sony Exmor IMX214 with f/2.0 aperture. It employs a 13-megapixel sensor and those dual LEDs promise extra lighting in dark environments -- though it's not as sophisticated as the iPhone 5s' True Tone system, so the camera is really just blasting extra light (usually to the subjects' detriment).
The front camera does a better-than-average job snapping selfies thanks to its wide-angle lens, which captures a wider field of view than, say, my iPhone 5s.
As for video, the One can capture not only 1080p, but also ultra-high definition (UHD -- also known as 4K and 2160p). It offers a 120fps slow-motion mode as well, though this requires you to downshift from 1080p to 720p -- a fact you discover only after trying to record at 1080p, at which you're limited to 60fps. (OnePlus needs to tweak the software so you can't select 120fps if you've also selected 1080p.)
The CyanogenMod Camera app is a joy to use, with clear onscreen controls and plenty of scene modes. You can select one of the latter via a typical menu, but it also lets you swipe up and down in the viewfinder to quickly "dial" through the available modes. That's so much faster than venturing into a menu over and over again until you find a scene setting you like.
After shooting in a variety of low-light and indoor/outdoor settings, I can attest that, while colors felt a bit muted and exposure wasn't always consistent, overall, the camera performed admirably. Low-light shots in particular were nearly as good as those captured with an iPhone 5s, and 120fps video -- even at the lower resolution -- looked silky-smooth. I'm fairly forgiving when it comes to smartphone photography, coveting convenience and versatility over perfect color accuracy, and I had few complaints with the One's camera.
In fact, the only real downside I discovered was a lengthy shutter lag (1-2 seconds, I'd say) when shooting in low light with the flash enabled.
Performance
The OnePlus One is as fast and responsive as any phone I've used. Apps loaded anywhere between instantly and quickly, though that's hardly the most telling indicator of performance. My preferred informal test is to run about a dozen apps simultaneously, then fire up the browser and see if there's any lag when I zoom in or out. Here, there was zero: The screen immediately snapped to whatever size I chose.
At a Glance OnePlus One OnePlus Price: $299 Pros: Big, beautiful screen; screaming processor; great battery life, smart CyanogenMod deployment; unlocked for use with GSM networks, half the price of competing unsubsidized phones Cons:Unappealing backplate; muted colors from the camera; not compatible with CDMA networks; not available except with invite
Battery life has long been one of my chief complaints with Android devices, especially when it comes to simple idling: I can leave a half-charged phone on my nightstand and wake up to find it dead. Not so the One: Even when I barely touched it for a couple days, it retained most of its charge. And on days when I used it heavily, it survived from morning till night with power to spare. Its 3,100mAh battery can't be removed, but I suspect few users would bother to carry a spare anyway.
Heading into this review, I'd read some reports indicating low call volume on preproduction Ones. My unit had no such problems; callers came through loud and clear, and reported similarly good voice quality at their end. Speakerphone calls were sufficiently loud, but otherwise unremarkable. The embedded pair of speakers also produced decent, if not especially loud, audio for the likes of games and music, though, as with most phones, your grip can end up muffling or redirecting the sound.
Bottom line
What really constitutes a "premium" smartphone nowadays? Is it metal construction? Advanced features like waterproofing and wireless charging? The OnePlus One offers none of those amenities, yet there's no question this is a high-end handset, one packed with a powerful processor, a beautiful screen, tons of storage and a really good Android experience in the form of CyanogenMod.
And that price. The best comparison is the unlocked Google Nexus 5, which starts at $349 for the 16GB model. (It's $399 for 32GB, but there's not even a 64GB version available.) It has a similar processor to the One, but also a smaller screen and battery. On the flipside, it's a prettier phone, at least from the rear, and it delivers unmodded Android, which some users are sure to prefer.
However, the hardcore Android crowd positively reveres CyanogenMod, and with good reason: It's easy on the eyes, full of clever contrivances and endlessly hackable. That it's baked into the One's DNA will be reason enough for the techie crowd to buy in.
For everyone else, there are plenty more reasons. The One instantly joins the ranks of powerhouse Android phones, but sets itself apart with a much lower price. In fact, if it's a phablet you're after, nothing else comes close.
Although right now, the real problem to getting a OnePlus One is -- getting a OnePlus One.
This article, OnePlus One deep-dive review: Unbeatable value for Android geeks, was originally published at Computerworld.com.SANAA (Reuters) - The leader of Yemen’s Houthis urged his militia on Sunday to fight on against Yemen’s Gulf Arab-backed government, dismissing its recapture of Aden last month as a ‘limited’ achievement made possible by Ramadan.
Southern Resistance fighters gather in the al-Alam entrance of Yemen's southern port city of Aden, after taking control from Houthi fighters July 31, 2015. REUTERS/Stringer
In a speech live on television apparently aimed at shoring up the morale of his men, Abdel-Malek al-Houthi accused his foes of resorting to alliances with both the Islamic State militant group and Israel in their assault on the southern port city.
Houthi said Aden’s fall occurred only because some Houthis and allied fighters had returned home to be with their families at the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. He said a political solution to the war was still possible.
“Continue and move in your resistance. You are in a strong position. And you are on the way to win,” he said. “We are in a battle, a great battle, in which we must use all our efforts.”
The government retook much of Aden in July, supported by air strikes waged since late March by Saudi Arabia and its regional allies who are trying to end Houthi control over much of the country and return President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi from exile.
“The enemy, when it threw all its weight and carried out thousands of raids, succeeded in limited achievements. They took advantage of an opportunity,” Houthi said, referring to Ramadan.
“A political solution is still possible, internally,” he said of the four-month-old war, without elaborating.
A Saudi citizen was killed in shelling fired across the border from Yemen into the southwest of Saudi Arabia on Sunday, the official SPA news agency reported. A shell fell on a house around dawn in Najran province, civil defence department spokesman Ali bin Omair al-Shahran was quoted as saying.
The Houthi-controlled Saba news agency reported that Houthis and allies among army units loyal to former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh fired artillery shells at al Radeef Saudi military site in Jizan, a southwest region of the kingdom.
The bombardment killed a number of Saudi soldiers, the agency said, quoting a military source. Reuters could not independently verify the information.
The Houthis and Saleh loyalists also shelled the al-Mazaab and al Ain Hara Saudi military camps in Jizan, it reported.
Alhadath TV channel, part of Saudi-owned Al Arabiya TV, reported late on Sunday that Houthi forces executed 11 resistance fighers captured in the southern province of Lahej. Reuters could not independently verify the information.This is going to be a big event. We’re expecting to hear about Microsoft’s Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL handsets, a new Surface Pro 4, Microsoft Band 2, and perhaps some surprises from the Xbox and Surface teams. For all of the details on what to expect — including which of these announcements are guaranteed — we've put together a full preview of the event below. The event itself kicks off Tuesday, October 6th at 10AM ET / 7AM PT. As always, you'll be able to follow along with our live blog for immediate updates on Microsoft’s announcements.
Microsoft is kicking its holiday season off with a press event in New York City next week. Normally you’d expect the company to announce a couple of devices, but this event is going to be unusually huge for Microsoft. The dream of Windows 10 running across multiple devices is finally coming alive, and Microsoft’s event is all about new hardware for its new operating system.
Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge
Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL Microsoft’s event will mark the first time the company announces new Windows 10 Mobile hardware. While the operating system is still, technically, in development, Microsoft will announce two new flagships next week: the Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL. Both handsets aren’t going to be a huge departure from the existing design of Lumia phones, and leaks have given us a good idea about what to expect. Windows Hello / Continuum The most exciting part of these phones could be around new features in Windows 10 Mobile. Both the Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL are expected to support Windows Hello, a new option that lets you log into a phone with just your face. Microsoft is also introducing the idea of Continuum with Windows 10 Mobile, giving owners the ability to transform their phones into PCs. No Surface phone just yet It works wirelessly or by using a new Continuum dock. The dock will let you use a keyboard, mouse, and display to extend your phone. Windows 10 Mobile’s apps and UI will scale up for the larger display, making it more like a full PC. Several companies have tried this in the past, but Microsoft’s implementation looks excitingly different. Specifications Microsoft’s Lumia 950 XL is the larger of the two devices, with a 5.7-inch WQHD display and a 20-megapixel camera at the rear. Both phones will have USB Type-C charging and share specifications like 3GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, and the 20-megapixel camera. Most of the differences are in size and processors. The smaller Lumia 950 will include a 5.2-inch WQHD display and a Snapdragon 808 processor, while the Lumia 950 XL will use the faster Snapdragon 810 chip. Accessories Microsoft’s phone accessories are usually limited to boring cases or Bluetooth speakers, but it sounds like the company has some interesting additions to share. Rumors suggest that the larger Lumia 950 XL will include support for the Surface Pen and a new smart cover that has a circular cut out for easy access to notifications. That could turn the Lumia 950 XL into more of a Galaxy Note competitor, and given its large size, the pen addition makes a lot of sense. Microsoft’s Display Dock will be the official name of the Continuum dock, complete with a USB Type-C connector and traditional USB port to connect a mouse and keyboard. The Display Dock will also include a DisplayPort to connect to a monitor.
Surface Pro 4 A refined Surface pro Everyone has been waiting for a successor to the popular Surface Pro 3, and Microsoft is about to unveil its latest tablet / laptop hybrid next week. Unlike the company’s Lumia phones, Microsoft hasn’t managed to leak its own announcements so there are not a lot of rumors about what the company is planning. Microsoft previously promised that a Surface Pro 3 successor would work with existing accessories like the Type Cover, charger, and dock. That means the design of the Surface Pro 4 can’t alter very much, or can it? A new display We’re hearing that Microsoft will squeeze a larger display into the Surface Pro 4, with thinner bezels on the device and a much higher resolution. This could be as a high as 4K or even 5K, suggesting that the display will be a key element of the Surface Pro 4. Alongside these changes the Surface Pro 4 will likely be lighter, and could even be thinner than its predecessor. If there are any significant physical changes, then older docks will still work with spacer attachments. A better stylus Apple focused on the accuracy of the iPad Pro stylus, and Microsoft will likely reveal some improvements with the Surface Pro 4 pen accuracy. The software maker acquired Surface Pen technology from N-trig earlier this year, and we’re expecting improved accuracy and better touch sensitivity to be part of Microsoft’s Surface Pro 4. Windows Hello While some machines are shipping with cameras that support Windows Hello, it’s unlikely that the Surface Pro 4 will feature one that’s compatible. Instead, Microsoft may opt for a fingerprint reader on the Surface Type Cover to let you log into Windows 10. Microsoft’s new Type Cover will also include better key spacing, a larger trackpad, and no more pen loop. Fear not, the pen loop will be replaced with an improved way of attaching your stylus to the Surface Pro 4. Surface Laptop Microsoft might have a big surprise ready for next week. While the Surface Pro 4 won’t look hugely different to the Surface Pro 3, Microsoft is also planning a larger model. It’s not clear exactly what this will be named, but its features will make it more laptop-like than any other Surface before it. 14-inch surface expected Rumors have suggested Microsoft will opt for a 14-inch display in this particular model, complete with a Windows Hello camera for logging into Windows 10 with just your face. If Microsoft doesn’t cancel this device at the last minute (like it did with the Surface Mini)
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experienced ‘staying’ between other waves. Therefore, diversity effects among movers would conflate the two types of change.
An alternative approach is to subdivide the sample by observations within individuals ( Longhi, 2013 ). If an individual is in the same community in two or more consecutive waves these observations are classified as a ‘staying’ period. If an individual is in a different community in two or more consecutive waves, these observations are classified as a ‘moving’ period. Individuals can therefore appear as both, movers in one model but stayers in another. 12 While the minimum n of observations for each individual is 2, in the ‘staying’ sample, 65% of individuals have three waves of data. Given that most people who move wards only do so once between waves, 38% of individuals have three waves in the ‘moving’ sample. 13 This method generates more accurate estimates for changes in diversity stemming from moving and staying. 14
Results
We first test the cross-sectional association between ethnic diversity and attachment. Model 1 ( Table 2 ) shows a multi-level random intercept logistic regression (observations nested in individuals nested in households nested in wards), using three waves of pooled data, and full individual-/community-level covariates. In line with the literature, diversity exhibits a significant, negative association with attachment. Community disadvantage and rural indicators also have significant associations. Previous studies conclude from this that living in diverse environments causes a decline in attachment. However, these results may be biased by unobserved heterogeneity. We therefore turn to fixed-effects panel models.
Table 2. Modelling method Model 1 Model 2 HLM pooled cross-sectional Fixed-effects Sample type All individuals All individuals % aged 65 + years 2.447 2.675 (1.758) (1.825) % in agricultural work 6.566* 5.130 (3.283) (3.810) Material disadvantage −0.349** −0.244 + (0.131) (0.132) % without degrees −5.234*** −3.963** (1.272) (1.280) Density −0.003 −0.001 (0.004) (0.004) Ethnic diversity −2.338** −3.923*** (0.719) (0.942) Constant 8.894*** (1.449) Random-effects parameters Ward intercept 0.238 (0.102) Household intercept 0.655 (0.086) Person intercept −0.139 (0.88) N (observations) 12,371 1,777 Modelling method Model 1 Model 2 HLM pooled cross-sectional Fixed-effects Sample type All individuals All individuals % aged 65 + years 2.447 2.675 (1.758) (1.825) % in agricultural work 6.566* 5.130 (3.283) (3.810) Material disadvantage −0.349** −0.244 + (0.131) (0.132) % without degrees −5.234*** −3.963** (1.272) (1.280) Density −0.003 −0.001 (0.004) (0.004) Ethnic diversity −2.338** −3.923*** (0.719) (0.942) Constant 8.894*** (1.449) Random-effects parameters Ward intercept 0.238 (0.102) Household intercept 0.655 (0.086) Person intercept −0.139 (0.88) N (observations) 12,371 1,777 View Large
Table 2. Modelling method Model 1 Model 2 HLM pooled cross-sectional Fixed-effects Sample type All individuals All individuals % aged 65 + years 2.447 2.675 (1.758) (1.825) % in agricultural work 6.566* 5.130 (3.283) (3.810) Material disadvantage −0.349** −0.244 + (0.131) (0.132) % without degrees −5.234*** −3.963** (1.272) (1.280) Density −0.003 −0.001 (0.004) (0.004) Ethnic diversity −2.338** −3.923*** (0.719) (0.942) Constant 8.894*** (1.449) Random-effects parameters Ward intercept 0.238 (0.102) Household intercept 0.655 (0.086) Person intercept −0.139 (0.88) N (observations) 12,371 1,777 Modelling method Model 1 Model 2 HLM pooled cross-sectional Fixed-effects Sample type All individuals All individuals % aged 65 + years 2.447 2.675 (1.758) (1.825) % in agricultural work 6.566* 5.130 (3.283) (3.810) Material disadvantage −0.349** −0.244 + (0.131) (0.132) % without degrees −5.234*** −3.963** (1.272) (1.280) Density −0.003 −0.001 (0.004) (0.004) Ethnic diversity −2.338** −3.923*** (0.719) (0.942) Constant 8.894*** (1.449) Random-effects parameters Ward intercept 0.238 (0.102) Household intercept 0.655 (0.086) Person intercept −0.139 (0.88) N (observations) 12,371 1,777 View Large
As fixed-effects logistic regressions only use within-individual variation, cases where attachment does not change between waves dropout of the conditional likelihood function. Attachment is relatively stable across all three waves, with only 14% of individuals reporting a change. Thus, the n of observations is lower in our fixed-effects models, potentially resulting in type II errors.
Model 2 shows the fixed-effects analysis on the full sample. Community diversity’s coefficient is significant and negative, indicating that a change in diversity is associated with a change in attachment. Changing community material/status disadvantage also significantly predict changes in attachment, although the rural indicator is no longer significant. It is also notable that relative to the other indicators, diversity has become stronger. 15 These findings therefore also suggest caution in assuming a causal effect of rurality (with potential unobserved heterogeneity accounting for the cross-sectional associations). However, the reduced sample size in the fixed-effects model, while strengthening our confidence in the effect of diversity, implies the possibility of type II errors for some predictors.
These results provide some of the first evidence that diversity’s cross-sectional association is causal. 16 However, as outlined above, a change in community characteristics may result from changes occurring around individuals who remain in the same community or individuals moving between communities. We therefore subdivide our observations into periods of ‘staying’ and ‘moving’. Important differences exist for our key variables between samples. Among stayers, only 9% changed their level of attachment, while diversity-change ranges from −0.02 to +0.37. Thus, change in diversity is essentially the effect of increasing diversity. Among movers, however, 16% changed their level of attachment, while diversity-change ranges from −0.66 to +0.67.
Model 1 ( Table 3 ) replicates the fixed-effects analysis of Model 2 ( Table 2 ) but among stayers. We observe that as a community becomes more diverse around an individual, they are likely to become less attached to their community. This is a strict test of the causal impact of diversity, minimizing unobserved heterogeneity and eliminating selection bias. Importantly, neither indicator of disadvantage is significantly associated with attachment. 17
Table 3. Modelling method Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Fixed-effects Fixed-effects Fixed-effects Fixed-effects Sample type Stayers Movers Movers to homogeneity Movers to diversity % aged 65 + years −7.663 4.397 + −3.917 8.849** (4.461) (2.485) (5.211) (3.391) % in agricultural work 1.288 2.807 13.207 4.852 (6.496) (5.698) (13.082) (7.158) Material disadvantage 0.138 −0.376 + 0.443 −0.788** (0.433) (0.191) (0.430) (0.261) % without degrees −2.265 −4.715* −13.612** −0.177 (2.489) (1.927) (4.918) (2.790) Density −0.008 0.004 −0.009 0.007 (0.008) (0.007) (0.018) (0.009) Ethnic diversity −3.854* −3.681** −12.323** −0.491 (1.762) (1.341) (3.919) (2.221) N (observations) 901 749 295 443 Modelling method Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Fixed-effects Fixed-effects Fixed-effects Fixed-effects Sample type Stayers Movers Movers to homogeneity Movers to diversity % aged 65 + years −7.663 4.397 + −3.917 8.849** (4.461) (2.485) (5.211) (3.391) % in agricultural work 1.288 2.807 13.207 4.852 (6.496) (5.698) (13.082) (7.158) Material disadvantage 0.138 −0.376 + 0.443 −0.788** (0.433) (0.191) (0.430) (0.261) % without degrees −2.265 −4.715* −13.612** −0.177 (2.489) (1.927) (4.918) (2.790) Density −0.008 0.004 −0.009 0.007 (0.008) (0.007) (0.018) (0.009) Ethnic diversity −3.854* −3.681** −12.323** −0.491 (1.762) (1.341) (3.919) (2.221) N (observations) 901 749 295 443 View Large
Table 3. Modelling method Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Fixed-effects Fixed-effects Fixed-effects Fixed-effects Sample type Stayers Movers Movers to homogeneity Movers to diversity % aged 65 + years −7.663 4.397 + −3.917 8.849** (4.461) (2.485) (5.211) (3.391) % in agricultural work 1.288 2.807 13.207 4.852 (6.496) (5.698) (13.082) (7.158) Material disadvantage 0.138 −0.376 + 0.443 −0.788** (0.433) (0.191) (0.430) (0.261) % without degrees −2.265 −4.715* −13.612** −0.177 (2.489) (1.927) (4.918) (2.790) Density −0.008 0.004 −0.009 0.007 (0.008) (0.007) (0.018) (0.009) Ethnic diversity −3.854* −3.681** −12.323** −0.491 (1.762) (1.341) (3.919) (2.221) N (observations) 901 749 295 443 Modelling method Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Fixed-effects Fixed-effects Fixed-effects Fixed-effects Sample type Stayers Movers Movers to homogeneity Movers to diversity % aged 65 + years −7.663 4.397 + −3.917 8.849** (4.461) (2.485) (5.211) (3.391) % in agricultural work 1.288 2.807 13.207 4.852 (6.496) (5.698) (13.082) (7.158) Material disadvantage 0.138 −0.376 + 0.443 −0.788** (0.433) (0.191) (0.430) (0.261) % without degrees −2.265 −4.715* −13.612** −0.177 (2.489) (1.927) (4.918) (2.790) Density −0.008 0.004 −0.009 0.007 (0.008) (0.007) (0.018) (0.009) Ethnic diversity −3.854* −3.681** −12.323** −0.491 (1.762) (1.341) (3.919) (2.221) N (observations) 901 749 295 443 View Large
Model 2 ( Table 3 ) shows the same analysis among movers. Diversity is again significant and negative, suggesting that individuals who move from more diverse to less diverse communities are likely to become more attached (and vice versa). 18 In comparison with stayers, moving into communities with higher/lower disadvantage does have a significant negative/positive effect. The coefficients of all non-diversity community characteristics also increase. Non-diversity effects therefore appear concentrated among movers. While the smaller n of the subsamples in Models 1 and 2 may increase type II errors, the continued significance of diversity, and ‘% without degrees’, indicates greater robustness.
The effect of a change in diversity for all individuals (Model 2, Table 2 ) therefore appears to be a product of negative effects among both movers and stayers. However, as suggested, an individual’s move into a more/less diverse community may reflect prior preferences for in-/out-group cohabitation. If present, we would expect different outcomes for those moving into more diverse communities (predicted to have no diversity bias) compared with those moving into less diverse communities (predicted to have negative bias). Models 3 and 4 ( Table 3 ) subdivide movers into ‘moved into a less-’ or ‘more-diverse community’.
For movers into homogeneity (Model 3), changes in diversity represent a change to less diversity only. We see a strong significant, negative effect of diversity, i.e. the more homogeneous their destination (relative to their origin) community the more likely attachment will increase. This coefficient can be alternatively read by reversing the sign and observing that individuals become more attached the greater the increase in community homogeneity. However, a move into a more diverse community appears to have no effect, with the coefficient substantially reduced and non-significant 19 (Model 4). There is thus substantial heterogeneity underlying the negative effect of diversity among movers. Other differences also exist between these samples: status disadvantage impacts those moving to more homogeneous communities, while economic disadvantage and percent aged 65 + years impacts movers to diversity.
These analyses perform a strict test of the causal claim that diversity undermines community attachment. Alternative modelling specifications and applying a range of sensitivity tests to the samples/results returned consistent findings ( Supplementary Analysis SE.1 ). 20
Discussion
This article subjected the claim that community diversity undermines cohesion to stringent causal examination. The most robust test is conducted among stayers. For those who remain in the same area for two or more consecutive waves, increasing community diversity is related to a decline in attachment. Fixed-effects methods reduce bias from unobserved heterogeneity, while focusing on stayers undermines arguments that findings are (solely) owing to selection. Given assumptions that unobserved heterogeneity at both the individual- and community-level is time-invariant, this provides strong evidence that diversity negatively impacts individuals’ community attitudes.
Among movers, there is heterogeneity in diversity’s effect based on moves into/out of diverse environments. For individuals relocating to less diverse communities, the more homogeneous the destination the more likely their attachment will increase. This could indicate that cohabiting with out-groups causes attachment to decline (via processes of threat, etc.). However, because we cannot partial-out time-invariant unobserved community -level heterogeneity, diversity may be correlated with omitted characteristics, which undermine attachment; therefore, moving away from diversity increases attachment. Alternatively, individuals may possess prior in-group cohabitation preferences that manifest themselves as higher attachment when moving to homogeneity. For individuals relocating to more diverse communities, increasing diversity is not associated with changes in attachment, indicating either that diversity has no effect or the absence of prior preferences against out-group cohabitation.
Without further data, we cannot claim greater support for one explanation. However, inferences can be made when the results are taken together. If exposure to diversity undermined attachment for all individuals owing to processes of threat, anomie, etc., then we would expect movers into diverse communities to also be affected. If it were an omitted characteristic of diverse communities, we would expect stayers to be unaffected and movers into diversity to be affected. Instead, the findings support the idea of prior biases influencing how an individual’s attachment reacts to diverse environments: while increasing diversity affects stayers, the effect is weaker than it is for movers into homogeneous communities, while movers into diversity experience no effect. 21
We infer whether individuals possess a negative (or no) bias towards diversity based on whether they moved out-of (or into) diverse communities. We suggest that subsequent changes in attachment (or lack thereof) is evidence of the existence (or absence) of prior biases. However, alternative explanations exist. Kaufmann and Harris (2015) show that individuals moving into diversity tend to be younger, single, renters without children, while those moving out of diverse areas tend to be homeowners, married, older and with children ( Supplementary Analysis SF.1 ). It is plausible that heterogeneity in diversity’s effect among movers is driven by certain socio-demographic groups being more/less sensitive to changing diversity, 22 e.g. older individuals may be more sensitive, and therefore, only movers into homogeneity are affected.
Relocation decisions and neighbourhood choice also occur for other reasons. We posited that omitted variables correlated with (but not caused by) diversity (e.g. services/amenities quality) may drive the change in attachment among movers. Yet, if this were the case, movers into diverse communities should experience a corollary decline in attachment. However, the effects of omitted variables may be dependent on the socio-demographic characteristics of the different mover groups. For example, young, single, childless people may not prioritize the quality of services (e.g. schools), and thus, moving into more diverse areas has no impact. Older people with children may place a premium on service quality. Thus, a move to homogeneity would increase attachment. This may apply to a range of characteristics (e.g. urban environments), affecting different socio-demographic groups differently. Thus, omitted characteristics could still account for findings among movers ; however, only certain types of individuals are affected by these.
Moving/staying decisions are also affected by constraints as much as choice. Weaker effects observed among stayers may stem from a combination of those choosing to stay (among whom diversity likely has a weaker effect) and those constrained to stay, e.g. owing to limited resources (for whom diversity likely has a stronger effect). Constraints could also play a role among movers, as neighbourhood choice may be constrained by available resources. However, more diverse communities are, in theory, less desirable, given diversity is largely found in disadvantaged, dense, high turnover areas with poorer accommodation; thus, they would be likely destinations for those movers with more constraints. Yet, it is movers to diversity who experience no effect of increasing diversity. As such, constraints likely play less of a role for our mover findings. Heterogeneity in diversity’s effect may also depend on the duration a resident has lived in their community. For example, diversity may have a greater impact on stayers who have lived in their communities longer, as they may be less able or willing to move. Testing suggests longer-term residents are somewhat more sensitive to community change. 23
Despite the possible explanations, these results remain compelling, as they suggest that underlying the cross-sectional association between diversity and attachment are complex causal processes occurring at the individuallevel, among stayers and movers. At the same time, contrary to the literature, changing diversity can have no effect on certain individuals. This questions the generalizability of the theoretical framework (of threat, etc.) used to account for the cross-sectional findings. Therefore, despite finding strong evidence of a causal effect, the results (especially among movers ) suggest prior preferences likely play a role.
This article also reveals insights into the role of other community characteristics. The pooled cross-sectional analysis demonstrates that disadvantage and rural-living are significantly associated with attachment. In fixed-effects models, these characteristics are only significant for movers. Furthermore, coefficient size declines for stayers and rises among movers. The causal effects inferred from the cross-sectional associations may be primarily driven by movers.
Statistical issues may account for these effects being concentrated among movers, e.g. for stayers, there may be little change in disadvantage within communities over time ( Supplementary Analysis SG.1 ). However, there may be substantive reasons. The mechanisms connecting disadvantage to cohesion may take longer to emerge. For example, the ‘petty crime…physical decay, and social disorder’, which erode cohesion could lag behind contemporaneous changes in their disadvantage antecedents ( Oliver and Mendelberg, 2000 : 576). The disadvantaged communities that individuals move into/out-of may already exhibit these processes. Hence, effects are concentrated among movers. Alternatively, changes in disadvantage for stayers may not result in immediate changes in perceptions of deprivation. Studies show the latter is more relevant for attachment ( Feijten and van Ham, 2009 ). Changes in diversity, however, are likely more discernible to residents. If diversity’s effects are related to exposure to out-groups, any effect would be relatively synchronous with changes in diversity.
This article has certain limitations. Our measure of attachment is a weaker proxy for the networks element of cohesion. Furthermore, Putnam’s ( 2007 ) ‘hunkering down’ thesis should not be inferred from these locally specific findings. There is also a relatively small amount of change in attachment over time. This is partly because our measure is binary (we observe far more temporal change on an index of cohesion), as well as the length of time between waves.
Another issue is that the findings may be conditional on the time span between waves. For example, among stayers, individuals might be negatively affected by diversity; however, their attachment may have recovered by the time they are surveyed again 8–10 years later, i.e. accommodation processes may be occurring. Our analysis may focus on those particularly susceptible to diversity, whose attachment remains depressed. With shorter periods between waves, diversity effects could be weaker. Alternatively, over the 8–10 year period, those individuals most adversely affected by diversity, whose attachment declines as community diversity increases, may have moved before they are re-surveyed. This would understate any diversity effect for stayers (although increase it for movers ). Importantly, who is a stayer or mover may be affected by changes in community diversity; yet, how they are classified will be, in part, a product of the 8–10 year wave span.
Similarly, this time span makes isolating the effect of diversity among movers more difficult, as diversity data for the two waves across which a move occurred are absent ( seeSupplementary Analysis SE.1 ). However, the current design may be advantageous, given large changes in diversity occur over longer periods (at least for stayers ), potentially increasing the likelihood of identifying effects present.
Another limitation is that, while the fixed-effects approach allows us to demonstrate robust evidence of a causal effect of diversity, it limits our ability to validate a tenet of the theoretical framework: that levels of diversity affect levels of cohesion. Our models examine whether changes in diversity elicit changes in cohesion. Cross-sectional studies show both the level of diversity and the amount of recent change in diversity can independently impact cohesion (although both effects are explained using the same theoretical framework, e.g. threat ( Feijten and van Ham, 2009 )). Our models do not disentangle changes in levels versus change itself. Demonstrating that changes in levels of diversity elicit changes in cohesion produces the strongest evidence yet that, as predicted, levels of diversity do affect cohesion. However, all or part of this effect may be a result of change itself, rather than any new level of diversity.
Conclusion
This study makes important contributions to the diversity and social cohesion literature. It performs the first panel data analysis of the effect of community diversity on intra-community attitudes, producing evidence that the negative cross-sectional association between diversity and indicators of cohesion (especially those related to attachment) is likely causal. Furthermore, distinguishing between diversity change from movers and stayers demonstrates that multiple causal processes occur at the individual level (including possible selection processes), providing insights into how the aggregate community-level differences in cohesion observed in the cross-sectional literature may emerge. Yet, changes in community diversity do not impact all individuals equally, casting doubt on the generalizability of the theoretical framework (of threat, etc.) often applied. While evidence for a causal effect of diversity does suggest such processes may be in operation, potential in-/out-group preferences likely play a central role, influencing if and how far diversity impacts cohesion.
Funding
This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (grant number: ES/L011255/1).
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Dr Ingrid Storm, Brian Kelly, Professors Anthony Heath and Ed Fieldhouse, and Dr Christiaan Monden for kindly commenting on earlier drafts of this article, the Institute for Social Change and the Cathie Marsh Centre for Census and Survey Research for support, and Dr Leila Vaez-Azizi for unique insights.
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The effect of being different from the neighbourhood population on wishes to move. Environment and Planning A, 40, 1151 – 1170. ). Widaman K. F. Ferrer E. Conger R. D. 2010 ). Factorial invariance within longitudinal structural equation models: measuring the same construct across time. Child Development Perspectives, 4, 10 – 18. ). Wilson G. Baldassare M. 1996 ). Overall “Sense of Community” in a suburban region: the effects of localism, privacy, and urbanization. Environment and Behavior, 28, 27 – 43. ).
Appendix
Appendix 1. Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5 Model 6 Model 7 Modelling method Fixed-effects Fixed-effects Fixed-effects Fixed-effects First-difference First-difference First-difference Sample Individuals—never moved Individuals—moved once or more Individuals—moved to homogeneity once or more Individuals—moved to diversity once or more Moved between two waves Moved to homogeneity between two waves Moved to diversity between two waves % aged 65 + years −8.435 4.402* −0.899 9.092** 2.960** 2.199 4.068** (5.056) (2.150) (5.800) (3.295) (0.977) (1.610) (1.290) % in agricultural work 2.060 4.172 23.111 5.757 2.193 3.035 2.592 (7.090) (4.917) (16.775) (6.422) (1.724) (3.099) (2.203) Material disadvantage 0.553 −0.284 + 0.067 −0.575* −0.152* −0.070 −0.244** (0.499) (0.150) (0.488) (0.237) (0.068) (0.106) (0.092) % without degrees −2.076 −4.393** −7.608 + −1.679 −0.163 −1.216 1.356 (2.775) (1.574) (3.763) (2.491) (0.758) (1.093) (1.094) Density −0.000 0.001 −0.007 0.007 0.002 0.001 0.001 (0.009) (0.005) (0.017) (0.008) (0.002) (0.003) (0.003) Ethnic diversity −4.644* −3.732** −10.837*** −1.146 −1.615*** −2.761*** 0.294 (1.994) (1.155) (3.250) (2.102) (0.470) (0.669) (0.884) N (observations) 893 1,284 543 746 N (individuals) 2,537 989 1,748 Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5 Model 6 Model 7 Modelling method Fixed-effects Fixed-effects Fixed-effects Fixed-effects First-difference First-difference First-difference Sample Individuals—never moved Individuals—moved once or more Individuals—moved to homogeneity once or more Individuals—moved to diversity once or more Moved between two waves Moved to homogeneity between two waves Moved to diversity between two waves % aged 65 + years −8.435 4.402* −0.899 9.092** 2.960** 2.199 4.068** (5.056) (2.150) (5.800) (3.295) (0.977) (1.610) (1.290) % in agricultural work 2.060 4.172 23.111 5.757 2.193 3.035 2.592 (7.090) (4.917) (16.775) (6.422) (1.724) (3.099) (2.203) Material disadvantage 0.553 −0.284 + 0.067 −0.575* −0.152* −0.070 −0.244** (0.499) (0.150) (0.488) (0.237) (0.068) (0.106) (0.092) % without degrees −2.076 −4.393** −7.608 + −1.679 −0.163 −1.216 1.356 (2.775) (1.574) (3.763) (2.491) (0.758) (1.093) (1.094) Density −0.000 0.001 −0.007 0.007 0.002 0.001 0.001 (0.009) (0.005) (0.017) (0.008) (0.002) (0.003) (0.003) Ethnic diversity −4.644* −3.732** −10.837*** −1.146 −1.615*** −2.761*** 0.294 (1.994) (1.155) (3.250) (2.102) (0.470) (0.669) (0.884) N (observations) 893 1,284
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p.m., Friday, 2215 W. Irving Park Road.
On Sunday, the VOX 3 Collective choral group will dust off a few holiday rarities during a free show at 2 p.m. at Irving Park Lutheran Church, 3938 W. Belle Plaine Ave.
Try your hand at painting, photography, ceramics or other artistic endeavors at Lillstreet Art Center's winter open house from noon-4 p.m. Saturday, 4401 W. Ravenswood Ave. Choose from nearly a dozen free workshops, and bring the kids along — they can make their own gingerbread man out of clay.
Sunday's customer appreciation event at Blue Sky Bakery is all about you, finally. Enjoy free sweet and savory munchies and a holiday punch spiked by Death's Door Spirits from 11 a.m.-4 p.m., 3720 N. Lincoln Ave.So, the shirt... if you were there at closing night at the fringe, you know that at one point a certain audience member's feminism got the best of her (I did apologise later and she laughed it off and we talked about misogyny) and asked where the women were in the slideshow of Australian actors. Courtney was extremely gracious about it, made a joke, clocked my shirt and said, "I'm vibing your femme." Later, when the show went to a 'darker, more vaginal place' she looked right at me and said, "This song's for you." Long story short, if this hobbity lesbian gives birth in 9 months we know who to blame. (That's totally how reproduction works... right? A gorgeous lady sings to your vagina and then hugs you...?)Image caption Jade Anderson's body was found with the dogs at a house in Chaucer Grove
Urgent reform of dog control laws is needed, an MP who chairs the Commons environment select committee has said.
Anne McIntosh, chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, was speaking in the wake of the death of Jade Anderson, 14.
She was attacked by "out of control" dogs at a house in Greater Manchester.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said it was looking to introduce new legislation as quickly as possible.
'Law change needed'
Five children and an adult have been killed by dogs on private property since 2007, and Defra estimates about 210,000 people are attacked by dogs in England every year.
Miss McIntosh said it was too early to say what had happened in the case of Jade Anderson, but said the law in England needed to cover the control of dogs on private property.
The Conservative MP said it should be an offence to train a dog to behave aggressively.
"It's not so much the breed of the dog as the way that that particular animal is taught to behave," she said.
"And whereas the law in Scotland and Northern Ireland would permit this offence to feel the full effects of the law - because it took place in private property - we're not quite there yet in English law, and I do urge the government to come forward with these proposals as a matter now of utmost urgency."
'Too many tragedies'
Jade's MP Julie Hilling, who lives near to the scene of the incident, said her party, Labour, had been pressing for new legislation since a government consultation on dangerous dogs in 2010.
Ms Hilling said: "There have been too many tragedies with dogs, and we've got to take some action."
Jade Anderson was found alone with five of the animals at a house she was visiting in Chaucer Grove, Atherton, Wigan, on Tuesday afternoon.
Police said armed officers destroyed four dogs and contained a fifth.
Four dogs, believed to be two bull mastiffs and two Staffordshire bull terriers, were shot by police marksmen.
A Defra spokesperson said: "Dog owners must keep their dogs under control. Police and local authorities already have powers to deal with irresponsible dog owners and dangerous dogs.
"Last month the Government announced that the law is being changed to cover attacks on private property."When printing, select LANDSCAPE and enable background colors for the best results.
DCI Kentucky presented by DeMoulin Bros. and Co. Saturday, July 16, 2016 - Alexandria, KY Chief Judge: Michael Turner
World Class General Effect Visual Music Sub
Total Timing & Penalties Total Bluecoats 33.200 1 24.950 2 25.150 1 83.300 1 0.000 83.300 1 Carolina Crown 32.900 2 25.250 1 24.975 2 83.125 2 0.000 83.125 2 The Cadets 32.200 3 24.050 3 24.650 3 80.900 3 0.000 80.900 3 Crossmen 29.500 4 22.300 4 22.575 4 74.375 4 0.000 74.375 4 Boston Crusaders 28.600 5 21.550 5 21.575 5 71.725 5 0.000 71.725 5 Spirit of Atlanta 26.600 6 19.600 6 19.500 6 65.700 6 0.000 65.700 6 Jersey Surf 24.600 7 18.250 7 18.350 7 61.200 7 0.000 61.200 7
Music and Visual scores at some contests may be derived from a reduced-sized judging panel with variable captions assigned.
* Total reflects factored subcaptionsThe leaders of the House Intelligence Committee gave dramatically different assessments Monday of the panel’s investigation into Russia’s involvement in the presidential election.
In a last-minute press conference Monday morning, Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) said he’d seen no evidence of regular contact between anyone in President Trump’s campaign and Russia.
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“There is no evidence that I’ve been presented [by the intelligence community] of regular contact with anybody in the Trump campaign,” Nunes told reporters. “The way it sounds like to me is, it’s been looked into and there’s no evidence of anything there.”
But in a separate availability just over three hours later, scheduled after Nunes’s public remarks, ranking Democrat Adam Schiff Adam Bennett SchiffHouse Democrats file legislation to ensure Mueller report released Hannity echoes Bill Maher, invites Schiff to appear on show Curtain rises on 3 days of Cohen drama MORE (Calif.) said it was too soon to make any judgments.
“We haven’t obtained any evidence yet, so it’s premature for us to be saying that we’ve reached any conclusions about the issue of collusion,” Schiff said, noting that the committee has not yet called witnesses or examined documents.
The daylight between the two leaders is unusual for the panel, which has traditionally worked on a bipartisan basis.
But the cooperative spirit of the Intelligence Committee is being put to the test as it faces pressure to review Russian efforts to influence the U.S. presidential election, including any links between Trump campaign officials and Moscow.
“The chairman and I have had an important working relationship that we both want to keep intact,” Schiff said carefully on Monday.
“I want to do everything in my power to make sure that we do a thorough and objective investigation, and if I get to the point where I conclude that’s just not possible, I’ll be vocal about it.”
Democrats have pressed for congressional investigations following a series of media reports linking the campaign with Russia. Those calls grew louder after the resignation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who misled Vice President Pence about the subject of a pre-inauguration call with the Russian ambassador.
Both Nunes and Schiff agreed that the Intelligence Committee’s review is still in its preliminary stages. They have finalized the scope of the investigation but have not yet begun receiving evidence from intelligence agencies.
Nunes, however, repeatedly downplayed media reports that claimed the FBI had uncovered regular contact between Russian officials and members of the president’s campaign.
Rather than links between the White House and Russia, Nunes insisted, the only “serious crime” of which the committee had any evidence is a variety of media leaks, apparently from the intelligence community.
Nunes and Schiff also differed sharply on the importance of investigating those leaks.
Schiff confirmed that the leaks would be part of the investigation but raised questions about whether the committee would be able to look into them without bringing in White House staff. While he condemned the leaks, he suggested that they were a distraction from the more important issue of Russian interference in the election.
Nunes, meanwhile, repeatedly invoked the leaks and said he was “very interested” in uncovering who made the decision to expose the contents of Flynn’s discussion with the Russian ambassador.
The Trump administration has sought to shift the focus away from any alleged communication between the campaign and Russian officials to the leakers themselves, reportedly enlisting Nunes, Senate Intelligence Committee chair Richard Burr Richard Mauze BurrFive things to watch as Michael Cohen testifies Cohen grilled by Senate Intelligence panel Hillicon Valley: Senators urge Trump to bar Huawei products from electric grid | Ex-security officials condemn Trump emergency declaration | New malicious cyber tool found | Facebook faces questions on treatment of moderators MORE (R-N.C.) and several high-ranking intelligence officials to help push back on media reports.
Nunes downplayed any contact he’d had with the White House, saying that he had merely reiterated comments he had already said publicly to a single reporter at the request of the White House press team.
Schiff warned of a “profound potential conflict of interest” for members who speak on behalf of a White House that is under investigation by the committee.
“I would urge members of our committee, including our chair, if they are reached out to by the administration on the subject of our investigation, they should politely decline,” Schiff said.
The two lawmakers also differed in their assessment of how closely the panel might work with Burr’s committee, which is also investigating Russian involvement in the election — including any contact between campaign associates and the Kremlin.
Nunes said that while he would try to work with the Senate where possible, “I view this as two separate branches of the legislative branch of government.”
Schiff called for the two investigations to be conducted jointly, noting that his calls to combine the two have so far been rebuffed.
“No one has explicitly ruled it out, neither have they welcomed the idea,” he said.When New Democrats last voted to select a new leader in 2012, most of the party's eligible voting members were in British Columbia and Ontario. An analysis of NDP donors suggests these two provinces will again carry the most weight in this year's leadership vote, but that Quebec and Alberta might be more important than they were five years ago.
The party did not provide a breakdown of its current membership, but looking at the regional distribution of NDP donors provides clues to how the profile of that membership might have changed since 2012 — and what that might mean for the four candidates currently in the running.
Members and donors do not entirely overlap, but the regional patterns of NDP donors in 2011-12 broadly reflected the breakdown of the 128,351 members who were eligible to cast a ballot in the vote that selected Tom Mulcair. Both the donor base and membership rolls were disproportionately concentrated in B.C. and the Prairies, with disproportionately low numbers in Quebec and Atlantic Canada.
This indicates that trends in donor numbers today can tell us what the membership may look like as the leadership race kicks off.
The decisive vote in Ontario and B.C.
According to Elections Canada's fundraising data for 2016, 39 per cent of contributors who donated at least $200 to the NDP (the names of those who donate less than $200 are not reported) came from Ontario, down only slightly from the province's share of all NDP contributors in 2011-12.
Another 21 per cent of donors were from British Columbia, down nearly a tenth from 2011-12.
(Natalie Holdway)
In 2012's leadership race, 30 per cent of members eligible to vote called B.C. home, while another 29 per cent were from Ontario. The two provinces are still likely to carry much of the weight in this upcoming leadership vote — they represented the two largest sources of donations in 2016.
But the trend line indicates that Ontario, rather than B.C., could now be home to the largest share of the NDP's membership.
Bigger role for Quebec, Alberta
At the time of the last leadership vote, the party's prospects in Alberta were virtually nonexistent. But today that province is home to the country's only NDP government.
Alberta produced eight per cent of party members in 2012 and just under 10 per cent of donors. But the growth of the NDP's donor base in Alberta has been significant, increasing to 14 per cent in 2016.
The rate of growth in Quebec has been even greater. Less than five per cent of donations to the party in 2011-12 came from the province. That has increased to 7.6 per cent — still a disproportionately small share but representing the highest rate of growth of any province.
In 2012, just 9.6 per cent of NDP members were from Quebec, and reports suggest the raw number of members has dropped — possibly linked to the rejection of Mulcair, a Montreal MP, last year. But the fundraising data indicates Quebec could carry more of the weight in the 2017 vote than it did five years ago.
Importance of Prairies, Atlantic Canada dropping
The share of donors in the Prairies has dropped by about a point to 12 per cent — a similar rate of decline as in Ontario. That decrease occurred primarily in Manitoba, where the NDP lost power in 2016.
Together, Saskatchewan and Manitoba represented 18 per cent of the NDP's members in 2012, more than twice the Prairies' share of the Canadian population. Despite the negative trend line in donors, the two provinces are likely to still punch above their weight.
That is not the case for Atlantic Canada, which was home to just five per cent of NDP members in 2012 and just over six per cent of donors. In 2016, that share of donors slipped below five per cent.
The impact on the field
The four candidates in the running for the NDP leadership will spend the next few months wooing both current and new members. The makeup of the party's membership will change by September, when voting begins.
But the bulk of the people who will select the next leader of the NDP are likely already members of the party, so their regional distribution will have an impact on the field of four.
Charlie Angus, an MP from northern Ontario, has only a small regional base from which to draw — just three per cent of all donors in 2016 were from the region.
Left to right: Guy Caron, Charlie Angus, Niki Ashton and Peter Julian react to the audience as they arrive on stage for the first debate of the federal NDP leadership race, in Ottawa on March 12, 2017. (Justin Tang/Canadian Press)
Quebec's disproportionately small membership could limit the potential of Guy Caron, who represents a riding in eastern Quebec (a region that itself produced just one per cent of the NDP's donors).
The decrease in donors in Manitoba may not bode well for Niki Ashton, an MP from the northern part of the province.
B.C. MP Peter Julian may have the most formidable donor base. B.C. carries disproportionate weight, and half of B.C. donors were from Julian's Metro Vancouver region. But the increase in members in Alberta could mitigate Julian's regional advantage. He is positioning himself within the environmentalist wing of the party, which could put him at odds with the growing and more pipeline-friendly Alberta New Democrats.
But none of the candidates appears to be in a position to depend primarily on a regional base to get over the top. The winner will need to transcend geographic boundaries if he or she is to replace Mulcair — though a little help from the locals wouldn't hurt.How to Game the College Rankings
Northeastern University executed one of the most dramatic turnarounds in higher education. Its recipe for success? A single-minded focus on just one list.
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In 1996, Richard Freeland looked across the sea of crumbling parking lots that was Northeastern University and saw an opportunity few others could. As the school’s new president, he had inherited a third-tier, blue-collar, commuter-based university whose defining campus feature was a collection of modest utilitarian buildings south of Huntington Avenue, with a sprinkling of newly planted trees.
The university had been a victim of many things, most notably federal cutbacks—rolled out in the mid-’80s—that had left many colleges scrambling for money to close their budget gaps. These cutbacks, combined with dwindling enrollment, had forced Northeastern’s previous president, Jack Curry, to slash the budget and cut 875 jobs in the early 1990s. When he announced the layoffs to his staff, Curry burst into tears. “To say it was an institution in turmoil would be an understatement,” says a vice provost from that time.
But Freeland, the man who had helped successfully launch UMass Boston over the previous two decades, had a plan. Freeland believed that if Northeastern could justify its increased costs to students and parents, it could be saved. And one gauge consistently determined a college’s value: its position on the U.S. News & World Report “Best Colleges” rankings. Freeland observed how schools ranked highly received increased visibility and prestige, stronger applicants, more alumni giving, and, most important, greater revenue potential. A low rank left a university scrambling for money. This single list, Freeland determined, had the power to make or break a school.
During his tenure, Curry had made improvements at Northeastern, but none of these changes could budge the school’s U.S. News ranking. Working with the mantra “Smaller but better,” Curry reduced class sizes and clamped down on admissions. He also tried to attract students from beyond Boston by creating a more welcoming campus, replacing some of the crumbling blacktops with new buildings, including a library and a recreation center. From the U.S. News perspective, these changes did little to influence the school’s reputation, the most statistically important metric in the ranking system. Curry left the school in 1996 at number 162.
Freeland swept into Northeastern with a brand-new mantra: recalibrate the school to climb up the ranks. “There’s no question that the system invites gaming,” Freeland tells me. “We made a systematic effort to influence [the outcome].” He directed university researchers to break the U.S. News code and replicate its formulas. He spoke about the rankings all the time—in hallways and at board meetings, illustrating his points with charts. He spent his days trying to figure out how to get the biggest bump up the charts for his buck. He worked the goal into the school’s strategic plan. “We had to get into the top 100,” Freeland says. “That was a life-or-death matter for Northeastern.”
Founded in the 1930s and 1940s by David Lawrence as two separate newsweeklies, U.S. News and World Report merged in 1948, but it wasn’t until 1983 that the publication printed its first cover story ranking America’s top 50 colleges. The issue happened to coincide with a sudden robust interest in higher education among the general population: Between 1970 and 1983, college enrollment increased 47 percent. What had once been considered a privilege for the wealthy or brilliant few was increasingly becoming the entry fee to the middle class. For the first time, a college degree was considered necessary, but how to choose among the thousands of institutions conferring degrees? Thus followed a new demand for unbiased, quantitative information—just as Consumer Reports rated washing machines, college rankings would serve as a first-time buyer’s guide to higher ed.
Along with the U.S. News list, the New York Times had just released Edward Fiske’s first Guide to Colleges, and in 1984, the College Board began regularly selling SAT prep books. But none had the authority of U.S. News. Billionaire publisher Mort Zuckerman seized the moment and purchased the magazine, along with its rankings franchise, in 1984.
In the offices of U.S. News & World Report in Washington, DC, Robert Morse has labored for decades, crunching numbers for college rankings (this year, they’ll be released on September 9). He spends his days staring at two computer monitors, analyzing the data that schools submitted over the summer. For a man whose life’s work triggers a yearly cage match among universities, Morse is far from intimidating. He slouches and shuffles, letting the plastic dry-cleaner clips on his shirt go unnoticed. Yet as chief data strategist and developer of U.S. News’s secret rankings sauce, Morse has helped the magazine become one of the most feared and influential voices in the world of higher education.
When the U.S. News editors first devised a formula that declared, with statistical accuracy, which school was on top, they quantified something previously thought to be intangible. For generations, colleges and universities had generally relied on a mysterious brew of prestige and reputation. Suddenly, legacies and tradition—qualities that had taken decades, and sometimes centuries, for schools to cultivate—were less important than cold, hard data. Schools that once relied on children of alumni and word of mouth were exposed by their own stats, including graduation and retention rates, admissions data (acceptance rate, average SAT score), academics (class size, number of full-time faculty), and reputation (peer reviews). Needless to say, U.S. News’s college rankings landed on the world of higher education with a thud.
With their authoritative tone, the rankings also introduced new possibilities. Before they appeared, it was doubtful that NU could ever rub shoulders with Boston College or Harvard. But now, with a codified system out there, nearly everything was reduced to numbers. And those numbers could be beat. “They give you a playing field on which you can play,” Freeland says of the rankings. They give schools “a way to compete.”
From the start, schools have argued that the rankings are subjective. Defenders of the rankings maintain that the system exposes students to more schools and helps the consumer compare products. Regardless, students, graduate schools, and employers have embraced the list, giving it unprecedented power. An unintended result, however, is that schools need to spend more to stay competitive in the categories that U.S. News considers important. Universities may be in the business of education, but it’s a competitive business in which all compete for students and revenue. With an arms race to the top, higher education has soared out of reach for an increasing number of Americans. NU tuition alone in 1989 was $9,500; today it’s $42,534.
“You can love us or hate us, but we’re not going away,” says U.S. News editor Brian Kelly. “University officials realized we’re much more valuable to them than not.” He deflects criticism, saying, “It’s not up to us to solve problems. We’re just putting data out there.” He does, however, admit that the rankings system can be gamed.The stakes are high in part because North Carolina has been through a series of significant political shifts over the last few years. After decades in which Democrats mostly dominated state politics, the GOP won control of the General Assembly in 2010 and then of the governor’s mansion two years later, with McCrory’s election. Republicans embarked on an aggressive program of conservative reforms. The most nationally noticed of those was HB 2, the so-called bathroom bill that, among other things, required transgender people to use bathrooms corresponding to the sex on their birth certificates. McCrory’s deficit appears to be in part a result of backlash to that law, and the economic repercussions for the state, which saw businesses cancel expansions, entertainers boycott concerts, and sports tournaments abandon the state.
But the battle over the results of the election is more directly tied to—and really ought to be seen as simply the latest battle in—a long war over voting rights. In 2013, as soon as the Supreme Court struck down several provisions of the Voting Rights Act, North Carolina Republicans passed a new law regulating voting in the state. Among other things, the law required voters to show a photo ID when voting, ended same-day registration, and shortened the early-voting period. The North Carolina law was described by some analysts as the most sweeping in the nation, but it fits with a wave of such laws that have been passed or proposed in states around the nation, mostly by conservative politicians who argue they’re necessary to safeguard the sanctity of elections. But there is very little evidence of widespread voter fraud, and less evidence that such measures prevent what fraud there is.
A coalition of groups, including the North Carolina NAACP and the Department of Justice, sued the state over the law, and after losing at the district court level, scored a resounding victory at the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which struck down most of the law, finding that it was specifically intended to suppress the votes of minority voters who vote overwhelming Democratic. That meant voting in November was conducted—for the most part—under the pre-2013 laws.
Now McCrory and his allies are challenging the tally in the election, suggesting that fraud is responsible for Cooper’s advantage. In essence, the battle over the McCrory-Cooper race is another major battle in that campaign. If Cooper wins, it will put a Democrat in the governor’s mansion—albeit still with strong Republican majorities in the legislature—and slow the conservative revolution. But if McCrory can somehow come back and win, it would not only preserve those conservative changes but also offer an opportunity to prove that fraud is real.
One of the more readily apparent problems with the McCrory team’s claims of widespread fraud is that several other statewide Republican candidates won solid victories, including Donald Trump, Senator Richard Burr, and Lieutenant Governor Dan Forest. But McCrory and his allies have several avenues to try to win him reelection. Here’s a quick rundown.Reserved
F.A.Q :
Video camera recording issue?
- please try to flash EMUI B360 before to switch to RROS 7.1.2!
Your SIM card are not recognized?
- please make sure that your SIM card have LTE capability!
Device too hot while charging with stock Huawei charger?
- please try to charge via USB connected to a Desktop/Laptop, or simply use a different charger, instead the stock one!
Why there is always full network signal?
- yes, is just a tweak - until we'll find a solution for correct signal scaling, we prefer this compromise solution!
Are you going to switch Selinux to enforcing?
- for the moment, this ROM is intended to use Selinux in permissive mode - do not try to change this!!!
All your issues, that in fact are related to F.A.Q will be ignored!Adrian Hinton Community Press guest columnist
I would like to inform my neighbors in Colerain Township of the man who should be our next president.
Gary Johnson is the best candidate for president in 2016, and he is already commanding 11 percent of voters’ support in national polls versus Trump and Clinton. We are approaching another Ross Perot phenomenon in this election year.
Gary Johnson has a great plan to restore the American Dream, by reducing taxes on everyone who works for a living, not just the wealthy, which seems to be the Republicans’ priority ever since George W. Bush. He wants to eliminate income taxes and corporate taxes in favor of a national consumption tax.
Government spending would be cut by a corresponding amount. Unlike Donald Trump and other right-wing militarists, he wants to reduce our military spending by 40 percent, and he would privatize certain government programs to save money, as he did with Medicaid and state prisons when he was the governor of New Mexico. This would not increase the national debt, as with the policies of George W. Bush, because Johnson balanced the New Mexico state budget when he cut taxes as governor, and he will insist on balanced federal budgets immediately.
This will make the United States more competitive with Canada and Western Europe, who now tend to have lower corporate taxes than the supposedly “capitalist” United States. When Princeton University researchers asked 500 corporate executives about this one simple reform, the majority said they would build their next plant in America, and 20 percent said they would move their corporate headquarters to the United States. Once the global economy prefers to conduct business in this country, we can have again the classical liberal capitalism intended by the Founding Fathers, and return to middle-class prosperity.
Johnson is also not a Religious Right candidate, even though raised Lutheran. He does not want government to prosecute the “sins” of certain religions, and he thinks that drugs, firearms, abortion and prostitution should all be legal. He opposes the draft or any form of mandatory national service. These policies are now endorsed by many celebrities, including Snoop Dogg, Geraldo Rivera, Clint Eastwood, Drew Carey, and Ashton Kutcher, among other libertarians.
NEWSLETTERS Get the News Alerts newsletter delivered to your inbox We're sorry, but something went wrong Be the first to be informed of important news as it happens in Greater Cincinnati. Please try again soon, or contact Customer Service at 1-800-876-4500. Delivery: Varies Invalid email address Thank you! You're almost signed up for News Alerts Keep an eye out for an email to confirm your newsletter registration. More newsletters
Gary Johnson will be a far better president than either of the men in history who bore his surname as the chief executive of the United States. In particular, he will undo the socialism and bureaucracy of his namesake Lyndon Johnson from the 1960s, the man also responsible for the Vietnam War and continuing the draft.
Here’s to Landslide Gary Johnson. He can defeat Trump and Clinton in 2016.
Adrian Hinton is a graduate of Colerain High School, Colerain Career Center, and the University of Cincinnati. He lives in Colerain Township.
Read or Share this story: http://cin.ci/29hiQLPLa La Land opens with a large-scale song-and-dance number on a Los Angeles freeway. Young people aspiring to a life in show business, but currently just stuck in gridlock, climb out of their cars and dance on the rooftops, singing about big dreams and the California sunshine. It’s a scene straight out of an old-school movie musical, which is exactly the point: La La Land is a romance, and everyone is in love with everything — most of all, old Hollywood dreams. It is, quite simply, magic.
Rating 4
“Magic” does not mean “perfect,” however. La La Land is not a perfect movie, but it is imbued with blue-tinged joy. It’s about audacious hopes and bittersweet love, with a distinctly 21st-century twist. It doesn’t feel fake or cheap. It’s a shot of optimism that’s been dosed with realism.
La La Land is a bunch of love stories loaded into one
Written and directed by Damien Chazelle (Whiplash), La La Land is a boy-meets-girl story about Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) and Mia (Emma Stone), a pair of starry-eyed dreamers who meet in the first scene’s gridlock. Road rage takes over. (You know from this scene that they’re fated to be together.) For months, they keep bumping into each other all over Los Angeles, and slowly their mutual antipathy turns to flirtation and, from there, to love.
But in the meantime, Mia is trudging the endless audition trail, leaving casting rooms to discover a dozen or more of her own doppelgängers sitting in the hallway, waiting to audition themselves. She wants to be an actor. It’s what makes her heart beat faster, what gets her out of bed in the morning. But to make ends meet and pay rent (on the apartment she shares with three other girls), she has to work in the coffee shop on a big-studio backlot, watching as the stars she admires go by.
Sebastian’s heart, meanwhile, belongs to jazz. But after being taken for a ride by a shady business deal, he’s playing for tips in restaurants and in cover bands for parties. He’s trying to keep body and soul together, all the while dreaming of opening a jazz club. (One in which — and this is very important to him — they will serve chicken.)
Mia and Sebastian’s romance is the soul of the movie, and also provides its most captivating musical moments: The best may be when Sebastian and Mia finally acknowledge their affections in the most wonderfully backhanded way, pooh-poohing the LA sunset and each other before they eventually start tap-dancing in sync. In another scene, they float off into magical realism against a starlit sky at Griffith Observatory. (The movie is as much a love letter to a mythical Los Angeles as anything else.)
But the course of true love is bumpy, as we know, and things start to take a turn when Sebastian’s nemesis Keith (John Legend) shows up and offers him a spot playing in his combo, which comes with money and strings attached. And Mia’s attempt to circumvent the Hollywood runaround by mounting her own one-woman show — with Sebastian’s encouragement — stresses her out as she tries to pull the pieces together without Sebastian’s constant, affirming presence. Which love story will win out: theirs, or the one they both sustain with their art?
La La Land isn’t a love triangle so much as a many-pointed love star: Mia and Sebastian, Mia and acting, Sebastian and jazz, Sebastian and Mia and the dream of a life of making beautiful things in the world, in a city of stars.
La La Land is a movie musical, but it’s anything but escapist
All the singing and dancing adds charm to La La Land, to be sure. Gosling and Stone aren’t the greatest at either of those — notes fall flat, steps are a bit tentative — but that seems like the point: They’re struggling, and success is in no way a guarantee.
More important than the charm factor is that La La Land’s song-and-dance elements hark back to the glory days of Hollywood musicals, which were at their best during hard times, when people wanted not only to escape their troubles but also be reminded there was some goodness in the world. Manohla Dargis wrote at the New York Times about this:
When I went to see “La La Land” again, I was in a terrible state, and this time I just fell into it, gratefully. I surrendered. Afterward, I realized that this must have been what it was like to watch Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers during the Great Depression...... Contemporary American movies could use more s’wonderful, more music and dance, and way, way more surrealism. They’re too dull, too ordinary and too straight, whether they’re mired in superhero clichés or remodeled kitchen-sink realism. One of the transformative pleasures of musicals is that even at their most choreographed, they break from conformity, the dos and don’ts of a regimented life, suggesting the possibility that everyone can move to her own beat.
The feeling of pleasure — not a cheap thrill ride or even catharsis, but being bathed in a happy, warm glow — is one of the best things cinema can evoke. The opportunity La La Land provides, to let its colors and sounds and surprises wash over you, feels almost like a public service in December 2016. It’s a reminder that there’s wonder out there, moments of surprise.
But don’t call it escapism. La La Land isn’t a wish-fulfillment fantasy; in fact, ambitious young people living in 2016 may find themselves a bit downcast after La La Land. Paying the bills is harder than it used to be, especially if you also have those behemoth student loan bills looming over the first 10 years of your career, and if you don’t have a safety net — well, forget it.
Being a working young artist is even more difficult. Digital distribution platforms lower the bar to entry but raise the bar for gaining an audience, especially for those who don’t specialize in vulgarity or ideologically one-note work (and that’s without any money involved). Day jobs are hard to find, and they don’t leave a lot of headspace for creative work. The influx of starry-eyed dreamers to places like Los Angeles and New York City never slows down, but the outflow is pretty steady.
In La La Land, contemporary struggles are entwined with Hollywood history
La La Land writer-director Chazelle was born in 1985, which makes him a millennial. He’s had a more charmed entry to success than most, with the critically acclaimed and beloved Whiplash to his name before he turned 30. But you get the sense from La La Land that he knows the landscape intimately. There’s an emotional familiarity with disappointment running through the film — the pain of knowing that you’re really good at what you do, but so is everyone else, and there’s no guarantee that your work will see the light of day.
Cleverly, La La Land doesn’t get too self-conscious about this distinctively 2016 theme, in the end twisting the bittersweetness of this struggle back into the romance. But the costume design tells the story: Mia’s style quietly creeps forward from the 1930s to today, subtly quoting every decade. This struggle for success is an old story, repeated since Hollywood’s golden age, but its distinctive modern contours are what make La La Land resonant today.
The movie’s nostalgic style doesn’t leave contemporary struggles in the dust; instead, it infuses them with new meaning. There’s a way to transform a budget-friendly can of beans, a secondhand dress, and a lousy audition into magic, says La La Land: Think of them as part of a melancholy love affair — and whenever you can, sing to your dreams.
La La Land opens in theaters on December 8, 2016.Here is a symbol for your age: OK Computer came out twenty years ago. I was four years old then, and the album didn’t make it into my life until much later (Amnesiac was my intro to Radiohead), but the genius of OK Computer is such that its influence trickled down to even those who were ten years too young (or too old) to be listening to a band like Radiohead in 1997. That year, Yorke, Selway, O’Brien and the Greenwoods finally achieved what a couple of decades worth of optimistic ‘prog’ had not: intelligence in rock music. “When a reporter asked one of the members whether Radiohead had been influenced by Genesis and Pink Floyd, the answer was swift and categorical: “No. We all hate progressive rock music,”” the New Yorker reported a couple of days ago. The weird wryness of OK Computer and its creators is so hard to comprehend that there is a whole cult of people out there who can only do
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, it can also be liberating.
When you can put things into perspective and realize that we only get one life, it makes it easier to stop caring so much about what other people think and be true to yourself.
4. Think, really think, about the absolute worst case scenario.
What intimidates you? What’s holding you back from doing the things you want to do?
For example, I’ve had numerous women tell me they’re intimidated to lift weights at the gym because it’s full of loud, grunting men. And others say, “There are no women back there; they all participate in group classes”.
Ask yourself this question: What is the absolute worst thing that will happen if you do [insert whatever it is you want to do]?
Sticking with the weight lifting room example, you may get an odd look or two. You may have to stand beside some smelly men. If your gym is filled with women who like to gossip, someone may say something about you.
And is that worst case scenario really that bad? No... no it’s not.
An amazing, determined woman received an ignorant comment from a personal trainer when he said, “There’s another one who will break our equipment” because she was 350+ pounds. But this lady didn’t give up and lost 250 pounds despite the comment of a horrible person. You can find her story here.
That story proves what we know is true: some people are ignorant assholes. The solution is simple: screw what other people think.
And here’s the REAL question we should be asking:
What is the worst thing that will happen if we don’t do the things that make us happy because we’re concerned with what other people will say/think?
In short: we won’t do the things that make us happy, and we won’t live life to the fullest. How sad is that? I know, because I’ve done it in the past. I’ve held myself back from doing the things I wanted, all because I was too concerned with what others would think and I missed out on many opportunities as a result. Hell, I spent almost two decades trying to force myself to be attracted to men because where I come from, being gay is unacceptable.
The next time you’re hesitant to do something or take a risk because you’re afraid of what other people will think, stop and ask yourself, “What’s the worst case scenario if I do this?” More than likely it’s not that bad. And I can almost guarantee you’ll be worse off if you do/don’t do things because you’re more concerned with what others will think.
“I’d rather look back on life and say ‘I can’t believe I did that’ than ‘I wish I did that’.”
-Richard Branson
5. Remove sources of negativity, immediately.
Purge your life of negative, toxic people and resources. If your coworkers have a knack for starting drama, avoid them. If your circle of friends have a tendency to tear you down, then separate yourself and look elsewhere.
If you have a public life on the internet or have trouble with cyber bullying and can’t (yet) laugh off the terrible comments people say about you, for the love of everything stop reading the comments or remove yourself from the situation! You can’t stop people from being hateful, but you can choose to ignore them and do something meaningful with your time instead.
I once made the mistake of reading comments about me on a forum, and I was utterly shocked by some of the comments. I can easily shrug off 99% of the cruel, ridiculous comments people make, but I’m not bullet proof. The fool-proof solution is to simply avoid it all together.
Instead of reveling over comments, I ignore them. I keep doing the work that makes me happy. I continue to follow my passion. I choose to make positive, productive, fulfilling decisions with my time.
You should do the same.
Avoid people and resources (and social media, if necessary) that are negative.
6. Trust a few opinions, but forget the rest.
There’s freedom in being true to yourself and not caring about what other people think. However, it is important to trust a select few to share their opinions with you, or people you can go to when you need to talk.
Have a few close people you can confide in; people who you know have your best interest at heart.
Personally, I can count on one hand the number of people’s opinions in my life that have an affect on me. And what about other people, or total strangers who feel the need to tell me what they think about me, my body, and my life? Pffft. They don’t matter.
7. Some people are going to dislike you, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Don’t waste your time trying to get everyone to like you, because it’s impossible.
Instead of worrying about who doesn’t like you, focus on being a better person for those who do. Spend your time and energy living an awesome life and using your talents, gifts, and abilities to make the world and people around you better.
Let other people like you not because of who you’re trying to be, but because of who you genuinely are. Or, as I like to say …
I’d rather be hated for who I truly am than loved for something I’m pretending to be.
Apply those seven tips and you’ll be on your way to not caring what other people think and living a more awesome life.
Ready, Aim, Don’t Care What They Think
Are the tips above easier said than done? Perhaps, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Just like anything else in life you want to master, it will require consistent practice. In the same way Lifting Like a Girl takes some time to achieve results, you’ll also have to consistently put the above tips to practice if you want to stop caring about what other people think and live the life you want.
Remember, what’s worse: Having to deal with unwelcome comments from doing the things you want, or not living your life to the fullest?
Finally, please practice this with other people too. If you find yourself judging or gossiping about others, please stop. Let’s focus instead on becoming the best versions of ourselves and encourage others to do the same, even if it’s a different way than us.
Did you enjoy this article? You may also like:
Never miss a thing! Sign up below to receive the newsletter. You’ll also receive the Beautiful Badass Mini Course as a Free Gift.The air battle of Mansoura was the Egyptian name for an air battle that took place during the Yom Kippur War between the Egyptian Air Force (EAF) and the Israeli Air Force (IAF) near the town of El Mansoura, in the Nile Delta.
The Israeli air force launched air strikes on October 14 against the Egyptian air bases at Tanta and Mansoura. Israeli aircraft were spotted approaching from the Mediterranean Sea. The 104th Air Wing of the Egyptian air force scrambled its fighters, receiving additional reinforcements from other air bases.[citation needed] The air battle began at 15:15 and lasted 53 minutes. The Egyptian commander was Hosni Mubarak. According to Egyptian sources, multiple Israeli fighters were shot down; this is disputed by Israeli sources.
Background [ edit ]
The 104th Air Wing had three squadrons equipped with MiG-21MF fighters; two squadrons were stationed at Mansoura, tasked with interception and air defense, and the third was stationed at the Tanta air base to defend both air bases. The IAF had made several attacks on the Mansoura air base from October 6 onwards, but failed due to dense Egyptian SAM defenses.[3]
At dawn on October 14, when Egyptian forces made their advance towards the Sinai Mitla and Gedy Passes, the ground forces were given ground support by MiG-17s, Su-7s, Su-20s and Mirage III fighter bombers. These in turn were given fighter cover by the 104th's MiG-21s. Although the Egyptian offensive on October 14 was a failure and culminated in heavy losses, the IAF was determined to destroy the 104th Air Wing's capabilities. A massive air strike would be launched against air bases in Salihiya, Mansoura and Tanta.[1][3]
In the aftermath of the Six-Day War, when the EAF lost almost all its aircraft on the ground to an Israeli preemptive strike, the Egyptians constructed 500 concrete shelters on 20 major airbases to prevent the aircraft from being destroyed on the ground in a future conflict.[4]
On October 14, when the Egyptians advanced from their bridgeheads along the Suez Canal, an Israeli air strike was expected to come against the Mansoura air base sooner or later, and consequently a number of MiG-21s were kept at full alert at the end of the runway with their pilots, ready for immediate take-off. As of 15:00, there was still no indication of an impending enemy attack.[citation needed]
At 15:15, air observation posts on the Mediterranean Sea notified EAF command that 20 Phantoms were approaching in south-west direction towards the Delta, flying over Port Said. The commander of the EAF, Air Marshal Hosni Mubarak ordered General Naser to scramble 16 MiG-21s. The EAF command believed the enemy aircraft were only a decoy meant to lure the MiG-21s away from the airbase, so that further waves of aircraft could attack the air base uninterrupted. Hence the fighter pilots were ordered to create a protective umbrella over the air base. Most importantly, they were instructed not to pursue and engage enemy aircraft before they had reached their target.[1]
The pilots were puzzled by the order, not knowing the reason behind it, as they expected to immediately engage the enemy after scrambling. In the event, the Israeli fighters continued to fly in broad circles for some time until, when it became clear the Egyptians would not leave the vicinity of the Mansoura air base, the Phantoms withdrew back to the sea.[3]
Battle [ edit ]
Sometime around 15:30, the Egyptian Air Defense Command issued a warning that around sixty enemy aircraft were approaching from the Mediterranean Sea in three directions; one from Port Said, another from Damietta, and the third from Baltim, to the west of Damietta. Mubarak ordered his pilots in the air to intercept them. The 16 MiG-21s forming the air umbrella over Mansoura moved against the Israeli aircraft with the objective of breaking the enemy formations and forcing them to disperse. 16 MiG-21s took off from Mansoura air base to support those in the air, along with eight fighters from Tanta air base, located west of Mansoura. The MiG-21s intercepted the Israeli formation a few dozen kilometers north of Mansoura.[citation needed]
At 15:38, Egyptian radar installations informed the EAF command that a second wave of around 16 Israeli aircraft was coming from over the Mediterranean at very low altitude.[citation needed] The Egyptians scrambled a final eight MiG-21s at Mansoura, while eight MiG-21s from the Abu Hamad air base were called upon to assist.[citation needed] The ensuing air battle was intense, involving large numbers of aircraft; at one point, the battle involved 62 MiG-21s and some 120 Phantoms and A-4 Skyhawks.[citation needed] A few Israeli fighter-bombers reached their target and bombed the runway and the air defenses around the air base. While the final eight aircraft from Mansoura took off, Israeli aircraft were approaching to make their bombing run. Nasr Mousa, piloting one of the eight MiG-21s, spotted an Israeli Phantom lining up against him. Mousa made a sudden, hard right-hand turn that put him on the Phantom's tail. He shot down the Phantom with cannon fire, and no parachutes emerged. Medhat 'Arafa, an Egyptian pilot, recalls "the battle was a frightening sight because I had never seen so many aeroplanes in one area. We were not only dogfighting, but also warning other pilots that they had an enemy on their tail..." The Israeli Phantoms had to abandon their bomb-loads in order to dogfight with the more maneuverable MiG aircraft. Egyptian pilots had to land their aircraft, re-arm, refuel and take-off again within a period of seven minutes. Take-off usually took three minutes, but according to Naser, the pilots were able to accomplish it in one-and-a-half minutes during the air battle.[1]
At 15:52, radars detected another wave of enemy aircraft, estimated to incorporate up to 60 Phantoms and Skyhawks. Eight MiG-21s from 102nd Air Wing were scrambled from Inshas air base, near Cairo. Around 20 MiG-21s that had landed, refueled and re-armed at Mansoura air base were also en route to intercept the Israeli aircraft. An air battle was raging over the Nile Delta village of Dekernis, where Israeli aircraft retreating eastward were being pursued by Egyptian aircraft. A dogfight ensued over this village between the latest Israeli wave and intercepting Egyptian MiG-21s. The commander of this final wave of Israeli aircraft, realizing that the previous waves had failed in their objectives and there were more Egyptian aircraft in the air than expected, decided to withdraw. The last Israeli aircraft left Egyptian airspace at 16:08, and the air battle was over.[3]
Veracity of claims [ edit ]
At 22:00 local time Cairo Radio broadcast “Communiqué Number 39”, announcing several air battles that day over a number of Egyptian airfields, the most intensive over the northern Delta area. It claimed that 15 enemy aircraft had been downed by Egyptian fighters for the loss of three Egyptian aircraft, excluding Israeli aircraft shot down near the Suez Canal.[citation needed]
The following morning, October 15, Israel Radio claimed that the IAF had shot down 15 Egyptian aircraft, a figure later reduced to seven.[3]
Following the war, the EAF concluded that 17 Israeli aircraft had been shot down for the loss of six MiG-21s; three were shot down by Israeli aircraft, two crashed after running out of fuel before the pilots could land, and one was destroyed after sustaining damage from an exploding Israeli Phantom. The pilot of the MiG-21 was Lieutenant Mohamed Adoub who claims to have shot down the Phantom with several bursts of 23 mm cannon fire. His aircraft suffered fatal damage from the debris. Adoub and the Israeli pilot parachuted almost alongside each other. The Israeli pilot, upon landing on the ground, was assailed by angry farmers who nearly killed him, but Adoub stopped them. The Israeli pilot was taken into captivity and hospitalized. In all two Egyptian pilots were killed in action, and the remaining four ejected safely.[1][3]
The IAF gave up targeting major air bases by October 15, although there was another significant air engagement over the Nile Delta that day.[1]
According to historian Lon Nordeen, the IAF lost only two aircraft on October 14.[5] According to Kenneth Pollack, throughout the war "there were fifty-two major dogfights between the Egyptians and Israelis. In all, the Egyptians succeeded in shooting down 5–8 Israeli aircraft while losing 172 of their own to Israeli fighters".[6] According to Chaim Herzog, a total of 334 Arab aircraft were shot down in air-to-air combat and Egyptian losses accounted for 172 of these. Israeli losses numbered five.[7] The list of fallen IAF pilots mentions no casualties on October 14.[8]
According to Shahdan El-Shazli, daughter of the former Egyptian military Chief of Staff Saad el-Shazly, Mubarak altered the representation of a number of events pertaining to the 1973 war to show a magnified role for himself. In the Egyptian newspaper Almasry Alyoum (26 Feb 2011), she claimed that Mubarak altered documents and photographs, and she planned to pursue legal action in this regard.[9]
Commemorations [ edit ]
Egypt's "Air Force Day" was changed from November 2 to October 14 to commemorate the air battle.[citation needed]
References [ edit ]
Coordinates:Two of Dell’s largest shareholders have made a new takeover bid for the struggling computer company that will challenge a previous offer from Silverlake and Michael Dell. Activist investor Carl Ichan and Southeastern Asset Management on Friday announced a new plan that would give current Dell shareholders the option keep their stock and receive either $12 per share in cash or $12 in additional shares valued at $1.65 per share. The offer counters a $24.4 billion bid led by Dell founder Michael Dell and private equity firm Silver Lake Partners to take the company private. Icahn and Southeastern hold a combined 13% stake in the company, compared to the 16% controlled by Dell and Silver Lake.
“It is insulting to shareholders’ intelligence for the board to tell them that this board only has the best interests of shareholders at heart, and then accept Michael Dell’s offer to purchase the company he founded for $13.65 per share, a price far below what we consider its value to be,” Icahn and Southeastern’s president G. Staley Cates wrote in a letter to the board of directors, according to Bloomberg.
Shares of Dell have continued to rise this year as buyout talks have made shareholders feel optimistic about the company’s future. The stock has gained more than 31% in the past five months and now trades around $13.40 per share, making Dell’s offer of $13.65 per share less appealing.
“Either give shareholders the real choice they are entitled to or face the legal liability for your failures,” Icahn and Southeastern said.Real-Life Financial Advice from Characters of Popular Fiction
For a young person coming up in the world, getting your finances in order can be a daunting task. With no real experience to refer to and no idea what the future truly holds, it can sometimes feel easier to let your funds run wild and hope for the best. In case you were wondering, that is not a very good plan at all. Have no fear, these nine fictional characters from pop-culture can teach you the lessons you need to grab your financial future by the horns.
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<a href="https://www.titlemax.com/financial-advice-from-fiction-characters/"> <img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/titlemax-media/Financial_Advice_Infographic.jpg" alt="Real-Life Financial Advice From Characters of Popular Fiction - Titlemax.com - Infographic" title="Real-Life Financial Advice From Characters of Popular Fiction - Titlemax.com - Infographic"></a><br><a href="https://www.titlemax.com" alt="TitleMax.com" title="TitleMax.com">TitleMax.com</a>Skip to comments.
15 Photos From The #OneNation Rally You'll Never See In Legacy Media
Beforeitsnews.com ^ | October 2, 2010 | Doug Ross @ Journal
Posted on by csd
It's times like this that I miss J. Edgar Hoover.
TOPICS:
Government
Miscellaneous
Politics
Society
KEYWORDS:
2010
2010election
2010midterms
communism
corruption
democrats
elections
fail
liberals
obama
onenation
onenationrally
progressives
seiu
socialism
To: csd
Absolute lowlife Welcome to today’s Democratic Party
To: csd
Meaning: these people can’t even wipe their own butts.
To: A_Former_Democrat
The Democrats: America's National, Socialist Party
To: csd
BUMP
by 5 posted onby BunnySlippers (I love BULL MARKETS...)
To: csd
Thanks for posting these! Oh my!
To: A_Former_Democrat
I’d chip in to get them the hell out of our country...permanently. Bastards.
To: csd
To: csd
I particularly like all the signs that emphasize the need for ‘jobs’...um, lefties- who’s in control of Congress and the Oval Office, again?
To: csd
What a bunch of slobs. I wonder what the cost will be to taxpayers for the cleanup of the accumulated trash?
To: A_Former_Democrat
I would love it if glenn beck had some of these photos on his show
To: Extremely Extreme Extremist
I went into the State of Washington Labor and Industries to get a permit. There was one of those Socialist Newspapers sitting on the coffee table.
To: csd
After our side went there to Restore Honor, the commie piggies went to the nation’s capitol and trashed the place. I’ll tell you what! Let’s tell Mexico that we’ll keep the illegals if they’ll take ALL of these little commie piggies.
by 13 posted onby FlingWingFlyer (Help stamp out political correctness.)
To: gieriscm
leftists trash the mall... Where are all the “it’s for the environment” weenies????
To: csd
These people are trash like the garbage they left behind everyone of them.
by 15 posted onby Cheetahcat (Zero the Wright kind of Racist! We are in a state of War with Democrats)
To: csd
Communists never have any regard for anyone elses property. Communist countries are always a mess.
by 16 posted onby HereInTheHeartland (Add some short, faux intellectual phrase here:)
To: Extremely Extreme Extremist
Typical day in the ‘hood!
To: csd
great post, sadly.
To: csd
sfl
To: HereInTheHeartland
Communists never have any regard for anyone elses property. Communist countries are always a mess. Having been in a couple of former communist counties I can testify to that fact.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John RobinsonI felt that both were kinda boring so I made a collage of both pictures. I seriously tried some Egg Carrier and Darkwraith thing but the liquids man... it really slipped into some serious rule 34.... and I want to stay a bit on the ridiculous funny side, rather then the absolute porn one. (My mom visits my page... hi mom)Okay so.... I guess that's about it. The joke gets old and I don't want to end up like Spongebob in the end, singing a song how I missed the point when the joke wasn't funny anymore ;D. I really dunno what to do next... ಠ_ಠ most likely just play some Dark Souls or keep on drawing Dark Souls stuff, or so... but without flooding poor de.reddit.com/r/darksouls/ with my shit anymore (I'm so sorry!!)Hope you guys like this little drawing. If I (or one of you) have a really good idea I might do something like this again but right now it feels rather forced.Last week we had a chat with Mattias Hedlund, founder of the brilliant and beautiful Into The Valley, a unique and highly discerning Techno festival on the cusp of a massive expansion. Outgrowing the gorgeous environs of it’s home these past years – the singular Dalhalla, an old limestone quarry north of the town of Rättvik, Sweden – the organizers have announced no less than six new festivals in the works, in places as far reaching as Estonia, South Africa, and beyond. Read the full interview, and see some exclusive shots of the new locations beneath.
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Into The Valley is expanding significantly this coming year – were there any major reasons besides having more capital and reach that spurred this decision?
MH: We have a long way to go until we can say that we have capital to spend. All money we’re earning from now on till 2019 will be re-invested in the project to improve and get the brand moving. This journey we’re on is very time consuming and if you’re not extremely passionate about what we do, you probably shouldn’t be doing it.
The main reason for the expansion was intuitive, we felt it was time to really go for it due to how we perceive the state of our culture. I’m also pretty restless so this kind of had to happen. 🙂
All of us working in the organization (Music Goes Further) and the festivals are true enthusiasts with a common goal of creating something unique that we really love being part of.
In a couple of sentences, how would you sum up your mission statement with the festival? What core elements distinguish ITV from other forward-thinking electronic festivals?
MH: Our ambition is to do something no one else does. To create festivals with 100% quality all the way through the whole concept. Also to do so at venues and in areas where no one’s done festivals like this before. What I mean with 100% quality is to maintain the high level of music, art, technique, food, drink, environmental awareness, all-in-all service and experience. All festivals will be set up on the same fundamentals, but at the same time built to be unique due to the local scene, culture and environment. As a recurrent guest at our festivals you should never be bored by the sense of repetition. Guests will experience music curated exclusively for every region and venue together with big artists within the scene.
Something very important for us is our focus on social and gender equality. Everyone should feel welcome, be it as a visitor, artist, crew or partner.
On that note, it’s been noted before that ITV’s lineups tend towards the more diverse side of things gender-wise. Is this a conscious effort on the part of your A&R, or something that has simply happened naturally in the past?
MH: We work in a traditionally male-dominated industry and we really want to be a part of changing that. We feel that Sweden is getting closer to an equal scene and we’re of course taking that momentum with us as we expand internationally. We’ve always worked actively with this and will continue doing so. We hope more festivals will do the same and help create a platform where all artists are equally valued. Festivals are obviously a perfect place for people to meet, regardless of race, status, gender or sexual orientation.
It sounds like there are many truly incredible venues on the horizon for the festival next year, was there a reason for moving the original festival away from Dalhalla?
There were several reasons interacting for this decision, but the deciding one was the lack of options for accommodation. The camping site was too small and there weren’t enough hotels or Airbnb’s available in the area. This limited capacity in lodging made it impossible for us to sell more tickets.
There were various complaints leveled not at the festival, but at the sheer number of law enforcement officers present at the venue in Sweden this year – is this one of the reasons for moving the events internationally?
MH: No, that’s not why we are moving (and expanding). But I want to say though that the local authorities’ way of working around our festival this year made us very disappointed and makes our move even more important. As the visitor’s experience is the most important thing we have, we take every comment and complaint from our guests very seriously, always eager to improve. Our visitors will definitely feel our experience growing and shape our vision step-by-step for the ultimate boutique festival experience.
Do you expect continued expansion beyond the six festivals you have planned in the coming years?
MH: I believe that six festivals are more enough hahaha. The idea is also that these festivals will change location moving forward. We don’t really know what the future holds and that’s making it all very exciting. One location might just be used one year, another one for three years etc. We’re aiming to continue making magic together with our visitors, and there are so many beautiful places all over the world to discover, you just have to know how to find them. 🙂
Are there any specific DJs that you personally would like to book for the upcoming events?
MH: That’s a very tricky question that I struggle with every single day. There are so many great DJs, so many I want to book. The reality of producing boutique festivals always means struggling with a tight budget to say the least. Having said that, we obviously learnt a lot along the way and the line-ups at the upcoming festivals are so good that I almost want to cry. Ulrike, our booking agent, and I, put a lot of effort, heart and energy in order to curate a musical ensemble we are extremely proud of. Next year is very exciting since we have two new festivals (in Talinn and Stockholm) each with its own unique profile, at an equal standard but with different artists.
You can follow Into The Valley, get more information, and sign up for their mailing list here: http://www.intothevalley.se/.Three months. That’s all it took to wipe almost every member of a species of turtles off of the map.
It all started in mid-February when canoeists paddling down the Bellinger River in New South Wales, Australia, came across several dead and dying turtles.
Since then more than 400 dead turtles have shown up. Dozens more sick turtles were also recovered, each of which was lethargic, emaciated and covered in infected lesions in their eyes, skin and even internal organs.
None of the infected turtles survived.
The 60-kilometer river is the only home to the Bellinger River snapping turtle (Elsaya georgesi), a rare but little-studied species that has already been on the decline for years due to pollution and predation by invasive foxes. Scientists now fear that this mysterious, as-yet-unidentified disease has reached 90 percent of the turtle’s habitat and could cause the species’s imminent extinction.
Is there hope? So far 17 apparently healthy turtles have been captured and brought into safety. University of Western Sydney zoologist Ricky Spencer says the 10 males and seven females—all that could be located by a multiagency team of wildlife experts—will spend up to the next eight months in quarantine where they will be monitored daily for signs of the disease. If they stay healthy, they could later form the core of a captive-breeding program that could, in theory, save the species from extinction even if it completely disappears in the wild.
Along with starting a captive-breeding program, the other big challenge is to identify the disease and determine how to stop it. The process could take years. Although other diseases and certain bacteria have been known to affect turtles—especially their fragile eyes—Spencer says there are no other known turtle diseases that produce such extensive lesions “throughout internal and external organs.”
At this point of the year, the Bellinger River turtles would typically enter their winter hibernation period, so it’s hard to know how many may be alive but hiding underground. Even though few turtles have been seen over the past few weeks, Spencer asks the public to report any sightings of sick or dead animals to state wildlife authorities, to not touch any turtles they do see and to limit human activities on the river to minimize the risks of spreading the disease further.
The next few months will be full of questions. Will the captive turtles survive and breed? Will the disease be identified in time to keep it from spreading? Will any hibernating turtles wake up in a few months or has this unknown disease already taken its toll?
Right now answers, and turtles, are in short supply.
Healthy Bellinger River snapping turtle photo by Sally Tsoutas, courtesy of the University of Western Sidney. Diseased turtle photos via the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage
Previously in Extinction Countdown:As if Syrian regime forces, Russian airstrikes, and internal squabbling weren’t enough to worry about, Syrian rebels have apparently now come under attack from Hezbollah drones dropping bombs.
On Aug. 9, the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group posted a video online purportedly depicting a commercial, quad copter-style drone dropping small explosive devices at alleged rebel positions in Aleppo, a major opposition-held city in northern Syria.
The 42-second video, apparently a compilation of footage shot by the attacking drones themselves, seems to show the robots hovering a few hundred feet over vehicles and structures as small blasts scatter fragments and send smoke and dust billowing into the sky.
In the third and final attack, the grenade-size munitions themselves—possibly Chinese-made MZD-2 artillery submunitions—are visible falling away from the drone. A person on the ground spots the bombs falling toward them and flees the targeted structure moments before the explosives detonate.
Hezbollah has deployed thousands of fighters to Syria to help bolster troops loyal to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. Hezbollah fighters lack heavy vehicles and weaponry but have moved quickly to adopt small, inexpensive drones for surveillance and attack missions.
As early as November 2004, Hezbollah sent Iranian-supplied Mirsad drones into Israeli airspace on spy missions, catching Israeli air defenses off guard. Shortly thereafter, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah proclaimed that the Mirsad could penetrate “anywhere, deep, deep” into Israel while carrying more than 200 pounds of explosives.
It was a bold claim for the time. The United States was the first country to deploy a modern, armed drone—the Predator—in 2001. For several years, America possessed a virtual monopoly on weaponized flying robots.
Nasrallah was perhaps exaggerating, but he wasn’t bluffing. In August 2006 during Israel’s brief, bloody war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, the militant group launched three explosives-laden Ababil drones toward Israeli territory. Israeli jet fighters shot down all three robots.
Hezbollah’s current armed drones represent a departure from the group’s previous concept for drone operations. The Mirsads and Ababils were, in a sense, strategic terror weapons, meant to cross borders and strike fear in enemy populations.
The submunition-armed drones that Hezbollah has deployed over Aleppo are, by contrast, strictly tactical. Hovering, commercial-style drones can fly only a short distance away from their operators and, under the best of circumstances, can haul only a few pounds of payload. But what the drone-copters lack in sheer power, they make up for in stability—hence their ability to accurately drop an unguided submunition.
They’re also cheap, easy to procure, and simple to operate. For all but the most impoverished military force, a $200 quadcopter is disposable. And that means the type could crop up again not only in Syria, but also on battlefields all over the world—as a bomber... or as a bomb itself, rigged to explode on command.
The Pentagon, for one, is assuming that small, cheap, weaponized drones will soon pose a significant danger to American troops. “I personally believe that the unmanned platform is going to be one of the most important weapons of our age,” U.S. Navy Capt. Vincent Martinez, who oversees technology development for the fleet’s bomb squads, told Defense News last year.
Martinez said he was doubly worried about drones crashing or landing while hauling improvised explosive devices or other munitions that the robot or its operator might trigger as bomb-disposal troops approach. “I’m going to have to start thinking not only about how I defuse the payload but how I defuse the platform,” Martinez said. “When I walk up on that platform, is it watching me, is it sensing me, is it waiting for me?”
The U.S. military is preparing its drone defenses. On Aug. 11, the fringe-science Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency asked for researchers and companies to propose technologies that might “detect, identify, track and neutralize these [drone] systems on the move, on a compressed timeline and while mitigating collateral damage.”
One private firm has already begun marketing one such tech. In March, OpenWorks Engineering began offering its SkyWall 100—in essence, a bazooka that fires a drone-entangling net—as a non-destructive robot-countermeasure.
The U.S. Marine Corps, for one, is signaling that it won’t hesitate to simply blow up drones in midair. Skipping ahead of DARPA’s own solicitation, the Marines recently announced plans to fit a drone-blasting laser cannon to its new armored vehicle starting in 2022.
But with Hezbollah already lobbing grenades from quadcopters in Syria, the non-state perpetrators of small-scale drone warfare have the jump on the world’s established armies and their lumbering bureaucracies.
At present, weaponized drones are way ahead of defenses against weaponized drones. If you shoot one down, another might quickly take its place. And once it drops its bomb, you can only do what that unfortunate figure can be seen doing at the end of Hezbollah’s new video—run.When any nation is rounding up political prisoners in large numbers, it is immediately worthy of the world’s attention. When any such nation is also a member of the European Union, we must ask ourselves some hard questions about what is and is not acceptable in today’s Europe. In just two months since Liberland’s founding, the nation of Croatia has arrested over 30 people for entering Liberland territory. By this point is has become clear to any casual observer that Croatia is determined to squash the success of the new nation. No matter how one feels about the newly proclaimed nation of Liberland, a seperate key issue has now surfaced: are the actions of the Croatian government illegal? The evidence suggests that on various levels they are severely violating international law as well as numerous treaties of which they are signatory to.
Which Border Is The Correct One?
Thus far, all of the nearly three dozen arrests have been for the same alleged crime, crossing the border illegally. Liberland is shaped like a half circle, with the Danube River hugging its eastern border leaving Croatia as its only land border. Many of the early arrests occurred due to people crossing the Croatia-Liberland border on foot. An official border crossing between Croatia and Liberland does not yet exist, and therefore crossing by foot into Liberland is an illegal act under Croatian law. The troubling part is that Croatian forces are also exiting Croatia on foot and into Liberland in order to abduct and extract citizens back into Croatia where they are fined and imprisoned.
Seeking to avoid breaking Croatian border laws, Liberland citizens have since purchased boats, and after registering them legally, have departed from the Serbian side to Liberland. It was expected that, since Croatia has no claim over the territory, it would be acceptable for Liberland citizens and visitors to enter the land in this manner. Sadly, this has been anything but the case. Using their police boats to blockade Liberland territory 24 hours a day, Liberland’s citizens have frequently been prevented from entering their soil by water, with many citizens being abducted across the Croatian border and placed into Croatian jails.
These facts can only lead to one conclusion: Croatia is knowingly making
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was a dear old Englishman, Mr Nicholson who used to wear a helmet and an ARP band round his arm. I can still remember his huge moustache and his buckets of sand.
During the air raids, Mr Nicholson would entertain us children with toy whistles, little paper hats — he was good at "Origami" and would fold brown paper into lovely decorative shapes. When the “all clear” siren sounded we would leave the shelters and look at the damage. Not far from our house was an Ismaili Religious Centre — called “Jamaat Khana” — it had been bombed — 2 cows had been killed. There was broken glass and shrapnel everywhere.
The bombing of Calcutta led to an exodus of residents — Howrah and Sealdah Stations being packed with people trying to get out. Some of our street hawkers also disappeared — we never saw our bread delivery man again.
© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.JERSEY CITY, N.J. (CBSNewYork/AP) – New Jersey law enforcement authorities have launched a “safe surrender” initiative that allows nonviolent offenders with arrest warrants to have their cases resolved quickly, often without jail time.
The four-day program started Wednesday morning and runs through Saturday at Evangelismos Greek Orthodox Church in Jersey City.
As CBS 2’s Hazel Sanchez reported, hundreds of people waited in long lines at the church to ask for forgiveness from the law.
“Your charges will not be dismissed, but you’ll have the opportunity to work with a judge and a public defender and a prosecutor to have your matter resolved quickly,” said New Jersey Attorney General’s office spokesman Neal Buccino.
“It’s a no-brainer,” said Sean Jackson of Jersey City.
N.J. Offering 'Fugitive Safe Surrender' Program To Those With Outstanding Warrants
As WCBS 880’s Levon Putney reported got in line at 2:45 a.m. on Wednesday to take care of his driving without a license warrant.
“Why not? Like I said, you can wait ’til they can come and get you or turn yourself in. You’re going to have to pay more than what you would have to pay to come in here,” Jackson told Putney.
He wasn’t the first in line.
“Over 700 people were lining up at 1 a.m.,” State Parole Board Chairman James Plousis said.
Truck driver Frank Rayford hoped to reduce thousands of dollars’ worth of fines he owed for unpaid traffic tickets. His license has been suspended for two years.
“I couldn’t afford to get it straightened out,” said Rayford, of Irvington. “So with the program hopefully it will help me get it back and I can help support my family more than what I’m doing now.”
Michelle Smart was hoping to deal with a warrant for drug possession.
“I made a change in my life. I’m doing something different now,” said Smart, of Jersey City. I’m in medical school, going on with my life. I have a granddaughter. I have something to live for today. That’s why I’m here to surrender.”
And by surrendering, many said they are finally free.
“I just feel like there’s a burden that has been lifted off of me and I just feel free,” said Veronica Fludd of Irvington. “When I come out this door, I’m going to click my heels and I’m going to say thank you Jesus, because it’s in back of me now.”
At the Jersey City Armory across the street, judges reduced fines and wipe the slate clean for the fugitives, mostly facing traffic and child support cases.
“Most of these people really want to be productive and this gives them an opportunity for that second chance,” said Plousis.
The program is open to U.S. citizens and legal residents wanted for nonviolent crimes or disorderly person offenses, including family matters and child support.
It’s not an amnesty program, but does offer favorable consideration from the court, often in the form of reduced fines or probation instead of jail time.
Officials expected as many as 4,000 fugitives will turn themselves in to have their cases adjudicated.
The event will take place from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day.
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(TM and © Copyright 2013 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2013 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)One of SK hynix's biggest competitors is the Crucial MX100, priced at about the same level, yet the SH910A generally matches it in out-of-the-box performance and beats it in the consistency tests.
SK hynix is coming into the retail SSD market with a quartet of aggressively-priced drives.
Using in-house technology, from controller to flash, the SH910A drives offer solid performance in all of our tests. The reviewed 256GB model's potential is highlighted by the above-average numbers posted in the battery of benchmarks that focus on performance in various degraded states.
One of SK hynix's biggest competitors is the Crucial MX100, priced at about the same level, yet the SH910A generally matches it in out-of-the-box performance and beats it in the consistency tests.
SK hynix could improve this model further by bundling in data-migration software, but other than that, this is a budget drive with premier performance credentials. Recommended.
The Good
Fast sequential performance
Excellent numbers in well-used state
Good value across all capacities
Rich OEM heritage
The Bad
No data-migration software
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SK hynix SH910A SSD 256GB
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The SK hynix SH910A SSD is available from eBuyer.co.uk.
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At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.New Zealand 609 for 9 dec and 79 for 4 (Anderson 20*, Taylor 16*, Shillingford 4-16) drew with West Indies 213 and 507 (f/o) (Bravo 218, Sammy 80, Wagner 3-112)
Scorecard and ball-by-ball details
'New Zealand's wobble was a problem'
For New Zealand, it must have felt like spending numerous hours debugging a simplistic computer code, and just when it all looked ready, seeing the message 'core dumped'. Dunedin had been dry for almost 14 sessions, but the rain arrived just before tea on the fifth day to leave New Zealand stranded 33 runs away from their first Test win under Brendon McCullum. The rain intensity seesawed frustratingly before the match was finally called off, the third time New Zealand failed to close out a home Test this year.
Thirty-three runs. At the rate they were going, New Zealand would have needed approximately 12 overs, or 50 minutes, to score those runs. West Indies' last three wickets had batted for 81 minutes in the morning, after the double-centurion Darren Bravo had been dismissed in the day's third over. The 38-run partnership between Darren Sammy and Shane Shillingford for the eighth wicket had eaten up 56 minutes. And this is without even considering the dropped catches on the fourth day.
Shillingford was instrumental in delaying New Zealand with the ball as well. Venomous on a fifth-day pitch, he bowled unchanged for 15 of the 30 overs in the chase, picking up four top-order wickets to dash any hopes New Zealand might have had of a quick dash to the target.
For West Indies, it was an epic escape. They had trailed by 396 runs after a forgettable first innings, were forced to follow-on, and then put up a gutsy fight to take a lead. A draw was a massive boost for a side that did not last three days in both Tests on their recent tour to India. In fact, West Indies had an outside chance at victory after Shillingford's spell.
Shillingford had not had an impact in New Zealand's first innings, on a pitch that was hard with an even cover of grass, bowling 46 over for one wicket. After four days of sunshine, however, the grass had withered and Shillingford was West Indies' only chance of defending 112. Sammy gave him the new ball and it took Shillingford only seven balls to strike.
The smile that was last seen on Darren Sammy's face at the toss was back © AFP
In the last over before lunch, Peter Fulton missed a flick and Denesh Ramdin appealed for a catch down the leg side. Umpire Paul Reiffel said not out but Hot-Spot highlighted a faint nick after West Indies asked for a review. Two overs later, Aaron Redmond fell into a trap, clipping a sharply turning delivery straight into the hands of Narsingh Deonarine at leg gully.
Another two overs later, Shillingford lured Hamish Rutherford into playing a lofted shot and the batsman obliged, hitting a boundary wide of the long-on fielder. The next ball was tossed up again and Rutherford couldn't resist. He tried to repeat the previous shot, but this time he lobbed it straight to the long-on fielder, falling in exactly the same way as in the first innings. 'What a shot,' said a close-in fielder as Rutherford whacked his bat on his pads in disappointment.
At 31 for 3, New Zealand were in trouble, but had the experienced pair of Brendon McCullum and Ross Taylor to see them through the tricky period. Both batsmen continued from where they left in the first innings: Taylor staying solid, while McCullum blasted the first ball he faced through covers. But McCullum's aggression consumed him and he top-edged an attempted sweep off a delivery that went the other way and Ramdin took an easy catch.
While Shillingford bowled unchanged from one end, the other bowlers were not able to create chances. Corey Anderson drilled three boundaries off the seamers and rose in confidence, taking on Shillingford with a powerful sweep to move to 20, while Taylor was on 16 with the help of two boundaries. That's when it began to rain, and there was delight and despair in the dressing rooms as it did not stop.
New Zealand had looked good for an early finish when Bravo was bowled by Trent Boult in the third over of the morning. But Sammy, derided during the Tests in India for his irresponsible batting, didn't let New Zealand take control. He ran his runs hard despite an injury to his hamstring to reach only his sixth half-century in 36 Tests.
Shillingford added 15 runs before he edged Neil Wagner to first slip. Tino Best hung around for 21 minutes, his stay ending in a similar fashion. With only the No. 11 for company, Sammy threw his bat at the first delivery with the third new ball and sliced it to deep cover, but he ensured 54 useful runs had been added after Bravo's exit. Every minute and run counted in the end.
Devashish Fuloria is a sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo
© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.The FBI could reopen its investigation into Hillary Clinton's mishandling of classified information if she fails to win the November election, according to a former National Security Agency analyst, especially in light of revelations made public in a Friday document dump by the agency.
"The FBI completely ignored the appearance of highly classified signals intelligence in Hillary's email, including information lifted verbatim from above-Top Secret NSA reports back in 2011," John Schindler, a security expert and former analyst for the agency, wrote in a Sunday column for the Observer, noting the agency revealed on Friday that it never questioned Clinton about the issue.
"This week, however, we learned that there is actually no mystery at all here. The FBI was never able to get enough traction in its investigation of EmailGate to prosecute anybody since the Bureau had already granted immunity to key players in that scandal," wrote Schindler, who has served at both the NSA and the Army War College.
Related Story: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/article/2598282
FBI notes released Friday evening indicated the Justice Department granted immunity deals to Clinton's longtime aide and chief of staff at the State Department, Cheryl Mills, in addition Heather Samuelson, a senior adviser, and John Bentel, who headed the department's Office of Information Resources Management. Deals were previously known to have been handed to Clinton's IT aide, Bryan Pagliano, and Paul Combetta, an employee at an outside tech firm.
"Giving a pass to Bryan Pagliano, Hillary's IT guru who set up her email and server, made some sense since he understands what happened here, technically speaking, and otherwise is a small fish," Schindler wrote. "Now it turns out the FBI granted immunity to much bigger fish in the Clinton political tank.
Related Story: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/article/2586017
"How exactly Cheryl Mills got immunity, and what its terms were, is the long-awaited'smoking gun' in EmailGate, the clear indication that, despite countless man-hours expended on the year-long investigation, [FBI Director] James Comey and his FBI never had any intention of prosecuting Hillary Clinton, or anyone, for her mishandling of classified information as secretary of state," Schindler added.
Schindler noted the questions arising from the situation give both Congress and the FBI reason to reopen the investigation. "Why Comey decided to give Mills a get-out-of-jail-free card is something that needs proper investigation. This is raw, naked politics in all its ugly and cynical glory."
"For Hillary Clinton, winning that election may be a legal necessity to protect her from prosecution," he added. "Congress, animated by these latest revelations of illegality and corruption, will now pursue her with vigor, while an FBI in the hands of Donald Trump seems likely to show an interest in EmailGate which the Bureau never possessed under President Obama."
Related Story: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/article/2588571
Schindler is the latest observer to highlight the specter that law enforcement officials could reopen the investigation into Clinton's handling of classified information if she fails to win the election.
"It was clear from the FBI's assessment of the case that they put weight on whether Clinton intended to expose classified information, but not whether she intended her actions as the law requires nor whether the information was actually exposed," Matthew Whitaker, a U.S. attorney at the Justice Department under President George W. Bush, told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday.
The issue is set to receive further scrutiny by Congress in the days ahead. Director James Comey is scheduled to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, and the agency has been hit with a subpoena seeking to compel its response to additional questions by Friday.If Stephen Shore were known just for the iconic photos he shot as a teenager at Warhol’s original Silver Factory, he’d probably still get a place in the history of photography. But galvanized by a road trip from Manhattan to Amarillo, Texas, in 1972, Shore went on to pioneer the use of color in fine-art photography. Over the intervening years, his photos have also documented America and Americans in a way that presaged the straight-on deadpan vibe of much current image-making—this includes streetscapes and architecture shot to reveal them as abandoned film sets, and cryptic vérité portraits of people he meets.
In 1998, Shore wrote a book that’s been handed around by photographers of my acquaintance ever since. The Nature of Photographs is an illuminating meditation on the basic assumptions we have and make while looking at photos. It has the power to shift your own perceptions with one read.
Since 1982, Stephen Shore has been the director of the photography department at Bard College.
Self-portrait, New York, New York, March 20, 1976
Vice: Do you use The Nature of Photographs in your teaching?
Stephen Shore: Actually, The Nature of Photographs grew out of a class that I had taught called “Photographic Seeing.” At first I was using John Szarkowski’s book The Photographer’s Eye as a text. But there was one chapter that didn’t fit with the way I wanted to teach, so I wrote a new one. Then I decided I had enough material to do a book. But yes, I still use it now, and I find that my students are very receptive.
Are you surprised that it’s become such a must-read among younger photographers?
I’m not aware of that. Unless somebody tells me, there’s no real way for me to know what effect it has. It’s delightful for me to hear that it’s getting that response.
It’s so rigorous in its logic, so I wonder if it’s hard teaching a student whose reasons for being a photographer might be at odds with your own?
Their approach and style can be radically different and it doesn’t pose a problem. But let me qualify that. In the early 80s, when I first came to Bard, most of the photography programs around the country emphasized manipulated photography. Photography as a kind of printmaking—collaging, painting on photographs, sewing on photographs, that kind of thing. The photography faculty at Bard decided we were going to emphasize straight photography—that we would simply take an aesthetic stance and that we wouldn’t try to satisfy everyone. There were plenty of other schools to go to if people were interested in the manipulated image. But within the straight approach there’s still a huge range, including performative, snapshot... a huge range of possibilities. We made that distinction early on, but even then some of the students in their senior year veer off from it, and in using Photoshop enter more into the printmaking realm. I don’t find there’s any problem. I feel my job is to help the student find their voice.
Does teaching affect your own work?
Definitely. If I have ten people in a class, I have to begin to think like ten different people. I’m trying to lead them individually to their next step as artists. And so I find myself, as I go out into the world with a camera, having more visual ideas than if I hadn’t been teaching. Ideas that may seem not in line with what people think of as my style. For the past five years, my main project has been a series of books using print-on-demand technology. These books often go in very different directions because I can explore an idea that I might want to spend one day on, that I’m not interested in spending a year on. And I think the genesis of some of this was the mental exercise of teaching different people.
Digital cameras had to have helped.
I think digital made it easier. I guess I could have done it with film. But it seemed to flow with digital. There’s something light and spontaneous in the touch of digital sometimes.
When did you first start using it?
For work that I’m really focused on, about six years ago.
I imagine you use it for fashion editorials.
That’s all I’m using now for commercial work. It flows so much better.
What cameras do you have for that?
I use different ones on the job. I rent them. Last week I did a job and I was using a Nikon D3. But I use a Canon Mark III sometimes, or a 4x5 camera with a Leaf back. It really depends on the situation, what the needs are. Fifteen years ago when you were doing work like this you might go Polaroid first, and when the Polaroid got approved by everyone then do the shot. That’s fine if it’s a tabletop still life. But for example, in January I did a Nike campaign using athlete models who were running. I needed to get the motion of them running, get their legs in a visually interesting configuration, and at the same time have three different styles of running shoes clearly visible. I had to have them run over and over again. If I was doing this and made a Polaroid, and the art director and the client all approved, now I would have to put film in the camera and try to re-create it. It would be almost impossible. This way they look at the image on a computer and they say, “Yes, that’s the one,” and that’s it.
In your fine-art work the concept of a photograph is more important than its need to also be an aesthetic object made by “authentic” means of film negative and a darkroom. Digital could have hit that mark.
I don’t really have an explanation for why I didn’t explore it sooner. I remember that one of my first digital cameras was a Casio Exilim, which was then about the size of a PalmPilot. After 30 years of using an 8x10, the idea of a camera that was about a quarter of the size of my exposure meter had a certain attraction. But actually I’ve always been interested in commonly available technology and processes that are very accessible. So I’m not sure why I didn’t use digital sooner.
I read an article wherein you spoke about the economy of digital versus analog.
There is some relation between the cost of taking a picture and the attention the photographer pays to the picture. With an 8x10 camera, simply because it costs, say, $35 or $40 for a sheet of film processing and the contact print, the picture is going to be well considered. Because the digital picture is free, what I find is a two-sided phenomenon. The positive side is that there’s less restraint and greater potential for spontaneity. The downside is that there’s more work that’s made that isn’t particularly considered at all. The camera itself doesn’t require that. However, if somebody wants to use the camera with very consciously directed attention, it does that too.
Your most iconic pictures were made with view cameras, either 4x5 or 8x10. Given what you just said, does it follow that those images were the only version of the shot?
Yes, absolutely. And that’s where the economy came in. I realized that I couldn’t try to limit myself by only taking pictures that I knew beforehand were going to be good. Because then I would only take safe pictures, that way I wouldn’t learn anything. What’s the point? So the way I made this process that I loved financially feasible was to decide that I wasn’t going to take two of anything. I don’t mean not bracket, I mean exactly what you said—not even two views. What it forced me to do was to decide what I wanted.
Lee Cramer, Bel Air, Maryland, 1983
In the photo diaries of your road trips in the 70s, how did you get shots of, say, your breakfast in a diner with such a big camera?
With the photo of pancakes, I asked the waitress if she minded if I brought out a big camera so I could get a picture. She didn’t, but I wound up having to stand on a chair, and the camera was on a tripod seven feet in the air.
Did being so conspicuous affect the photos?
The year before American Surfaces, in ’71, I was using a small 35 mm. I had hair to my shoulders and looked sort of like a hippie, and every now and then I’d be photographing in a neighborhood and some resident would call the police. The cops would ask me, “What are you doing?” and every now and then I was told to get out of the neighborhood. Once I started using a view camera that never happened. That the camera is so conspicuous gives it even greater license. The extreme examples of this are two works from a series that I’ve never shown before—New York City photographs that I did with an 8x10 of people interacting on the street. And I’d never before been more invisible. I would stand at 72nd and Broadway or 52nd and 5th with this big camera, and people would just walk around me. I photographed people at crosswalks, people hailing a cab, and I’d be six feet away from them taking their picture with an 8x10 camera, and no one would be paying any attention to me.
But all those landscapes devoid of humans were because you wanted fewer people around to ask you what you were up to?
Part of it was technical. My exposures were typically a half or a quarter of a second, so if I had a person in the shot they had to be either posing for me or stopped at a crosswalk. But I don’t want to say that it was simply technical, because I chose the tools. If having the streets full of people was that important to me and were an essential part of what I was trying to do and I couldn’t have accomplished it with those tools, I would have used different tools. There’s also another factor that those of us who grew up in New York might not recognize. If you go to some intersection in Ashland, Wisconsin, and set up a camera, if you wanted a person in the picture, you’d have to wait. In most of these towns, the streets are not full of people the way they are outside our windows in New York.
I now live in a small town. Consequently, those photos have a lot more meaning to me now. But you’ve done such compelling portraits, too. Have you ever consciously shot a series of portraits?
Not really. In American Surfaces, I’d say about a fifth of the pictures are portraits, and that was probably the most extensive. Although my Warhol pictures are pictures of people, they’re not necessarily portraits. There were periods in the 70s when I would come back to portraits. I did a number in Fort Worth in ’76. A few of them have been published. And then I photographed almost every member of the Yankees in ’78. But for a lot of the time in the 70s, I had particular cultural questions on my mind and also particular formal questions that just didn’t relate to portraiture.
Critics sometimes refer to your landscapes as “portraits.” But isn’t there some ineffable quality to a human portrait that can’t be applied to objects?
That’s a really good question, and I don’t think there’s a simple answer. Whenever you see a person in a picture, your response is different. It’s not like looking at a mailbox or a lamppost. There’s the attraction of the eye, there’s the focusing on it, and a chain of associations that are all very different. For American Surfaces, I asked everyone before I photographed, “Can I take your picture?” And I was thinking about not just their expressions but what their clothes were and what their backgrounds were, information about their heritage. It fit into a kind of cultural nexus. I think that that work in particular integrated the portrait maybe more successfully than at any other time for me.
So what about the description of your landscapes as portraits?
I would say they feel that way because maybe there’s a sense in a portrait of paying very focused attention and respect to someone. That the photographer is showing some respect and is looking carefully at a person. The viewer may pick up that same quality in looking at a building or looking at a street.
It’s as if you entered into the same deal with the building as you would a person of whom you’re making a portrait. That quality runs all through your work. I wonder how intentional it is. Or are we getting into quantum science, where intentionality has the power to transform the physical?
That’s exactly the point where my work finally wound up in the 80s when I was doing actual natural landscapes. That is what I was exploring—how responsive this very mechanical medium can be to subtle shifts in the state of mind of the artist.
There’s a recurring theme in The Nature of Photographs. You advocate developing a closer relationship with all of our senses—paying more attention to how they work and training ourselves to better monitor what they’re trying to tell us. Your best pictures are examples of just that.
A photograph can do many things at once. I can be exploring culture or I can be making decisions about what street to photograph to give a taste of this town or this age. At the same time, I can explore the medium formally, explore how the structure of a picture may give a taste of an age, how perception works, and how a photograph plays with it. I can also explore what you were saying, that sometimes the most mundane subject matter is the most telling because what gives the picture charge isn’t the cultural charge of the content as much as the awareness of the senses and the awareness of perception giving it a kind of visual resonance. It’s like those days or moments when maybe your mind gets a little quieter and space becomes more tangible, textures and colors become more vivid.
Sneden’s Landing, New York, July, 1972
Do you think the brain switches between different states of optical perception, like a camera?
Yes, it’s one of the things I learned from the process of photography. Let me give an example. I think it’s absolutely typical that you could leave your house and have a certain walk to a café every day and not really pay attention to what’s around you, but if you put a camera on your shoulder, all of a sudden you do. What can I learn from that? To address it in a different way, when I was photographing the Yankees I would see these people who were performing mind-boggling feats of attention. I’ve been going to baseball games since I was six, but from the stands there’s no way to experience what a major-league fastball looks like from the batter’s perspective. At spring training in Fort Lauderdale, I was able to stand essentially where the umpire was and watch these pitches being thrown. That anyone can even hit a fastball is an amazing feat of attention and coordination. But if you talk to them, they’ll say that when they’re really in the flow of it, they’re watching the rotation of the stitches on the ball. Yet these same people who are able to perform this so well would at four in the afternoon go to a bar called Trader Jack’s and try to pick up young girls and forget the state of mind that they had achieved that even allowed them to see the ball. They weren’t carrying the lesson of that into the rest of their lives. I wonder why we don’t go through our lives paying closer attention, and what would accrue from doing that.
In the 90s you published a book of photographs called Essex County. It featured compelling and, I have to say, strange images of trees, flora, etc. It seemed almost a break from the earlier work, but in some hard-to-pin-down way.
There are a number of things I could say to that. One thing is that I take pictures to solve problems, visual problems, and the picture is the byproduct of that. I find that when I work everything out [in the problem], I don’t want to repeat myself. It’s my nature to keep trying to push myself into new directions. That’s one of the reasons that particular work looks so different from what I’d done before. I’d worked out a number of problems in my streetscapes of the 70s and my landscapes of the 80s, and by the time I got to this body of work my concern was for seeing with a kind of deeper resonance.
I want to present you with four of your best-known portraits and have you tell me something about their circumstances. The first is New York City, New York, September–October 1972, a shot of Henry Geldzahler.
It was at a party. I had known Henry since the mid-60s. I think there’s something delightful about him eating the apple. The book it’s in, American Surfaces, began as a cross-country trip, and I photographed different categories of things repeatedly, including everyone I met. I continued this after I got back to my home in the city. I never identified the people, but it’s a mixture of very close friends and someone I would run into in a bus depot in Oklahoma City, or a gas-station attendant. A whole range of people, whether or not identified. There’s Senator Javits, the Earl of Gowrie, and the great avant-garde film critic P. Adams Sitney.
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, July, 1972.
This is someone I met, I think, in a bus depot. The Trailways bus depot in Oklahoma City. I just thought he was a wonderful character.
Self-Portrait, New York, NY, 3/20/76.
The self-portrait is set up. I was looking at things like the tape coming from the adding machine. I was thinking of these little details and how to arrange it. But I can’t remember what else was on my mind.
Lee Cramer, Bel Air, Maryland, 1983.
It was my father-in-law in his kitchen. I’ll say this about portraits in general that I find very interesting: Facial expressions and signs that we’re culturally attuned to pick up on read as particular emotions. There is also the problem that facial expressions flow in time and, taken out of the context of their time by a still photograph, can mean something different than they actually are. Nonetheless, we’re left with this result that we read emotion and experience into. A wonderful example is a book of portraits made by the photographer Robert Lyons of both perpetrators and surviving victims of the Rwandan genocide. They are not titled; they’re indexed in the back of the book. They’re faces of men that have a look in their eye of depth of experience and wisdom and compassion... visual symbols we read as those things. Then in the back you read that this person ordered the death of 17 people. A wonderful photographer named Tod Papageorge, who is a good friend of mine, photographed my wedding. It was in California and he came out and photographed people that he had never met before that day. And in his pictures every single one of these people is shown in their essence. So on the one hand we know there is something deeply fictive about a portrait and yet on the other there’s this result where I see Tod’s penetrating insight in understanding people. I also feel that the picture of my father-in-law does communicate something about his state of mind. And that is the conundrum of the portrait.
Sandusky, Ohio, July, 1972
New York City, New York, September–October, 1972
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, July, 1972
Toledo, Ohio, July, 1972
Stanley Marsh and John Reinhardt, Amarillo, Texas, February 15, 1975The first unmanned aerial vehicle bearing the “Made in Greece” stamp will be presented at the 81st Thessaloniki International Fair.
The HCUAV RX-1 is 4 meters long, takes off at a speed of 2.8 meters per second and can develop a speed of 190 km per hour. With a range of 150 km and autonomy 11 hours, it can fly day and night and transmit real-time, relevant and detailed information, from a 2 km height.
The project took 36 months to complete and it was designed and built from scratch.
The drone can support civil protection services and public safety by monitoring land and sea borders, protect vital infrastructure, support rescue investigations, supervision of woodland to timely extinguish fires, soil sampling, water and air pollutants, monitoring roads and provide aerial photography of areas of interest.
This is the first Greek production on such scale. The HCUAV RX-1 made its first flight on August 4. The test flight lasted 15 minutes and can be considered a success by its makers.
The head of the project is Kyros Yakinthos, Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. It is a collaborative effort, as AUTH designed the airborne vehicle, made the aerodynamic analysis, the engineering design, developed geometry optimization and conducted the flight tests.
The Democritus University of Thrace designed the robotic vision, environment perception and signal processing. Spacesonic, a company from Farkadona, Trikala, undertook the construction of the airborne vehicle; Intracom Defense Electronics developed and installed communication systems, mobile earth stations and intelligent software systems; MLS installed the GPS system and supplied the maps.
“Greece can create extraordinary things, with the collaboration between universities, research organizations and Greek companies. In Greece there are great human resources, but there is also the problem of lack of investors,” Yakinthos told ANA-MPE news agency.
The project head said that Greece must look beyond the issues that are given priority today because there are people with vision and persistence who have achieved lots with very little. At the same time he criticized bureaucracy that has hindered the project and “tied their hands” several times.India has been pushing for a collective security mechanism with its maritime neighbors to prevent China from making further inroads into the Indian Ocean region where India has its strategically most important economic zone.
New Delhi (Sputnik) – In view of the increasing Chinese influence in the Indian Ocean Region, India is lobbying hard for a consensus among other countries of the region to support India. India’s foreign minister, Sushma Swaraj is in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo, where she addressed the inaugural session of the second Indian Ocean conference. She called for the development of a security architecture for collective action.
“We will use our capabilities for the collective well being, and the mutual benefit of our maritime neighbors and island states in building their capabilities. As we envisage the Indian Ocean as an engine for growth and prosperity in our region and beyond, it is of utmost importance that these waters remain safe and secure. We consider it an imperative that those who live in this region bear the primary responsibility for the peace, stability and prosperity of the Indian Ocean,” Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj said.
“The Indian Ocean is prone to non-traditional security threats like piracy, smuggling, maritime terrorism, illegal fishing and trafficking of humans and narcotics. We realize that to effectively combat transnational security challenges across the Indian Ocean, including those posed by non-state actors, it is important to develop a security architecture that strengthens the culture of cooperation and collective action,” she added.
The Indian Ocean is one of the busiest and most critical maritime transportation links in the world, carrying about half of the world’s container shipments, one-third of the world’s bulk cargo traffic and two-thirds of the oil shipment. Both India and China are in a tug of war to increase their influence in the Indian Ocean Region.
The Indian Ocean is of vital strategic importance to India as it consists of 2.4 million square km of economic zone and almost all of India’s oil imports come through it.DUBLIN, Mar 07, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --
Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Blockchain Technology and Solutions: Market Outlook and Forecasts 2017 - 2022" report to their offering.
This research examines the technology, leading companies, and solutions in the evolving Blockchain ecosystem. The report evaluates current and anticipated use cases for Blockchain and assess
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tectonics, but from several hundred-million-year-old salt deposits. The Gulf of Mexico was once an enclosed basin, and seawater pouring in may have evaporated and formed those deposits, according to Eos. All of that salt combined with the sediment from the rivers surrounding the Gulf, lead to the array of domes and depressions in the map.
You can read more about how all the salt got there in Kramer’s own words. Over here, we’re still stuck on how amazing the new map is.
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Your browser does not support HTML5 video tag.Click here to view original GIF
You might be wondering why the data cuts off at more shallow parts of the Gulf. All of this data is taken by blasting air to create sound traveling downwards to the seafloor, then measuring the acoustic response. But data collection is actually more difficult in shallower areas, where the readings return too much noise to make a meaningful picture.
As new data comes in, BOEM will continue making improvements to the map, and they’re happy to do it. “Any time we can take our massive database and let other scientists use it,” said Kramer. “We are very happy about that.”
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Since this is your government and your data now, you can download it over at the BOEM website, linked here. If you’re lazy, here are some more photos.
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[BOEM via Eos]EXTRAS
• Take the Edgar Allen Poe Quiz
Locally, the musical duo Nox Arcana took inspiration from Poe to craft 21 songs with titles like "Masque of the Red Death" and "Murders in the Rue Morgue" that are a roll call of the writer's best-loved work.
When Edgar Allan Poe was 21 and a cadet at West Point, he and a buddy burst into the barracks brandishing a bloody knife and declaring that one of their professors would be bothering them no more.
The two students then flung a freshly killed, trussed-up goose into the room, which, in the low candlelight, looked like it might be the professor's head.
Theatrical, macabre and defiant of authority, even the pranks of Edgar Allan Poe burnish the legend. In the 200 years since his birth on Jan. 19, 1809, his influence has flourished -- in the stories we tell ourselves now and in our curiosity about the writer himself.
On Friday, the U.S. Postal Service marked the bicentennial with a commemorative Poe stamp. Herman Melville gets a nod in the coffee brand Starbucks, but Poe has his own football team in Baltimore. As a boy of 16, Alfred Hitchcock began reading Poe's stories, which he credited for igniting his lifelong interest in suspense. And when the Mystery Writers of America singles out the best work in that genre, the group calls the annual awards the Edgars.
Poe, in the canon for "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Cask of Amontillado," strove to bring a musical ear to his writing, so he might not be surprised to see the compliment returned. In 2003, Lou Reed produced a two-CD tribute, "The Raven," with an all-star cast of collaborators, including David Bowie. And the Northeast Ohio instrumental duo Nox Arcana has made a Poe-inspired CD called "Shadow of the Raven."
Even Sylvester Stallone has admitted that he writes poetry and has a long-standing ambition to make a film about Poe.
"There are a handful of writers whose lives are almost as fascinating as their work -- Poe, Hemingway and a few others," said Steven Fink, an English professor who teaches a course on Poe at Ohio State University. "This class was packed the last time I taught it. The students love him."
Writer still chills modern reader
Partly, Fink believes, that is because most undergraduates enjoyed a chill sampling of Poe in high school. Two centuries since his birth, Poe's fascination with the morbid and his explorations of obsessive love remain far more accessible to the reader wearing an iPod than do the dense works of other 19th century literary giants: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Melville, Ralph Waldo Emerson.
"Poe was a writer of tremendous versatility and perplexing contradictions: He was a genius and a hoaxer; an elitist who was nevertheless among our most popular writers," Fink writes in his course description.
"A poet, short-story writer, essayist, critic, and magazine editor, Poe was essential to the development of both the detective story and the gothic horror story.... He was both celebrated and misunderstood; desperate for public approval, yet an acerbic, jealous, and self-destructive critic of his contemporaries."
Poe thought of himself foremost as a poet, and "The Raven" is the incantatory, formal piece for which he is best known. Four years before his death, "The Raven" brought Poe the fame he craved. And although he sold it for $9, the impoverished writer managed to charge for his recitations of it -- and sometimes for reprints.
" 'The Raven' made him sexy, and for the first time he was invited, paid to do readings," said Shelley Costa Bloomfield, who teaches at the Cleveland Institute of Art and is the author of the lively and well-received "The Everything Guide to Edgar Allan Poe" (Adams Media, 286 pp., $14.95).
Emerson dismissed the poem that brandished "Nevermore" and contemporary academics are not overly fond -- Poe is not subtle -- but if it leads a reader to become curious about his other work, Bloomfield is encouraged.
"Even as a doctoral student in 19th-century American writers, I never really appreciated how central he is to American literature," Bloomfield said of beginning her book on Poe. When she finished, she said, "I got in the shower and cried -- I drew so close to someone who lived 150 years ago."
The word "detective" did not exist in 1841, but Poe managed to conjure the genre out of the atmospheric Gothic tales popular in his day, the 19th-century love of the lurid, serialized "Penny Dreadfuls" and his taste for the sensational.
His character C. Auguste Dupin laid the groundwork for Sherlock Holmes and all their subsequent children. Each of Poe's detective stories, wrote Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "is a root from which a whole literature has developed.... Where was the detective story until Poe breathed the breath of life into it?"
To Bloomfield, Poe brought a moral consideration to this genre's emphasis on crime and punishment. "CSI," anyone? And its enthronement of rationality also served Poe as a rebuke to the gooey mysticism of Transcendentalism, whose adherents Poe satirized as "Frogpondians," after the Boston Commons pond.
At the center of Poe's legend and legacy is horror. It was fanned and elevated, ironically, by a Poe rival named Rufus Griswold, who got busy as soon as he learned of Poe's mysterious death.
Griswold placed an obituary in the Oct. 9, 1849, New York Tribune that began, "Edgar Allan Poe is dead. He died in Baltimore the day before yesterday. This announcement may startle many, but few will be grieved by it."
The Griswold character assassination backfired into a cult of personality.
"So much of Poe's fiction is about transgressing boundaries," Fink said. "He takes the normal and pushes that past the point of abnormal, such as with our impulse for revenge. One of the things that marks Poe as so important is how clearly he understood horror was psychological, not physical."
Both he and Bloomfield warned against making the rookie mistake of guessing that Poe's narrators are Poe and that his themes of deception and self-deception are simply autobiographical.
"He was more than we assume," Bloomfield said. "He was not a madman. He was not a drug addict and he was not a pervert."
She paused. "He was complicated."We told you this wouldn’t take long.
It’s been a little over a week since TrotCon 2016 ended and only a couple days since our big wrap-up post where we told you that we’d be announcing our plans for 2017 very soon. To tell the truth? We already knew pretty much everything then — the date, location, theme, all that. Just needed the ink to dry before we moved further.
Well, consider the i’s dotted, t’s crossed, toasters still lost in some black hole somewhere. Let’s talk about 2017.
If any of you who attended TrotCon 2016 have our con book handy, please feel free to check out the back cover of it. Eh, or better yet, click here on this tweet from the Friday of this year’s con.
Uh, OK, everything’s looking a little… hm. Definitely looks like whatever civilization our ol’ pal Peanut Bucker stumbled upon has seen better days, that’s for dang sure. Looks like someone had a… falling out.
Hehe. Haha. Whoo boy.
We won’t delay it any longer: TrotCon 2017 will be happening July 14-16 at the Crowne Plaza Columbus North in Columbus, Ohio, and our theme for 2017 is “post-apocalyptic.”
Yeah, yeah, all of the Fallout fans out there are probably going nuts right now. And with good reason! Not only is the Fallout video game series one of the most beloved of all time, but the My Little Pony fandom also has its own opus in Fallout: Equestria. It’s a match made in brony heaven, y’all.
But of course, that’s not all we’re going for with this year’s theme, much like how with last year’s space theme, there was some different Star Wars/Star Trek/Aliens vibes going on, but they certainly weren’t limitations on what you could plan for the year. Along with other great post-apocalyptic-flavored media such as Mad Max, The Walking Dead and much more, we of course encourage all of you out there to play with the theme in the best way you see fit. Major points for creativity!
You know we wouldn’t get through another year without factions, though. Last year, we pitted the Solar Empire versus the Lunar Republic. This year, we’re adding a third to the mix. You’ll have a choice, upon pre-registration, of being either a Raider, a Steel Ranger or a Stable Dweller. Yep, we made it even tougher to choose a side this year. Maybe it won’t be a runaway victory for one side this year, eh?
OK, next on the agenda: badges. They’re officially for sale! As with previous years, we’re breaking up pre-registration into multiple tiers. Purchase between now and Sept. 9 and you’ll be able to snag a weekend (Friday-Sunday) pass for $30. After that? They’ll be $40 until Jan. 31, and then $50 through June 20, when pre-reg closes for the year. At-door registration will be $60 — twice as much as it is right now, in case you needed more of a reason to purchase earlier rather than later.
As usual, we’ll also have multiple sponsor badge tiers, running from the $100 earth pony tier to the $2,000, limited-edition draconequus tier. Same idea as last year, really. For more information on what comes with each sponsor tier, our website has all the details.
And of course, single-day passes will be available at the door, as they have been in previous years. Same prices, too: $30 for Friday, $40 for Saturday and $20 for Sunday.
Hm… let’s see, anything else? Oh, RIGHT, duh: our con store is officially back up and running, with pins, plushes and more from 2016 and even before then now available. Snag ’em before they’re gone forever (or until we inevitably give some out at a raffle, whichever comes first).
That’s all for now, but don’t think you won’t be hearing from us for a while. We’re already neck deep into planning for 2017, and we’ve been talking to a few potential guests. When we have some official announcements to make — and we think that won’t be too long from now — we’ll be whispering into your ear yet again. You like it, don’t you? Yeah, you do.
In the meantime, you should definitely follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr and Snapchat (username TrotCon), as well as join our Discord server.
Talk soon! <3A Charlotte, N.C., mayoral candidate is coming under fire for listing the obvious fact that she’s white as one of her qualifications for the job.
“Vote for me!” Kimberley Paige Barnette posted on her Facebook bio. “REPUBLICAN & SMART, WHITE, TRADITIONAL.”
She might want to scrap the “smart” part.
WBTV reports that Barnette is a former Mecklenburg County, N.C., magistrate making her first run for office and that she significantly trails the other two Republican candidates in the Sept. 12 primary. They’re also white, by the way.
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The original post has since been taken down, and her Facebook account deactivated.
On Tuesday she got a good dressing down in a statement from the state Republican Party chair, who quoted Martin Luther King Jr. for good measure.
“The Charlotte mayoral contest will be decided based on who can best promote public safety, provide economic development and improve critical infrastructure needs,” said NCGOP Chair Robin Hayes in a statement.
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She continued:
This contest will not be decided based on the skin color [of] the candidates. Any suggestion that a candidate is more or less qualified for political office based on their skin color alone is offensive to North Carolina Republicans, and we condemn it. This type of suggestion has no place in our public discourse. With violent confrontations in the streets under Mayor Roberts, we have seen the dangers to public safety when a Charlotte mayor fails the leadership test of bringing all people together. We believe that bringing people together starts with the Republican belief that government should deliver critical government services in a colorblind way, and in a society that judges all people by the content of their character, rather than the color of their skin.
In a televised debate last month, Barnette criticized last year’s protests of the police killing of Keith Lamont Scott as “an expression of Democratic behavior” (and lest you think she meant an expression of your rights in a democracy, no. She meant the protesters acted like Democrats). She also said that she doesn’t want more “lower-income people” in Charlotte.
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In the age of Trump, why dog-whistle when you can just bark like a bitch?
Read more at WBTV.Sussex Police’s text messages asking offenders on the run to hand themselves in are ‘surprisingly effective’, it has been revealed.
More than 13,000 people are subject to outstanding arrest warrants across England according to national reports earlier this month, and Sussex Police and Crime Commissioner Katy Bourne asked what the local picture was at a performance and accountability meeting last Friday (May 20).
Assistant Chief Constable Laurence Taylor explained that they had 41 first instance warrants, and 501 failure to appear warrants outstanding. Of these 76 are in category A, with crimes including drug trafficking, serious assault, and robbery, 404 in category B, for offences such as theft and criminal damage, and 21 in category C, including being drunk and disorderly as well as minor public order offences.
During the meeting it was revealed that Sussex Police will text offenders or suspects asking them to hand themselves in.
Mr Taylor said: “The first thing we do when we get a warrant is we put it through the police national computer and on to our systems and then the warrant is sent to either a divisional resource or another force to be executed.
“Then there’s a whole raft of activity we undertake with address checks, we text message the offender and ask them to give themselves up, and you’d be surprised how effective that is.
“It goes on our briefing systems, we use the media, we visit places of employment, we target vehicles that they use, we do checks with the Department for Work and Pensions, credit checks, a whole range of activities to try and identify those individuals who are outstanding.”
They also use a warrant enforcement bureau, which will undertake weekly checks of all warrants in the system. From their submission a warrant in category A is checked within two weeks, category B within three weeks, and category C within four weeks, and dependent on what information comes back, the open cases are reviewed at different intervals.
According to Mr Taylor the most serious outstanding warrant Sussex Police currently has is for Joseph Watts who is wanted for charges of attempted murder from 1991 following an assault on his partner.
Mr Taylor added: “We strongly suspect he is either abroad or no longer alive.”
Chief Constable Giles York explained that Sussex Police took successfully executing warrants ‘really seriously’, but noted of a total of 2,011 warrants in 2015 less than five per cent were still live.
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Be part of it.CHENNAI, India (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Various forms of slavery, including child labor, are present in more than 90 percent of south India’s spinning mills which produce yarn for Western brands, researchers said, calling for mapping of supply chains and tougher audits.
The India Committee of the Netherlands (ICN), a human rights organization, spoke to workers from almost half the mills in Tamil Nadu, the largest producer of cotton yarn in the country.
Most female workers employed in the 734 mills involved in the research were aged between 14 and 18, it said, and up to 20 percent of the workers were younger than 14.
It said employees were forced to work long hours by employers who often withheld their pay or locked them up in company-controlled hostels. Many also faced sexual harassment.
“We have raised the issue for five years now, but even to us the scale of this problem came as a shock,” ICN Director Gerard Oonk said in a statement.
K. Venkatachalam, chief advisor of the Tamil Nadu Spinning Mills Association, said he was not aware of the research.
He said the state government had recently filed a report to the Madras High Court “clearly stating that these issues are no longer prevalent in the industry”.
“The matter has been closed,” Venkatachalam told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
“TORTURE”
India is one of the world’s largest textile and garment manufacturers. The southern state of Tamil Nadu is home to some 1,600 mills, employing between 200,000 and 400,000 workers.
Traditionally the dyeing units, spinning mills and apparel factories have drawn on cheap labor from villages across Tamil Nadu to turn cotton into yarn, fabric and clothes, most of it for Western high street shops.
Most workers are young women from poor, illiterate and low-caste or “Dalit” communities, who often face intimidation, sexually offensive remarks and harassment.
ICN said in more than half of the mills it researched, workers were not allowed to leave company-controlled hostels after working hours.
Only 39 mills paid the minimum wage and in half the mills, a standard working week involved 60 hours or more of work.
“Supervisors torture girls to extract work beyond their capacity,” ICN quoted an 18-year-old former worker as saying.
Another teenage girl, Kalaichelvi, who earned around 8,000 rupees ($118) a month, told researchers she was forced to work for 12 hours straight with no breaks for lunch or to use the bathroom.
She said she suffered from burning eyes, rashes, fever, aching legs and stomach problems due to the working conditions.
About a third of the yarn produced by workers like Kalaichelvi is used in export factories in Tamil Nadu that produce garments for many global brands.
Citing poor enforcement of labor laws and “superficial audits” by buying brands, the ICN called on the industry and government to map supply chains and publish sourcing details.
It also called for factories that upheld standards to be rewarded.
($1=67.8650 Indian rupees)A rough estimate puts more than three million shipwrecks on the ocean floor. This number represents ships throughout the entirety of human history, from 10,000-year-old dugout canoespreserved in the muck to 21st century wrecks that you might have read about in the news. There are so many shipwrecks, in fact, that a search operation for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has discovered two by accident. The Battle of the Atlantic alone, which spanned nearly six years during World War II, claimed over 3,500 merchant vessels, 175 warships, and 783 submarines.
Particularly interesting are the cargo ships that literally contain treasure, such as Spanish galleons that transported gold and jewels across the Atlantic. The Uluburun shipwreck off the coast of southwestern Turkey is roughly 3,300 years old, and that Late Bronze Age vessel contained gold, silver, jewels, copper and tin ingots, tools, swords and other weapons, and much more trade cargo—all of it hauled up over the course of 10 years and 22,413 dives.
But most wrecks don't receive that kind of attention. In fact, less than 10 percent of the shipwrecks that we we've located—which account for just 10 percent of all shipwrecks in the world—have been surveyed or visited by divers. Fishing trawlers snag on sunken ships, sonar readings pick them up, historical records tell us where they should be, harbor dredging operations uncover wrecks that have long been lost below the seafloor—but there simply isn't enough time and money to explore the vast majority of them.
Daunting Task
James Delgado, the Director of Maritime Heritage at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), says that there are an estimated 4,300 shipwrecks within NOAA's 14 National Marine Sanctuaries. Of these, 432 have been dived on and surveyed. And these are shipwrecks within a mapped area set aside for preservation.
"There are laws and regulations directing NOAA to find what lies in those waters and assess it," Delgado said in an email. Similar to other marine preservation organizations around the world, NOAA is not only devoted to discovering what the ships are, but also how their presence might affect the ecology of the marine environments they lie within. Outside of marine sanctuaries, there isn't as much of an incentive.
Most shipwrecks are documented for a much simpler reason: to avoid collisions or other incidents. NOAA's Office of Coast Survey maintains a database of about 20,000 ships that is available to the public, primarily for the benefit of navigators and researchers. The information for that database comes from two organizations within NOAA, the Electronic Navigational Charts (ENC) and the Automated Wrecks and Obstructions Information System (AWOIS).
Still, it's difficult to pinpoint exactly where a shipwreck is on the ocean floor. The database lists some limitations, including that it "contains wreck features from two different sources that were created for different purposes, and there is not a perfect match of features from either source. The same wreck may be found in both the ENC wrecks and AWOIS wrecks layers, although the positions may not necessarily agree."
Riches Under the Sea
Still, there is an estimated $60 billion in sunken treasure around the world, just waiting at the bottom of the ocean. And that doesn't include the historical and cultural value of excavating shipwreck sites. So why don't we explore more of them?
For one thing, it's hard to know what's worth the time. Diving operations can cost millions of dollars, and before we go down there, we have no idea what the ship is, what it was carrying, and what condition the cargo is in. In some cases, we are not even 100 percent sure that the identified object is a ship at all. "Not many people follow up on a target to determine if it is a wreck, and if so what type it is, and then if possible, which ship it is," says Delgado.
It is possible, however, that the situation will improve. As Delgado points out, 90 to 95 percent of the sea floor itself remains unexplored. There are a number of efforts to change that, such as the Ocean Discovery XPrize that is offering $7 million in prize money for private teams that build an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) and create a bathymetric map (like a topographic map, but of the sea floor). The Schmidt Ocean Institute, founded by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, maintains a 272-foot vessel outfitted with modern oceanographic equipment that scientists can apply to use for various research expeditions.
The good news, for shipwrecks explorers at least, is that the majority of shipwrecks are actually near the coast, with a large percentage of incidents occurring in and around the entryways to ports and harbors. "Some harbors are tough to enter, like Oregon's Columbia River Bar, or leave, like San Francisco's Golden Gate and Bar, due to shifting winds, shifting sands, fog, storms, or strong tides," says Delgado. "But also for the same reason that most auto accidents seem to happen within a mile of home, and there are many accidents coming in and out of parking lots, people seem to be less cautious or more aggressive."
With most shipwrecks so close to the shore, and multiple examples of wealthy patrons sponsoring exploration and research expeditions, we could see many of these unexplored shipwrecks investigated in the coming years. But even with advancing AUV technologies and efforts to map more of the ocean floor, many shipwrecks are likely to remain unexplored until they are buried below the sands or decay beyond the point of recognition.Less than two days before an expected Thursday vote in the U.S. House of Representatives on a Republican national health care plan, Congressman Mo Brooks made clear his opposition.
"I'll vote no," Brooks tweeted on Tuesday night.
Brooks has long opposed the bill put together by House GOP leaders, saying it doesn't go far enough to repeal the Affordable Care Act passed during the Obama presidency.
In his tweet - shorthanded to squeeze into Twitter's 140 characters - Brooks said his opposition to the bill is because "it doesn't deliver on the promise I made" to his north Alabama constituents "to fully repeal Obamacare."
And during an appearance on CNBC on Tuesday night, Brooks said he believed there were enough House conservatives to vote down the bill.
Brooks is a member of the House Freedom Caucus, a conservative wing of House Republicans who have largely spoken against the bill. Another caucus member, U.S. Rep. Gary Palmer, R-Hoover, changed his mind and said Friday he would support the bill.
U.S. Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Haleyville, has also said he will support the bill.
President Trump summons Alabama congressmen to Oval Office, wins health care votes Aderholt said he told Trump about his concern for older, poorer Americans. And Trump vowed to make it better.
"In this instance, I believe the legislation is bad in a number of different ways," Brooks said during an appearance Tuesday on CNBC. "Primarily, that it creates a huge new welfare program where taxpayer dollars are being used to subsidize insurance companies.
"And over the long haul, that's going to result in either higher premiums or higher taxes or greater deficit and higher debt that's going to burden our economy for years, maybe decades to come. So I'm looking at the big picture long term."
U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks says new health care proposal is 'lump of coal' In its first "whip count" on the health care proposal, The Washington Post listed Brooks as one of seven federal Republican lawmakers likely to vote against the bill.
Brooks also said the bill "will do great damage to our country."
"What I think we ought to do is repeal Obamacare," Brooks said. "That's something we committed to doing. That's something that we had the votes to do in the House and the Senate just a couple of years ago. Then we can have a vigorous debate over what interjections of the federal government into the nation's health care system we should have. We certainly should interject competitive efforts so that insurance companies have to compete so that health care providers and insurance carriers are not exempt from anti-trust laws.
"And as much as possible, shift this health care issue to the 50 different states. For one reason, if nothing else, the states are more solvent than the federal government."
Congress may lack courage to repeal Obamacare, Rep. Mo Brooks says "Donald Trump is the key. I don't know what he will do."Three weeks ago it revealed the existence of a uranium enrichment plant, potentially giving it a new pathway to make nuclear bomb material. And last week it shelled a South Korean island, killing two civilians and two marines and injuring many more.
None of that was predicted in the dozens of State Department cables about North Korea obtained by WikiLeaks, and in fact even China, the North’s closest ally, has often been startlingly wrong, the cables show. But the documents help explain why some South Korean and American officials suspect that the military outbursts may be the last snarls of a dying dictatorship.
They also show that talk of the North’s collapse may be rooted more in hope than in any real strategy: similar predictions were made in 1994 when the country’s founder, Kim Il-sung, suddenly died, leaving his son to run the most isolated country in Asia. And a Chinese expert warned, according to an American diplomat, that Washington was deceiving itself once again if it believed that “North Korea would implode after Kim Jong-il’s death.”
The cables about North Korea — some emanating from Seoul, some from Beijing, many based on interviews with government officials, and others with scholars, defectors and other experts — are long on educated guesses and short on facts, illustrating why their subject is known as the Black Hole of Asia. Because they are State Department documents, not intelligence reports, they do not include the most secret American assessments, or the American military’s plans in case North Korea disintegrates or lashes out.
They contain loose talk and confident predictions of the end of the dynasty that has ruled North Korea for 65 years. Those discussions were fueled by a rash of previously undisclosed defections of ranking North Korean diplomats, who secretly sought refuge in the South.
But they were also influenced by a remarkable period of turmoil inside North Korea, including an economic crisis set off by the government’s failed effort to revalue the currency and sketchy intelligence suggesting that the North’s military might not abide the rise of Mr. Kim’s son Kim Jong-un, who was recently made a four-star general despite having no military experience.
The cables reveal that in private, the Chinese, long seen as North Korea’s last protectors against the West, occasionally provide the Obama administration with colorful assessments of the state of play in North Korea. Chinese officials themselves sometimes even laugh about the frustrations of dealing with North Korean paranoia. In April 2009, just before a North Korean nuclear test, He Yafei, the Chinese vice foreign minister, told American officials at a lunch that the country wanted direct talks with the United States and to get them was acting like a "spoiled child" to get the attention of the "adult."
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When James B. Steinberg, the deputy secretary of state, sat down in September 2009 with one of China’s most powerful officials, Dai Bingguo, state councilor for foreign affairs, Mr. Dai joked that in a recent visit to North Korea he “did not dare” to be too candid with the ailing and mercurial North Korean leader. But the Chinese official reported that although Kim Jong-il had apparently suffered a stroke and had obviously lost weight, he still had a “sharp mind” and retained his reputation among Chinese officials as “quite a good drinker.” (Mr. Kim apparently assured Mr. Dai during a two-hour conversation in Pyongyang, the capital, that his infirmities had not forced him to give up alcohol.)
But reliable intelligence about Mr. Kim’s drinking habits, it turns out, does not extend to his nuclear program, about which even the Chinese seem to be in the dark.
On May 13, 2009, as American satellites showed unusual activity at North Korea’s nuclear test site, officials in Beijing said they were “unsure” that North Korean “threats of another nuclear test were serious.” As it turns out, the North Koreans detonated a test bomb just days later.
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Soon after, Chinese officials predicted that negotiations intended to pressure the North to disarm would be “shelved for a few months.” They have never resumed.
The cables also show that almost as soon as the Obama administration came to office, it started raising alarms that the North was buying up components to enrich uranium, opening a second route for it to build nuclear weapons. (Until now, the North’s arsenal has been based on its production of plutonium, but its production capacity has been halted.)
In June 2009, at a lunch in Beijing shortly after the North Korean nuclear test, two senior Chinese Foreign Ministry officials reported that China’s experts believed “the enrichment was only in its initial phases.” In fact, based on what the North Koreans revealed this month, an industrial-scale enrichment plant was already under construction. It was apparently missed by both American and Chinese intelligence services.
The cables make it clear that the South Koreans believe that internal tensions in the North have reached a boiling point. In January of this year, South Korea’s foreign minister, who later resigned, reported to a visiting American official that the South Koreans saw an “increasingly chaotic” situation in the North.
In confidence, he told the American official, Robert R. King, the administration’s special envoy for North Korean human rights issues, that a number of “high-ranking North Korean officials working overseas” had recently defected to the South. Those defections were being kept secret, presumably to give American and South Korean intelligence agencies time to harvest the defectors’ knowledge.
But the cables also reveal that the South Koreans see their strategic interests in direct conflict with China’s, creating potentially huge diplomatic tensions over the future of the Korean Peninsula.
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The South Koreans complain bitterly that China is content with the status quo of a nuclear North Korea, because they fear that a collapse would unleash a flood of North Korean refugees over the Chinese border and lead to the loss of a “buffer zone” between China and the American forces in South Korea.
At one point, Ambassador Stephens reported to Washington, a senior South Korean official told her that “unless China pushed North Korea to the ‘brink of collapse,’ ” the North would refuse to take meaningful steps to give up its nuclear program.
Mr. Chun, now the South Korean national security adviser, complained to Ambassador Stephens during their lunch that China had little commitment to the multination talks intended to force North Korea to dismantle its nuclear arsenal. The Chinese, he said, had chosen Wu Dawei to represent Beijing at the talks. According to the cable, Mr. Chun called Mr. Wu the country’s “ ‘most incompetent official,’ an arrogant, Marx-spouting former Red Guard who ‘knows nothing about North Korea, nothing about non-proliferation.’ ”
But the cables show that when it comes to the critical issue of succession, even the Chinese know little of the man who would be North Korea’s next ruler: Kim Jong-un.
As recently as February 2009, the American Consulate in Shanghai — a significant collection point for intelligence about North Korea — sent cables reporting that the Chinese who knew North Korea best disbelieved the rumors that Kim Jong-un was being groomed to run the country. Several Chinese scholars with good contacts in the North said they thought it was likely that “a group of high-level military officials” would take over, and that “at least for the moment none of KJI’s three sons is likely to be tapped to succeed him.” The oldest son was dismissed as “too much of a playboy,” the middle son as “more interested in video games” than governing. Kim Jong-un, they said, was too young and inexperienced.
But within months, a senior Chinese diplomat, Wu Jianghao, was telling his American counterparts that Kim Jong-il was using nuclear tests and missile launchings as part of an effort to put his third son in place to succeed him, despite his youth.
“Wu opined that the rapid pace of provocative actions in North Korea was due to Kim Jong-il’s declining health and might be part of a gambit under which Kim Jong-il would escalate tensions with the United States so that his successor, presumably Kim Jong-un, could then step in and ease those tensions,” the embassy reported back to Washington in June 2009.
But carrying out plans for an easy ascension may be more difficult than expected, some are quoted as saying. In February of this year the American Consulate in Shenyang reported rumors that Kim Jong-un “had a hand” in the decision to revalue the North’s currency, which wiped out the scarce savings of most North Koreans and created such an outcry that one official was executed for his role in the sudden financial shift. The cables also describe secondhand reports of palace intrigue in the North, with other members of the Kim family preparing to serve as regents to Kim Jong-un — or to unseat him after Kim Jong-il’s death.— Surveillance aircraft used by the U.S. military overseas could soon be coming to the skies above Los Angeles County.
KNX 1070’s Charles Feldman reports the Federal Aviation Administration is making it easier for local law enforcement agencies to fly unmanned drones. https://cbsla.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/drone-1.mp3
The FAA has streamlined the process that would allow agencies to fly smaller, unarmed versions of the drones that hunt down terrorists in places such as Pakistan and Afghanistan.
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intensification around STC, and the subway itself does not serve many of the riders who might otherwise be on the LRT line.
The Sheppard Subway, even at its peak point, barely reaches 8k/hour just east of Yonge Street by 2031. This lies within LRT’s capability, but I am not sure that a retrofit would be cost-effective (I will turn to that question in a separate article).
Page 68 compares the 510 Spadina car with the proposed Sheppard LRT. It’s worth noting that the TTC claims the Spadina car has signal priority when, in fact, this exists at only a few locations on the route, and the “priority” can do as much to slow transit as it helps with the service. It would actually make more sense in this context for the TTC so say there is “no” or “little” priority to reinforce known problems with running speeds.
February 24, 2012
This presentation begins with a series of photos of LRT in major cities. Although many of the shots are attractive, they do not appear to have been selected to illustrate comparable conditions to what would be built on Sheppard. However, the photos do illustrate that LRT is alive and well in many “world class” cities.
Next comes a discussion of subway construction in Madrid and specifically of the MetroSur. A chart plots results from a US Federal Transportation Administration study of construction. The points are arrange from lowest to highest cost/km. Many, notably the MetroSur, fall below the average while others lie above it including projects in Hong Kong and London (the Jubilee Line extension). TTC projects at an average of $290m/km lie slightly above the international average of $275m/km (2010). The most expensive of the TTC’s projects is the Yonge Subway extension from Eglinton to Finch that came in at over $350m/km in 2010$. The “Finch LRT” is included in this chart at about $300m/km, but I must assume that this would be for a subway alternative as the estimated cost of the LRT itself is only $1b.
The TTC lists several cost drivers affecting underground construction costs including:
the frequency/km and length of stations
the number of major interchange stations
the rate of advance of tunneling depending on conditions
the effect of a high water table especially as it may affect settlement of properties above the tunnel work
the complexity of underground utilities
international competition for tunneling expertise and construction crews
The TTC presents a chart of construction times for projects and claims to be faster than the international average. However, the values do not appear to be scaled to the length of the projects, and a few outliers from Washington DC skew the average above that of TTC. This chart is not a meaningful presentation of the information because it tells us nothing about the characteristics of each project nor the source of major delays (or unusually fast construction) that might affect each project.
This is not to say that the TTC is bad at what it does, and peer reviews through the American Public Transit Association (APTA) have validated TTC processes. One important point the TTC does not mention is that a project’s timing can be affected by non-technical factors some of which apply to the Transit City network:
To minimize disruption over a wide area, construction schedules may be extended. This applies to the Eglinton line where Metrolinx does not want to have every station under construction more or less simultaneously with the resulting massive disruption across the corridor.
To manage financing requirements, projects may be artificially stretched out so that spending does not peak in certain years.
Projects may be ready to build, but not have committed funding.
Next, the TTC turns to the MetroSur in Madrid and contrasts it with the Sheppard subway, the most recent large, completed project in Toronto.
Aside from the advantage of being a larger project with economies of scale, the MetroSur was part of an ongoing construction program pursued by the Mayor of Madrid over many years. The administrative environment including aspects of design (no “EA” process or site permit requirements), ease of property acquisition (the city has strata ownership of land 10 metres below grade), and a simpler project change management environment all contributed to lower costs.
Construction of the MetroSur took place in a very different corridor from Sheppard Avenue:
A great deal of the corridor was greenfield with little or no utilities or traffic disruption to worry about.
30% of the line was cut-and-cover as compared to almost 100% tunnel for Sheppard between stations.
Soil conditions allowed the tunnel boring to progress in Madrid at over twice the rate on Sheppard.
Greenfield construction meant that surface settlement above the tunnel work in Madrid could be accepted.
Fire code for Madrid is less restrictive than in North America allowing the use of a single tunnel without escape shafts between stations.
Stations on the MetroSur are 130m long versus 200m for Sheppard.
Track construction in the tunnel in Madrid does not include the vibration isolation used on all newer Toronto projects beginning with the Spadina subway.
When these factors are taken into account, the cost of the Sheppard subway is still 17% higher than the MetroSur, but not as wildly different as portrayed in other reports, notably those by Dr. Chong and TTIL.
The TTC concludes with a review of changes in conditions since the “Network 2011” plan of 1986. This covers much of the same ground as in other reports, but wraps up with a major change in the TTC’s outlook — subways do not always generate development contrary to the standard wisdom of past decades. Any new line is proposed in a complex environment of the GTA development industry and competes with many other locations as an attractive market for new buildings.Instead of joining a movement or speaking out about Black Lives Matter, Kendall Jenner cashed a Pepsi check for playing a protester. Taylor Swift, who’s identified as a feminist for years, encouraged her billions of fans and followers to vote, but didn’t publicly denounce the candidate whose policies punished women. Ivanka Trump, a woman who dares to cite female empowerment and defend her pussy-grabbing father in the same breath, is quickly becoming the face of pseudo-feminism. At this rate, SNL’s “Complicit” perfume brand will be sold in more stores than Ivanka Trump’s fashion line.
While a pop singer and a social-media supermodel shouldn’t be held to the same standards as a White House employee, these three women exemplify a disturbing trend: the ability to shirk off their convictions and abandon their moral compasses for fame and profit.
Ivanka’s egregious fake feminism has been exhaustively examined. Back in December, The Daily Beast’s Lizzie Crocker deemed her a “soft-focus feminist.” More recently, Erin Gloria Ryan listed all of the issues that fall within the first daughter ’s feminist blind spot, writing, “She poses for girl power photo-ops, but doesn’t speak up for the women’s health care that’s on the chopping block in the potential ACA repeal. Her brand’s tagline is Women Who Work, but she doesn’t fight for a living wage for all female workers and manufactures her clothing overseas in countries where workers are often mistreated. She’s proud to be a wife and mother, but hasn’t made a peep about this country’s disgraceful maternal mortality rate, especially among women of color.”
Basically, Ivanka Trump uses feminism to win over liberal audiences and build her brand—as opposed to, you know, actually helping women.
Unlike your average feminist with a gigantic public platform, Trump appears to pride herself on her ability to say nothing, obfuscating every thought and feeling until it’s as blandly palatable as a $34.99 nude work pump. Recently, Ivanka’s ability to move her mouth for an extended period of time without expressing an opinion has really hit its stride.
During an interview with Gayle King this week, Ivanka gave a stunning meditation on her complicity in her father’s horrendously run administration. “If being complicit is wanting to—is wanting to be a force for good and to make a positive impact, then I’m complicit,” she said. “I don’t know that the critics who may say that of me, if they found themselves in this very unique and unprecedented situation that I am now in, would do any differently than I am doing. So I hope to make a positive impact. I don’t know what it means to be complicit, but you know, I hope time will prove that I have done a good job and much more importantly that my father’s administration is the success that I know it will be.” College freshmen, take note: Picking one word in the question and repeating it a bunch of times is a great way to avoid giving an answer.
Ivanka Trump may not know what complicit means, but she does know how to say it over and over again until an interviewer gives up on trying to ask a follow-up. Also in the interview, when pressed on why she appears to be silently condoning her father’s atrocious policies, Trump explained, “There are multiple ways to have your voice heard. In some cases, it’s through protest and it’s through going on the nightly news and talking about or denouncing every issue on which you disagree with. Other times, it is quietly and directly and candidly.” She continued, “Where I disagree with my father, he knows it. And I express myself with total candor.”
Unfortunately, Ivanka’s apparent method of politely asking her father not to usher in Armageddon isn’t going so well. It’s difficult to comprehend why Ivanka hasn’t spoken out publicly on issues like her father rolling back Obama-era workplace protections for women, which seems right in her wheelhouse. Clearly, Trump has decided that she has more to gain from blindly supporting her father than from sticking to her old belief system. After all, abandoning all of your morals is a small price to pay for a new job, a promotion for your hubby, and a personal business plug from Kellyanne Conway.
Now look, you might be thinking, maybe behind closed doors Ivanka Trump really is trying to convince her dad to rethink some of his policies. After all, some of the greatest feminist victories have been the direct result of asking your daddy for something very nicely. For those of us who don’t think that progress will come from a series of polite requests directed at a guy who likes to grab vaginas for fun, Ivanka “I don’t know what it means to be complicit” Trump simply isn’t a feminist.
All too often, celebrities who want to be associated with sleepover parties and girl power—or who want you to vote for their misogynistic dad—forget that feminism is actually a political movement. At its best, it’s an active, intersectional push for women’s equality. But at its worst, it’s an empty phrase used to evoke “wokeness” without actually copping to any potentially polarizing political opinions. Under the Trump administration, the plague of pseudo-feminism and performative activism is more contagious than ever. These days, every celebrity is expected to have a political cause and an anti-Trump agenda. It’s gotten to the point where “good” stars—liberal, queer-friendly, not Kanye—are often critiqued for not speaking out at any and all opportunities. Just ask Lady Gaga, who got pushback when she didn’t burn an effigy of Stephen Bannon during the Super Bowl halftime show or fill the arena with Muslim refugees. This call for an increase in celebrity activism isn’t unwarranted. After all, if you’re rich, beautiful, and have a little extra time on your hands, why not give back with a statement on transgender rights or a Trump Twitter feud?
But these new political expectations have some unforeseen consequences. Not all pretty people are built to be social-justice warriors. Now that the resistance is literally in Vogue, the apolitical A-Lister has to choose between being perceived as a closet Trump supporter or a fair-weather, insincere ally. Since rallies are the new brunch and protest Instagrams are the new Snapchat selfies, celebs have been flocking to social media to hype the #Resistance.
Needless to say, some posts have been more convincing than others.
To make yourself extremely irritated about performative feminism in the Trump era, look no further than celebrities’ Women’s March Instagrams. While some stars—Madonna, America Ferrera, and Janelle Monáe, to name just a few—joined activists in the streets, others decided that their platforms would be put to better use with platitudinous tweets and stock protest Instagrams. Kim Kardashian tweeted, “So proud of the women & men who stood up for what is right & are determined to make this world a better place for our children”—which would have been a great start to a thread promoting the substantive issues and policy concerns at the heart of the protest. Younger sis and soon-to-be Pepsi advocate Kendall Jenner used the same go-girls protest photo as Kim, captioning her Instagram, “i wish i could have been a part of this amazing history. beyond proud.” Jenner could not be a part of “this amazing history” because she was too busy walking at Paris Fashion Week.
We’ve written extensively about Taylor Swift’s faux-feminism, which very well may have peaked with her Women’s March social-media campaign. She tweeted, “So much love, pride, and respect for those who marched. I’m proud to be a woman today, and every day. #WomensMarch.” This, of course, from a proud “feminist” who couldn’t even be bothered to endorse Hillary Clinton because it could hurt her Walmart album sales. Seriously—even Karlie Kloss Instagrammed that she was #WithHer, and Kloss is literally dating a Kushner. When you’re less woke than a woman who said that her favorite Beyoncé song is “Waterfalls,” that’s a problem.
What would it take to get a Taylor Swift squad member to actually show up at a protest? If we promised to dress all of the attendees in patriotic onesies and take an Instagram photoshoot afterward, would Selena Gomez stand outside of Trump Tower (let alone say the words Black Lives Matter)?
Much like doomsday bunkers and VPNs, it appears that performative activism and pseudo-feminism are having a moment. Among this growing cast of self-identified allies, Kendall Jenner deserves a special mention for her recent attempt to cure racial tension with a refreshing can of Pepsi. While the faux-protest ad heard ‘round the web was quickly pulled, the memory of Jenner milking BLM and resistance imagery to sell soft drinks will not soon be forgotten. It takes a certain kind of tone-deaf celeb to agree to a campaign like that, and the fact that Jenner had previously been a bare-minimum ally is just the icing on the cake. KJ wasn’t the first sort of well-meaning celeb to exploit a political movement for personal gain, and she certainly won’t be the last.CHAPEL HILL – UNC researchers have taken a cue from plants, finding a way to capture the sun’s energy during the day for use at night. It’s a system that converts the sun’s energy into hydrogen fuel, rather than electricity, so that it can be stored, allowing us to draw power long after the sun sets.
Tom Meyer, an Arey Distinguished Professor of Chemistry in UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences, led a team of researchers at the UNC Energy Frontier Research Center to develop the system which mimics natural photosynthesis.
“A lot of these energy systems with battery storage are fine, but if you are talking about making the sun a primary energy source—say it accounts for 50 percent of our energy needs—then you ask the question, ‘Where are you going to store the energy?’ It is staggering. There is no answer to that. Then the nighttime dilemma becomes really, really important,” Meyer said.
The process uses a device called a dye-sensitized photoelectrosynthesis cell (DSPEC).
The goal of the process is to produce solar fuel, which is high-energy molecules, like carbohydrates or hydrogen, with the energy of the sun stored in chemical bonds.
The hydrogen fuel product is generated by the DSPEC using the sun’s energy to split water into its component parts. After the split, hydrogen is sequestered and stored, while the by-product, oxygen, is released into the air, as explained here.
“The key to it is that it represents this most recent observation we made—a breakthrough. This plan where you combine molecules and semi-conductors, now you can see it is actually feasible. This was the last piece of a 40-year-old puzzle,” Meyer said.
Solar energy is one of the most popular methods of renewable energy.
The more commonly used photovoltaic cells are placed on rooftops and are used to generate electrical power by converting solar radiation into direct current electricity, but are dependent on the sun’s rays.
“What we have done is to develop a new way to do solar energy conversion, a really important problem. As time passes, with photovoltaic devices, we [will] see more and more solar panels, and they are great. The trouble is when the sun goes down, at night—you are stuck,” Meyer said.
This research breakthrough comes at a pivotal time for solar and other forms of renewable energy.
In 2013, the International Energy Agency (IEA) predicted that renewable power production, including solar, wind, and water, will top the production of gas and nuclear energy combined by 2016. Renewable energy is projected to deliver almost 25 percent of the world’s total energy by 2018.
“We want to find ways to use the sun and convert things that are readily accessible like water and carbon dioxide and turn them into fuels that people can use later.”
Meyer, who has been researching the sun energy to hydrogen fuel conversion possibility since the 1970s, said these are very early days in terms of where this research could go.
“Typically when a discovery like this is made, if it has the ability to make economic sense, it takes at least 10 or 15 years to get to the point where there is a technology that people are willing to use and put out into the field.”
The challenge at this point, Meyer explained, is that after the process is complete, the fraction of the solar energy that is harnessed is very small—less than 1 percent.
The research will now focus on adjusting and perfecting the process. Meyers said he hopes to one day be able to harness 10-15 percent of the energy captured. At that point, he said it could become economically viable.
In one hour, the sun puts out enough energy to power every vehicle, factory and device on the planet for an entire year, according to a news release on UNC’s website.
“So if it pays out and actually down the road does become economically viable, the University has a stake in the intellectual property through patents and stuff like that so it can also benefit financially if something actually came of it.”
This system was designed with help from Meyer’s colleagues at UNC and fellow researcher Greg Parsons and his team at North Carolina State University. The program began in 2009 with federal funding support.This article is about the Byzantine musical system of eight modes. For the book of liturgical texts set to those modes, see Octoechos (liturgy)
Oktōēchos (here transcribed "Octoechos"; Greek: ὁ Ὀκτώηχος Greek pronunciation: [okˈtóixos];[1] from ὀκτώ "eight" and ἦχος "sound, mode" called echos; Slavonic: Осмогласие, Osmoglasie from о́смь "eight" and гласъ, Glagolitic: ⰳⰾⰰⱄⱏ, "voice, sound") is the eight-mode system used for the composition of religious chant in Byzantine, Syriac, Armenian, Georgian, Latin and Slavic churches since the Middle Ages. In a modified form the octoechos is still regarded as the foundation of the tradition of monodic chant in the Byzantine Rite today.
Nomenclature [ edit ]
The names ascribed to the eight tones differ in translations into Church Slavonic. The Slavonic system counted the plagioi echoi as Glas 5, 6, 7, and 8. For reference, these differences are shown here together with the Ancient Greek names of the octave species according to the Hagiopolites[2] and to the chant treatises and tonaries of Carolingian theorists. Fifteenth-century composers like Manuel Chrysaphes, Lampadarios at the Court of Palaiologan Constantinople exchanged the Phrygian with the Lydian. The Armenian names and their temporal cycles are represented in the article about the hymn books octoechos and parakletike.
Byzantine octoechos Church Slavonic osmoglasie Octave species Carolingian octo toni First (ἦχος πρῶτος) First (гласъ а.) Dorian Tonus primus / Authentus protus Second (ἦχος δεύτερος) Second (гласъ в.) Phrygian Tonus tertius / Authentus deuterus Third (ἦχος τρίτος) Third (гласъ г.) Lydian Tonus quintus / Authentus tritus Fourth (ἦχος τέταρτος) Fourth (гласъ д.) Mixolydian Tonus septimus / Authentus tetrardus Plagal of the First (ἦχος πλάγιος τοῦ πρώτου) Fifth (гласъ є.) Hypodorian Tonus secundus / Plagis proti Plagal of the Second (ἦχος πλάγιος τοῦ δευτέρου) Sixth (гласъ ѕ.) Hypophrygian Tonus quartus / Plagis deuteri Grave (ἦχος βαρύς) Seventh (гласъ з.) Hypolydian Tonus sextus / Plagis triti Plagal of the Fourth (ἦχος πλάγιος τοῦ τετάρτου) Eighth (гласъ и.) Hypomixolydian Tonus octavus / Plagis tetrardi
Southern Slavs use the Byzantine musical system and, nonetheless, use the variant numbering that is always found in Church Slavonic texts.[3]
History [ edit ]
According to three main periods, which divides the history of the eight-mode system, the former article has been split chronologically:
Analysis [ edit ]
Byzantine Chant performance practice has been computationally compared to the theory by Chrysanthos. The analysis of 94 Byzantine Chants performed by 4 singers showed a tendency of the singers to level theoretic particularities of the echos that stand out of the general norm in the octoechos. In practice, smaller scale degree steps (67-133 cents) appear to be increased and the highest scale step of 333 cents appears to be decreased compared to theory. In practice, the first four scale notes in decreasing order of prominence I, III, II, IV are more prominent than the V., VI., and the VII.[4]
References [ edit ]During the Wednesday edition of Morning Joe, host Joe Scarborough observed that “nobody” was expecting Republican hopeful Mitt Romney to beat President Obama in 2012.
“Nobody thinks Romney’s going to win,” Scarborough said candidly. “Let’s just be honest. Can we just say this for everybody at home? Let me just say this for everybody at home.”
RELATED: Joe Scarborough Slams Mitt Romney: He ‘Lied’ About Individual Mandate
“The Republican establishment — I’ve yet to meet a single person in the Republican establishment that thinks Mitt Romney is going to win the general election this year,” Scarborough continued. “They won’t say it on TV because they’ve got to go on TV and they don’t want people writing them nasty emails. I obviously don’t care. But I have yet to meet anybody in the Republican establishment that worked for George W. Bush, that works in the Republican congress, that worked for Ronald Reagan that thinks Mitt Romney is going to win the general election.”
“I don’t totally agree with that,” Time editor-at-large Mark Halperin interjected. “But even if you think Romney’s going to lose, there’s still, look ’16. If Romney loses, there’s so many strong candidates out there.”
“Who?” Scarborough asked.
“Who? Mitch Daniels, Bobby Jindal, Haley Barbour — uh, not Haley Barbour, Chris Christie, Paul Ryan, Jeb Bush…”
“Are you serious?” Mika Brzezinski asked.
“There’s a bunch of them!” argued Halperin.
“A lot of their times have passed,” Scarborough noted. Watch his prediction below, via MSNBC:
(h/t Newsbusters)
Have a tip we should know? [email protected] it comes to suspension performance, it doesn’t get much better than Swedish shock sorcerer Ohlins.
In the world of motorbike racing, they don’t even bother sponsoring riders. In fact, it’s company policy that they’ll never give product away to teams. Despite that you’ll see that most of the top MotoGP riders still have the distinctive yellow and blue brand fitted to their bikes. That means that when they release a new product destined for the world of mountain biking, it's definitely time to sit up and take notice.
Though best known for their motorsport equipment, Ohlins does have plenty of mountain biking experience but it until now it was limited to rear shocks, having helped design the Cane Creek Double Barrel and more recently providing both coil and air shocks for top end Specialized models. They've never attempted a mountain bike fork however, so this could be the start of something big.
The rxf 34 is ohlin's first mountain bike fork and it looks amazing:
Made in collaboration with Specialized, the RXF 34 fork is designed for use on their Camber, Stumpjumper and Enduro models, coming in 120mm, 140mm and 160mm versions. Before you cast your current forks into the sea and begin booking the operation to have your other kidney taken out in order to afford one of these, there’s some bad news. Yes, the RXF is only coming in a 29er version, though it looks like you could probably squeeze a 27 Plus tyre in there. We’ll temper that with the fact that you can keep you internal organs where they are - early reports are that the cost (and weight) will be comparable with other top end forks from the likes of Fox or RockShox. You’ll be able to buy one through normal Specialized retailers too.
You get high and low speed adjustable compression damping from the twin-tube cartridge:
Now we’ve whet your appetite, here’s the juicy tech details. As the name suggests, it’s got a 34mm diameter chassis but Ohlins claim that, thanks to a clever one-piece forged crown and steerer assembly, stiffness is greater than 35mm forks and more comparable to 36mm units. They’re talking about the RockShox Pike and the Fox 36 respectively, if you hadn’t got the subtlety. The clever crown also has a cartridge bearing race designed into it, designed to work with any 40mm ID/45º lower bearing. If that's not your bike, tough luck. We imagine chassis stiffness is also helped by the fact that the 15x100mm axle (no Boost here) is secured by a single pinch bolt, rather than a quick release mechanism.
Special low friction seals are claimed to improve sensitivity:
The sealed cartridge damper is where the real magic happens and unlike any other fork on the market, it’s a twin-tube design, which separates out rebound and compression damping oil flow to reduce internal pressures. Ohlins claim this ensures initial smoothness and also allows you to ride high in the travel while maintaining bump absorption, traction and stability. Sounds good to us. You get externally adjustable high and low speed compression as well as rebound damping adjustment, with compression dials on the top of the crown and rebound on the bottom of the leg.
Want to know how to set up a fork? look no further!
The air spring is also a pretty special affair. It’s also a sealed unit and it’s winning in the numbers game too. Normal forks have two air chambers, with a positive one that takes resists compression and a smaller negative one that alters how much force it takes to get the fork moving. Ohlins goes one better by adding in a second positive air spring that allows you to tune the spring rate, so you can balance a super supple initial stroke with a resistance to bottoming out.
There's no quick release, just a single pinch bolt for the 15mm axle:
It’s safe to say we’re keen to get our hands on one. We’ll give you a full ride report when we do!Tata Hexa has been one of the most talked about cars made by the Indian automaker recently and had left us impressed when we tested it last year before its launch in January 2017. Now, a video of the car towing a Boeing 737-800 is doing the rounds on social media wherein it gets a chance to show off the amount of torque it generates.
The Boeing 737-800 aircraft is a stretched version of the 737-700 and seats 162 passengers in a two-class layout, or 189 in one class. The aircraft can go up to a maximum speed of over 850 km/h, measures almost 40 metres in length and has an operating empty weight of 41,400 kilos.
Also Read: Tata Hexa First Drive Review: A Car That Deserves Your Attention
This comes after another video of the hexa went viral recently wherein the 7-seater SUV was being driven around on two-wheels.
What needs to be kept in mind is that when pulling a heavy object like an airplane which is on wheels, one needs to have enough power to have it moving from standstill. Post which, once the plane is in motion, the amount of torque required is significantly lower.
This is not the first time, though, that an SUV has taken to towing in order to show off the torque it generates. Last year, Range Rover Discovery had pulled a 100-tonne train in Switzerland. You can read it more about it here. Since Tata Motors owns Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), a point of 'inspiration', perhaps?
Watch our Tata Hexa first drive review -
(Disclaimer: News18 does not promote such driving and urges all the readers to drive safe and responsibly)LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Two-thirds of British women have been sexually harassed in public places and more than one-third have experienced unwanted sexual touching, according to an online survey released on Tuesday, International Women’s Day.
A woman walks through snow in Buxton, Britain March 4, 2016. REUTERS/Darren Staples
For women aged 18 to 25 the abuse is even more common, 85 percent reporting unwanted sexual attention and almost half undergoing unwanted sexual touching, the survey by the End Violence Against Women Coalition (EVAW) said.
“Sexual harassment is an everyday experience which women and girls learn to deal with, but it’s time to hold a mirror up to it and challenge it,” EVAW acting director Sarah Green said in a statement.
“Women should be free to live their lives without the threat of harassment and violence, not having to plan and limit their choices to make sure they’re safe.”
Two-thirds of the 1,600 women surveyed by EVAW last month said they felt unsafe in public places and almost half used “safety planning” such as avoiding public transport and paying for taxis, leaving early and taking a different route when going out in the evening.
The majority of women said they would have liked someone to intervene when they experienced unwanted sexual touching in a public space, but just 1 in 10 victims said someone else had intervened when it happened.
As prevention measures, women said they would like to see more police, better street lighting, more transport staff and awareness campaigns encouraging other people to intervene.
More than one-quarter of women who experienced unwanted sexual attention and touching were less than 16 years old when they first experienced it and more than three quarters were under 21, the survey said.
A Thomson Reuters Foundation poll in 2014 ranking transport systems in 16 major world cities, based on how dangerous they were for women, placed London 13th, its safety bettered only by the New York and Tokyo transport networks.
The British government published an updated Violence against Women and Girls Strategy on Tuesday, aimed at tackling sexual harassment “in all its forms” by 2020.The Original Macintosh: 33 of 122 Mister Macintosh Author: Andy Hertzfeld Date: February 1982 Characters: Steve Jobs, Andy Hertzfeld, Susan Kare, Folon Topics: Software Design, Personality Summary: Steve has a unique idea for the software Mr. Macintosh,
as rendered by Folon (courtesy of Digibarn) Steve Jobs often came by Texaco Towers after dinner, to see what was new, and we'd usually show him whatever recent progress we made. Sometimes he'd be pissed off about something, but other times he'd be really excited about a new idea.
I was the only one in the office one evening when he burst in, exclaiming that he had a flash of inspiration.
"Mr. Macintosh! We've got to have Mr. Macintosh!"
"Who is Mr. Macintosh?", I wondered.
"Mr. Macintosh is a mysterious little man who lives inside each Macintosh. He pops up every once in a while, when you least expect it, and then winks at you and disappears again. It will be so quick that you won't be sure if you saw him or not. We'll plant references in the manuals to the legend of Mr. Macintosh, and no one will know if he's real or not."
Engineers like myself always daydream about building surreptitious little hacks into the software, but here was the co-founder and chairman of the company suggesting something really wild. I enthusiastically pressed him for details. Where should Mr. Macintosh appear? How often? What should he do when he shows up?
"One out of every thousand or two times that you pull down a menu, instead of the normal commands, you'll get Mr. Macintosh, leaning against the wall of the menu. He'll wave at you, then quickly disappear. You'll try to get him to come back, but you won't be able to."
I loved the idea and promised that I would implement Mr. Macintosh, but not right away, since there were still so many more basic things to get done. Steve told the idea to the marketing team, and eventually recruited the French artist Folon to do some renditions of Mr. Macintosh. I also asked my high school friend Susan Kare, who hadn't started with Apple yet, to try to draw some Mr. Macintosh animations.
Most of the Macintosh system software had to be packed into a 64 KByte ROM, and ROM space got more scarce as development proceeded and the system grew. Eventually, it was clear that we'd never be able to fit bitmaps for Mr. Macintosh into the ROM, but I wasn't willing to give up on him yet.
I made the software that displayed the menus look at a special low memory location called the "MrMacHook", for an address of a routine. If the routine is present, it's called with parameters that let it draw in the menu box, and it returns a result that tells the menu manager if it did anything. Using this, an application or system module could implement Mr. Macintosh (or perhaps his evil twin) if they saw fit.
I'm not sure if anybody ever actually implemented Mr. Macintosh or used the "MrMacHook" for something worthwhile. I was the only one in the office one evening when he burst in, exclaiming that he had a flash of inspiration."Mr. Macintosh! We've got to have Mr. Macintosh!""Who is Mr. Macintosh?", I wondered."Mr. Macintosh is a mysterious little man who lives inside each Macintosh. He pops up every once in a while, when you least expect it, and then winks at you and disappears again. It will be so quick that you won't be sure if you saw him or not. We'll plant references in the manuals to the legend of Mr. Macintosh, and no one will know if he's real or not."Engineers like myself always daydream about building surreptitious little hacks into the software, but here was the co-founder and chairman of the company suggesting something really wild. I enthusiastically pressed him for details. Where should Mr. Macintosh appear? How often? What should he do when he shows up?"One out of every thousand or two times that you pull down a menu, instead of the normal commands, you'll get Mr. Macintosh, leaning against the wall of the menu. He'll wave at you, then quickly disappear. You'll try to get him to come back, but you won't be able to."I loved the idea and promised that I would implement Mr. Macintosh, but not right away, since there were still so many more basic things to get done. Steve told the idea to the marketing team, and eventually recruited the French artist Folon to do some renditions of Mr. Macintosh. I also asked my high school friend Susan Kare, who hadn't started with Apple yet, to try to draw some Mr. Macintosh animations.Most of the Macintosh system software had to be packed into a 64 KByte ROM, and ROM space got more scarce as development proceeded and the system grew. Eventually, it was clear that we'd never be able to fit bitmaps for Mr. Macintosh into the ROM, but I wasn't willing to give up on him yet.I made the software that displayed the menus look at a special low memory location called the "MrMacHook", for an address of a routine. If the routine is present, it's called with parameters that let it draw in the menu box, and it returns a result that tells the menu manager if it did anything. Using this, an application or system module could implement Mr. Macintosh (or perhaps his evil twin) if they saw fit.I'm not sure if anybody ever actually implemented Mr. Macintosh or used the "MrMacHook" for something worthwhile.
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5Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has expressed support for the tens of thousands of protesters in Iran's capital, saying they deserve to have the same rights that they saw being played out in Egypt and are part of their own birthright.
"Let me, clearly and directly, support the aspirations of the people who are in the streets in Iran today," Clinton told reporters after meeting with the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner.
"What we see happening in Iran today is a testament to the courage of the Iranian people, and an indictment of the hypocrisy of the Iranian regime -- a regime which over the last three weeks has constantly hailed what went on in Egypt," Clinton said
|
illion-dollar solar power plants and wind farms.
“It’s simply the most important policy for continuing growth of renewable energy in the United States,” Rhone Resch, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association, said Wednesday during a press conference.
While some of those projects are photovoltaic farms that install tens of thousands of solar panels like those found on residential roofs or on the ground in huge arrays, many are solar thermal power plants that use mirrors to heat liquids to create steam to drive an electricity-generating turbine.
While the tax credit and federal loan guarantees are critical for such utility-scale projects, the residential and commercial rooftop market depend on a host of state and federal incentives that won’t be as affected if the cash grant program disappears.
California, for instance, runs a program that is subsidizing the installation of 3,000 megawatts of rooftop solar while states such as Oregon, Illinois and Massachusetts have carved out quotas for photovoltaic projects in their renewable energy targets.
Hence, IDC estimates that installed photovoltaic capacity in North American in 2011 will more than double to between 2.3 gigawatts and 2.7 gigawatts.
“While subsidies undeniably underpin much of this growth, the young solar PV industry has been rapidly innovating in ways that make solar PV systems more cost effective, easier to install (from both an economic and an installation labor perspective), and easier to maintain,” the report states.
Contributing to the growing rooftop solar market has been a rapid decline in photovoltaic module prices over the past two years, increased competition with low-cost Chinese manufacturers and the spread of leasing programs that allow homeowners to go solar without incurring the significant capital costs of installing photovoltaic arrays.
(Photo: Todd Woody)About
Under The Flesh is not over. We have plans for it!
If you wanna contact us or check our latest news, please follow us on Facebook:
Under the Flesh (UTF) is a dark horror story that could be described as a grindhouse mashup of Captain America, Y: The Last Man, and The Walking Dead.
Set in an post-apocalyptic world ravaged by a pathogen that only infect males turning them into savage cannibals, UTF strays away from the traditional viral story by accentuating a premeditated reason behind the plague, as opposed to leaving the origin of the outbreak as a common question mark.
The protagonist, Ruben Lobos, is a genetically enhanced soldier that must face the challanges of a new devastated world, while being clueless about the true potential of his abilities.
UTF features a diverse cast, comprised mostly of female survivors, and a renegade biker, named Jewel, that is yet not aware of the vital role she´ll play in the human race´s struggle for survival...and perhaps salvation.
To fund the printing of issue #2, which is completed, and the art of issue #3. You don´t have to wait for us to finish it: Issue #2 is 100% ready to be sent to print!
The carnal chaos continues with Ravaged Road, where Ruben gears up for an exploratory trek through the surrounding hell-zone, riddled with ferocious fleshers, bloodthirsty bandits, and a pair of ominous ever-watching eyes, to rescue his bitter love.
His heart-thumping journey will bring him tense new encounters, as he soon discovers that as long as there's a machete taped to his hand, the world isn't lost yet!
Issue #2 preview pages:
INDIE COMICS: What is it and what does your help do for unknown creators like us?
Under The Flesh is a 100% creator-owned independent comic. That means we don't receive any financial help from advertising or publishers. It's an unconditional labor of love, blood, sweat, and tears. Our dream is to share this work of passion with all of you. Truth is, we have very limited financial resources to keep UTF going at its current level of quality and consistency.
That´s why right now, you guys have the power to help this project continue to grow. We have the chance to work together and create a great comic book outside the margins of a market dominated by big companies.
Only ten years ago, it was almost impossible for small independent creators like us to self-publish and get their work out to the public. Although today it is still an extremely difficult task, Kickstarter opens up new financing channels that have turned the gloomy tortuous path of self-publishing into a creative and hopeful crowd-publishing reality! Thanks to Kickstarter & your support, skies are the limit!
With your help Under The Flesh is possible!
45% of the pledge funds will be budgeted towards the art J.L. is creating for the project. This allows a talented artist to receive a respectable rate for providing professional grade quality art.
45% of the pledge funds will be budgeted towards covering reward expenses (production printing, and shipping costs).
10% of the pledge funds will cover Kickstarter and Amazon fees.
Gilbert Deltres - Writer with a highly percolative imagination since childhood. Loves writing comics. His creator-owned project Under The Flesh is his first foray into the comic world as he looks to garner credibility in the craft.
J.L. Giles - Loves painting and drawing comics since childhood. Has done work for IDW, Hasbro, Zenescope, Papercutz, Grindhouse Comics, Top Secret Press, and others. You can check more of his artwork on his BLOG.
Don´t forget to follow us!Particles ejected from a supermassive black hole are caught up in a galaxy merger, blasting the material even more powerfully into space.
Astronomers have discovered an immense surge of energy coming from a cosmic particle accelerator located about 2 billion light years from Earth. It's powered by interactions between a supermassive black hole and the colliding galaxy clusters Abell 3411 and Abell 3412.
Using several telescopes, researchers have traced extremely energetic particles back to a giant black hole shooting out matter, and this material is then caught up in the galaxy merger, flinging the particles away with even more power. The research team compared the process to launching a rocket into low-Earth orbit and then sending that rocket out of the solar system with another rocket blast.
A supermassive black hole ejects particles that are swept up by a galaxy merger and flung outward even more quickly. This image incorporates X-rays detected with the Chandra X-ray Observatory, radio waves detected with the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope and optical data from the Subaru Telescope. (Image: © X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/R. van Weeren et al.; Optical: NAOJ/Subaru; Radio: NCRA/TIFR/GMRT)
"We have seen each of these spectacular phenomena separately in many places," study leader Reinout van Weeren, a fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), said in a statement. "This is the first time, however, that we['ve] seen them clearly linked together in the same system."
Researchers now know that a supermassive black hole in one of the galaxy clusters created a magnetic funnel, which generates powerful electromagnetic fields. The fields then accelerate the gas away from the black hole into a jet.
Inside the jet, the particles are pushed again when they hit shock waves coming from gas-cloud collisions within the two merging galaxy clusters. The "doubly accelerated" particles shine in radio wavelengths, which have been long observed (but not understood) in Abell 3411 and Abell 3412.
(Image: © X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/R. van Weeren et al.; Optical: NAOJ/Subaru; Radio: NCRA/TIFR/GMRT)
"These particles are among the most energetic particles observed in the universe, thanks to the double injection of energy," co-author Felipe Andrade-Santos, a postdoctoral research fellow at CfA, said in the same statement. The research team said that more examples of these particles should be found in future deep-space studies, using radio and X-ray wavelengths.
The results were presented at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Grapevine, Texas, Thursday (Jan. 5) and will be published in the inaugural issue of the journal Nature Astronomy. Observations were performed using the orbiting Chandra X-ray Telescope, the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) in India, the National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array in New Mexico and several other telescopes.
Follow Elizabeth Howell @howellspace, or Space.com @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.https://www.bourbonblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/FLoat_Trip_Final1.mp3
Trey Zoeller, Founder and Owner of Jefferson’s Bourbon, tells BourbonBlog.com that he is setting sail on a new experiment in the world of Bourbon aging on the water. Listen to the podcast above as we are the first media outlet to share the story.
This Tuesday June 7th, a boat carrying two barrels of Jefferson’s Bourbon new fill distilled at the new Kentucky Artisan Distillery will travel down the river to its first stop in New Orleans.
After New Orleans, the barrels will be placed on an old rum runner boat to Key West. From Key West, the barrels will travel up the Atlantic to their final destination in New York.
Zoeller says he has been dreaming about this for a long time and wanted to replicate this unique aging process similar to what it was like 150 years ago when Bourbon traveled from Kentucky.
Once he received permission from the TTB, Coast Guard and the insurance, he took action on this innovative experiment. According to Zoeller, the journey may take 4 to 6 months in total.
You are invited to Bon Voyage Party on Tuesday, details below. Visit BourbonBlog.com for updates during the Jefferson’s Reserve Float Trip. Subscribe to our newsletter on this link for updates.
Bon Voyage for Jefferson’s Reserve Float Trip
WHEN: Tuesday, June 7, 2016 – 1 pm party, Launch 2 pm
WHERE: Marine Sales, 2929 River Rd, Louisville, KY 40206
The two barrels are named “I’m on a Boat” and “Fantastic Voyage” – pictured below.
WHEN:
WHERE:'Alaskan Bush People' Star Help, My Fridge Exploded!! Head Stitches Needed
'Alaskan Bush People' Star Matt Brown Gets 9 Staples After Bizarre Accident
EXCLUSIVE
"Alaskan Bush People" star Matt Brown needed 9 staples in his head after an explosion in his fridge landed him in the hospital.
Our sources in Alaska tell us the accident happened Tuesday night in Matt's Hoonah, AK crib. Apparently, he'd filled a mason jar with gunpowder and cannon fuse, and stored it in his fridge. Doesn't seem like the smartest move, but if you haven't seen the show... the Browns march to the beat of their own drum.
Lo and behold... the mason jar exploded, and blew the fridge door off its hinges, and into Matt's head.
He went to a hospital, got stapled back together and was released. Now, we know what you're thinking, and no... this wasn't a stunt for the show. 'ABP' wasn't shooting at the time.On a third batted pass on a final drive against Florida State, Miami's chances of pulling an upset of the Seminoles — and getting the first win over the 'Noles of Al Golden's tenure as Miami's head coach — fluttered to the ground. FSU had its 29-24 win, a second consecutive one-possession win over its hated ACC rival.
And Miami may have a hard choice to make on Golden.
Sure, Golden's seat has been molten since the beginning of the 2015 season, or maybe before it. Sure, losing at Cincinnati is probably less respectable than losing at the three-time defending ACC champions. But the cold truth is that Florida State has now been better than Miami when the two teams have met for six straight years, which covers Golden's entire five-year tenure, and the entire careers of Miami's first full recruiting class under Golden.
And the way this loss happened — with Brad Kaaya being as game a QB as the 'Canes have had in a while, but Miami's defense being totally unable to stop Miami native Dalvin Cook — is only going to burn Miami fans more. Miami players looked dumbstruck and spent on the sideline after the final whistle; the, er, somewhat boisterous Hurricanes fan base is likely to be far less sanguine.
For Golden to save his job with his team's work on the field, Miami's absolutely going to have to avoid the post-FSU swoon that has plagued it in recent years. The 'Canes lost their last three games after a near-miss against the 'Noles in 2014, and are 2-6 after seeing FSU over the last two years; over Golden's entire tenure, that post-FSU record is only 6-8. If Miami loses out, Golden's seat will dissolve, of course, but a far more likely outcome is almost as bad: The 'Canes could very easily fall to 3-5 after October games against Virginia Tech, Clemson, and Duke before rallying to finish 7-5 against lesser competition in November.
With FSU still atop the ACC and Florida surging back to prominence, a 7-5 season in Golden's fifth year would have to be a death blow to Golden's ability to recruit the Sunshine State, and thus to his continued employment — in theory. But Golden's under contract through the 2019 season, and while Miami's a private school that doesn't have to release salary figures, it's a good bet that the 'Canes would have to eat something close to eight figures to cut Golden loose now, if not more.
So the choice will fall to Miami athletic director Blake James, who did not give Golden that extension, and the rest of Miami's leadership: Is keeping Golden and hoping for something different out of his sixth year more worthwhile than signing off a massive golden parachute for him and hoping to find a better option at head coach?
It's a tough thing to contemplate. But, then, so is losing yet another game to FSU.The Labor senator Penny Wong has poured cold water on the idea of changing voting laws to stop micro-parties “gaming” the system.
A bipartisan parliamentary committee examining the 2013 federal election recommended voters be allowed to mark preferences above the line on Senate ballot papers, or not have to number all the boxes below the line.
Despite the report being received a year ago the government has yet to decide whether to go ahead with the electoral law changes. The Labor party is deeply divided on the plan and is quickly backing away from its support for a joint parliamentary inquiry which recommended the reforms.
'Madness' for Labor to back Senate voting changes, says Sam Dastyari Read more
Leader of the opposition in the Senate, Penny Wong, told ABC radio on Monday that Labor was still working through the impact of possible changes on the party and the upper house as a whole.
“But I have to say, I’ve been in the Senate since 2002 and apart from a brief period where John Howard actually had the numbers when he passed WorkChoices, the government hasn’t had the numbers,” she said.
“I’ve seen the whole range of different permutations in the Senate and governments have always had to work with them.”
Self-interest was driving the Coalition’s thinking, Senator Wong said. “This government is very keen to point the finger at anyone else but themselves.”
Senator Wong’s comments follow those of fellow Labor senator, Sam Dastyari, who told the Australian newspaper that the measures would result in a more conservative upper house.
Crossbench senators issue ultimatum over plan to curb micro-party influence Read more
“It would be complete madness for Labor to support any proposal that would risk forever preventing a progressive Senate. I can’t see Labor doing that,” Dastyari said. “Frankly, I can’t find a single Labor senator that supports any of this.”
At present, voters must either put a “1” in only one box above the line or fill in every box below the line on a ballot paper. Voting above the line hands the flow of preferences over to the parties which lodge “group voting tickets” with the electoral commission.
There have been concerns that group voting tickets have been exploited by very small parties, enabling candidates to win with a tiny proportion of the vote. In the case of the 2013 election, Australian Motoring Enthusiast party candidate Ricky Muir won a Victorian Senate seat with only 0.51% of the primary vote.
Under the proposed changes, voters would be able to cast preferences above the line, with any preferences deemed to run through each nominated party’s listed candidates in their nominated order before moving on to the next nominated party.
If voters want to cast their ballot below the line, they would only need to fill in at least six boxes for a half-Senate election, 12 for a full Senate election and two for any territory Senate election.
The Coalition would need the support of Labor, the Greens or six crossbenchers to get any changes through parliament.Cybercriminals have managed to alter the DNS records of some Go Daddy hosted websites. As a result, users visiting these pages are being infected with ransomware.
For the uninitiated, ransomware is a very profitable type of threat which restricts access to the computer it infects, spamming the user with prompts that demand a ransom paid for functionality to be reinstated. Access is limited either by encryption or locking the system.
The attackers in this case are accessing and modifying the DNS records of sites, adding one or more additional subdomains with corresponding DNS entries referencing malicious IP addresses, ensuring they resolve to rogue servers with the Cool Exploit Kit. As a result, the attacks appear to use legitimate-looking URLs, helping evade security checks as well as tricking users into thinking the content must be safe.
Instead, the users are hit with various malicious files, since the exploit kit takes advantage of several different vulnerabilities and can serve up different types of malware, mainly ransomware according to Sophos:
Recent ransomware variants use law enforcement imagery to make it look as if the warnings are legitimate. Many even leverage geo-location services, like the one in this case, to determine the location of the infected computer in order to display a message appropriate to that country. Sophos detects the threats as Mal/ExpJS-AV, Troj/DexFont-A, and Mal/JavaGen-E.
The above is a British example, but again the warning pages vary depending on where you are in the world. Those infected are told they have viewed or downloaded copyrighted or illegal material and must pay a fine (in the above case, 100 British pounds) in order to have their computer restored. If not, they are told they will be arrested.
In all cases, never pay the ransom. If you don’t know how, have a friend clean out your computer.
Sophos isn’t sure how the attackers were able to access the Go Daddy DNS records, but the security firm speculates that they may have used compromised user credentials (stolen or weak passwords). Unfortunately, webmasters are unable to check their historical login activity to verify this theory, and Go Daddy is refusing to release such information.
We have contacted Go Daddy about this issue. We will update this article if and when we hear back.
Update on November 26: Go Daddy blames phishing (not security hole) for some sites pushing malware, resets passwords
See also – Ransomware uses Anonymous name to extort money: Your files are encrypted, pay up to get them back and Warning: Skype users attacked by ‘lol is this your new profile pic?’ ransomware and click fraud
Image credit: Paul Joseph
Read next: Cinemark's mobile app now rewards patrons for not using their mobile phones during moviesAugust condominium sales in the Greater Toronto area were the worst in a decade and are now 46% below the long-term average, says the Building Industry and Land Development Association.
At the same time the tight market for low-rise homes has prices at all-time high for that segment of the market. The gap between the index price for high-rise and low-rise homes is now $222,149 — the highest on record.
RealNet Canada, which compiles the data for BILD, said there were 633 new high-rise homes sold in the GTA still. Even in the low-rise segment of the market they were only 777 sales, counting detached, semi-detached and townhomes.
Sales along low rises were the third lowest in 10 years and 43% below the long-term average. Land shortages were blamed for the weak sales, a statement BILD said is supported by a price index which saw low rises reached a record of $658,938.
“Constrained land supply has severely diminished inventory in the low-rise sector, bringing prices to a considerable increase. Another factor is the rising government fees and charges which, on average, add up to one-fifth of the cost of a new home,” said Bryan Tuckey, chief executive of BILD, in statement.
He said the constrained market for low-rise new homes also affects existing homes. “Affordability continues to be a challenge for everyone looking to buy a ground-related home in the GTA,” said Mr. Tuckey.
Financial Post
[email protected]
twitter.com/dustywalletREDS chairman Greg Griffin has rejected claims Harry Kewell is still on the hunt for an A-League club.
Socceroos manager Bernie Mandic recently reignited the debate.
Mandic told Melbourne radio Kewell had not signed for Melbourne Victory, but Griffin believes the superstar wouldn't choose any other club.
Speculation is pointing towards Kewell being officially unveiled when the Victory hosts Scotland's Glasgow Celtic at AAMI Park on July 13.
It's understood Kewell has put pen to paper in a deal which would command a minimum wage and receive 80 per cent of any additional revenue Victory receives from bumper crowds at Etihad Stadium and AAMI Park.
Griffin said Adelaide was never in the running for Kewell because Hindmarsh's 16,500 capacity wouldn't be lucrative enough for the Socceroo to command a decent salary as part of the revenue agreement.
"We have a strong belief that Harry has already agreed to play for Melbourne Victory," Griffin said.
While United won't get Kewell, Brisbane Roar coach Ange Postecoglou has been given the green light by Football Federation Australia - the club's interim owners - to chase him.
Mandic mentioned A-League champions Brisbane as a potential home for 32-year-old former Leeds, Liverpool and Galatasaray star.
"They've got a sensational team... a great coach who's earned his stripes in Europe, they've got a stadium waiting to be filled," Mandic said.
"He's a once-in-a-generation player," Postecoglou said.
"If it could be done, I'd love to have him in Brisbane."
Mandic last night told The Advertiser he would not publicly discuss his client's dealings.December 26, 2012
by Compassion Over Killing Staff
As 2012 comes to a close, it’s the perfect time to look ahead to the coming year with hope. Hope for a kinder future for animals, an improved planet and optimal health for yourself. A new year offers a fresh start, a time to set new goals for yourself and expand your possibilities!
At Compassion Over Killing, we’re thrilled to look back on the many milestones that you helped us reach in 2012 — and we’re looking forward to an even more effective 2013.
Right now, we’re setting new goals that will continue the momentum of our advocacy work, and we hope you’ll join us in resolving to help even more animals in the coming year!
With meat consumption declining — down 12 percent in just the last 5 years — and dairy consumption continually declining, we’re optimistic about the future for farmed animals. Let’s work together to bring an end to the needless suffering of these animals.
What’s your New Year’s resolution? Let us know by posting a comment on our Facebook page!
Need some New Year’s resolution ideas? Here are a few ideas:
1. Choose vegan: it’s delicious, fun, easy, and there are so many resources out there to help get you started.
2. Already vegan? Get at least 5 of your vegan-to-be friends or family members to participate in Meatless Mondays, and offer them free delicious veg recipes to help them further down the path to vegan eating!
3. Volunteer at least once a month with an animal protection organization. (Hint: We’re always accepting volunteers and interns in our DC and LA offices!)
4. Reach out on your own: Ask local restaurants to offer vegan meals, hand out Vegetarian Starter Guides around your community and spread the message through meaningful conversation that you can help start by wearing our popular “Ask Me Why I’m a Vegetarian” t-shirt.
5. Watch — and share — and health-related video a day – subscribe on NutritionFacts.org.
6. Become a member of COK and sign-up for our eNewsletter action alerts!The elements of a classic Chris Buck portrait are instantly recognizable and often unforgettable: bold colors, crisp lighting, and simple yet slightly bizarre scenarios. The Toronto-born and -bred photographer has a way of capturing iconic figures in the most unconventional, almost dreamlike settings. It’s hard to imagine Jay Z working a fast food joint, Gary Oldman with pie on his face, or Billy Bob Thornton pissing on a backdrop (alright, that last one is pretty believable). But over the course of his 30-year career, Buck has managed to turn the surreal into truly stunning portraits for publications like GQ, The New Yorker and The Guardian Weekend. “I always liked pictures of people that look kind of uncomfortable or vulnerable,” he says. “When making a portrait, I want to capture that uneasiness with them.” That signature uneasiness, more than 300 examples of it, has been packaged in a book aptly titled Uneasy released earlier this year. Each page will leave you A) awestruck, B) scratching your head, or C) wondering why anyone would agree to pose like that. “Ultimately I saw these portraits as more about me than they are about the subject,” says Buck, which likely explains why a majority of the photos are of men at their most unguarded moments. So, what makes a portrait truly memorable? “The No. 1 element is vulnerability,” says Buck. “To me, that is humanity. There needs to be a sense of openness. And ambiguity. It's not clear what this person is thinking or feeling. The ambiguity is kind of an invitation to step in.” Now it’s your turn to step into the wonderfully weird world of Chris Buck with commentary from the man himself.
“I was at a film festival in Toronto where I grew up. I went over to him—he was in the middle of an interview, I don't know what I was thinking—and I asked, ‘Can I take a picture?" And he says, ‘Oh sure, dude. Just let me finish this.’ We found some nice light on the roof. I wanted to do an homage to that famous James Dean picture where he's pulling his sweater over his face. We start doing that, then I saw his scar. I was like, ‘That scar is awesome. Lift it up so I can see it.’ And he thought it was funny. He was very, very sweet.”
Chuck D only gave Chris 15 seconds to get this shot. He’s literally counting down in the photo. “Funny thing is he ended up using this on the back of one of their EPs and the back cover of his autobiography. Obviously he warmed up to it later.”
"Really one of my favorites ever, because I'm a big fan. The best thing about this looking back is at the end of the shoot he made lunch for my assistant and I. He'd just gone to the deli that morning, and he was like, ‘What do you want, boys?’ I said, ‘Pastrami on rye.’ And he said, ‘The chopped chicken liver is very good today.’ So I had that as a side. One of the things that's fascinating about him is you can't pin him down.”
"You need to have confidence in your ideas and what you’re doing. What I love about working with GQ is that that confidence is there. In an email they said, "Simple portrait. No props." Justin O'Neill [the shoot producer] was like, we'll send the bunnies anyways. This was the third to last frame. This is a shoot that's interesting in that he was kind of making fun of me. My assistant was like, ‘I used to want to shoot celebrities, but after seeing how you're treated I don't want to do that.’ And I said, ‘You've totally got the wrong take away. Think of the amazing shots we've come out with. This is not about having a nice time; this is about getting the shots. And if you don't get the shots, it doesn't matter. Nothing else matters.’”
“One of the approaches I make is thinking, What is the one thing I can't imagine this person doing? Jerry Stiller riding a majestic horse. It was one of those amazing challenges. Where are we going to get a beautiful white horse in Manhattan? There's a stable in Central Park, and that's where we did it. It looks like we could be in Northern California or Nevada.”
“John Mayer, what can I tell you? God bless him. I'm not going to say he was high, but I got so many weird pictures. It was amazing. The most variety ever.”
“When I first think of ideas for a shoot, I might do a little research, then I brainstorm and write the weirdest things I can think of. This is in London. I bought a fish tank, I brought it, and he did it. Actually his one addition is he asked that his bottle of tequila be in the background.”
“That's one of the classic shots for me. It's about great light and a simple gesture. I loved how tall and skinny he was, and I wanted to make him taller and skinnier. That's all it was. He was great because we were shooting the day before, but he showed up so late we had no light. He gave us a ton of time the next day. It was worth the inconvenience to get the extra time.”
“He's the man. This is a great example of taking shoots seriously because you never know what can happen. He was already a star at this time, but he's obviously an icon now. The crazy thing about this is we shot on a large format camera in the Marcy Projects where he grew up. We had a great shoot, and this was by far the best moment. In a way, it doesn't really look like a lot of my work, but it's such a magical moment you know he'd never do now. The whole idea was what would Jay Z being doing if he didn't become Jay Z? We had him working in a chicken joint, shopping at the bodega, having his SUV towed, doing his laundry in the local laundromat. It was super fun.”
“This was for a big piece on Largo, which is a comedy club in L.A. It was a studio shoot with comedians for a double page spread. We wanted to do things with microphones because of stand up comedy. For some reason people weren't really giving me too much, but one of the only ones who did was Zach. This shot's not genius, but it's clever in a quiet way. It's very Zach Galifianakis. This is the only photo from that session that ended up in the book even though I shot eight or nine people.”
“We had to shoot at the backlot at Universal Studios. They're both so funny, but the costume and the environment was so strong that for me to make the shot work I had to have so much less. The one that ran in the magazine was in color, but it was almost too much. The black and white makes it looks like 1940s Bavaria or something. It's funny, but it's more of a cool picture.”
"I don't think it's G.I. Joe, it's some kind of army man. This was one idea I didn't even tell the magazine I was going to do. I've learned if things are really small, don't tell the magazine."
“We put Ramis in the makeup to get this exploding debris look. He comes out, and he looks like he’s wearing black face. It was horrifying. Of course I didn't say anything, I just shot it. Then when we executed in black and white, it looked perfect.”
“This was the secondary shot that was more for me. The boar was approved and all that, but we literally eked out 10 minutes at the end. They closed the beach because of some weird sanitation run off. So basically there’s some undefinable gross biological issue going on, and they still did it. They knew but they did it. Also, their suits were so tight they were literally popping out of them, in classic GQ form.”
“His people were all like, ‘No props, no props. Come on. No props, no props. We told you we don't want props.’ We were getting some good stuff, but it was just getting a bit same-y. So we decided to go outside, and we walked around the neighborhood. This is a spot I pre-scouted around the corner. I think Paul held the balloon for literally five or six seconds, and then his publicists relieved him by taking it away.”
“Don was amazing. He would do anything. At some point he did some kind of side jump, then my guys would catch him. He almost looks like a dolphin or something jumping out of the water. We got so much material they couldn't even run it all. We had all these ideas, but the stuff that Don was suggesting was so much better.”
"When he was transitioning from Louis CK Family Comedian to Louis CK Scrappy New York Guy, he was like, ‘No kids. No suburbia. It's gotta be New York.’ I don't know why he allowed us to use the pony. I think he actually thought it was funny, so he couldn't resist. Then he regretted it.”
“Andy wanted to play basketball with it, like he's blocking. I thought it was a little too silly. Then he said, 'How about I high five it?' Each time, Andy would say something different, so we were genuinely in danger of not getting the shot because of everyone laughing, including me.”
"When he was transitioning from Louis CK Family Comedian to Louis CK Scrappy New York Guy, he was like, ‘No kids. No suburbia. It's gotta be New York.’ I don't know why he allowed us to use the pony. I think he actually thought it was funny, so he couldn't resist. Then he regretted it.” Louis CK
“Don was amazing. He would do anything. At some point he did some kind of side jump, then my guys would catch him. He almost looks like a dolphin or something jumping out of the water. We got so much material they couldn't even run it all. We had all these ideas, but the stuff that Don was suggesting was so much better.” Don Lemon
“His people were all like, ‘No props, no props. Come on. No props, no props. We told you we don't want props.’ We were getting some good stuff, but it was just getting a bit same-y. So we decided to go outside, and we walked around the neighborhood. This is a spot I pre-scouted around the corner. I think Paul held the balloon for literally five or six seconds, and then his publicists relieved him by taking it away.” Paul Giamatti
“This was the secondary shot that was more for me. The boar was approved and all that, but we literally eked out 10 minutes at the end. They closed the beach because of some weird sanitation run off. So basically there’s some undefinable gross biological issue going on, and they still did it. They knew but they did it. Also, their suits were so tight they were literally popping out of them, in classic GQ form.” J.J. Abrams and Bad Robot
“We put Ramis in the makeup to get this exploding debris look. He comes out, and he looks like he’s wearing black face. It was horrifying. Of course I didn't say anything, I just shot it. Then when we executed in black and white, it looked perfect.” Harold Ramis
"I don't think it's G.I. Joe, it's some kind of army man. This was one idea I didn't even tell the magazine I was going to do. I've learned if things are really small, don't tell the magazine." Aziz Ansari
Charles Griffin “We had to shoot at the backlot at Universal Studios. They're both so funny, but the costume and the environment was so strong that for me to make the shot work I had to have so much less. The one that ran in the magazine was in color, but it was almost too much. The black and white makes it looks like 1940s Bavaria or something. It's funny, but it's more of a cool picture.” Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd
“This was for a big piece on Largo, which is a comedy club in L.A. It was a studio shoot with comedians for a double page spread. We wanted to do things with microphones because of stand up comedy. For some reason people weren't really giving me too much, but one of the only ones who did was Zach. This shot's not genius, but it's clever in a quiet way. It's very Zach Galifianakis. This is the only photo from that session that ended up in the book even though I shot eight or nine people.” Zach Galifianakis
“He's the man. This is a great example of taking shoots seriously because you never know what can happen. He was already a star at this time, but he's obviously an icon now. The crazy thing about this is we shot on a large format camera in the Marcy Projects where he grew up. We had a great shoot, and this was by far the best moment. In a way, it doesn't really look like a lot of my work, but it's such a magical moment you know he'd never do now. The whole idea was what would Jay Z being doing if he didn't become Jay Z? We had him working in a chicken joint, shopping at the bodega, having his SUV towed, doing his laundry in the local laundromat. It was super fun.” Jay Z
“That's one of the classic shots for me. It's about great light and a simple gesture. I loved how tall and skinny he was, and I wanted to make him taller and skinnier. That's all it was. He was great because we were shooting the day before, but he showed up so late we had no light. He gave us a ton of time the next day. It was worth the
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rich, but to help.
Beginning
Like many people, I came to cryptocurrency last year. Sure, I had héard about Bitcoin, but it never really registered on my radar as something I wanted to put the time and effort in to find out more. Again, like many of you, my wake-up call came when Bitcoin started to rise sharply in the beginning of 2013 and then again in December, when it reached the $ 1000 mark.
I decided to do some research, learned about mining and also learned that both mining ánd investing would not be for me. The initial investment was too steep to be interesting to me.
My research led me to the wide variety of altcoins, and I thought I saw some possibilities there. Maybe I could jump in those and get a decent bank roll to smartly trade my way up. However, being who I am, two things happened:
The first one was that I got bored quickly. Most altcoins just rehashed what Bitcoin had already done and were trying to repeat the success it had. Most people involved were also dreaming of what I like to call “earn $$$ sitting on your butt!!”.
The second was that I basically couldn’t contribute. I like to be in the thick of things and have my finger in the proverbial pie. That way I get to influence the thing I am involved in. There wasn’t all that much to do in most altcoins, at least not for me as I saw it.
Nxt
I had already heard of Nxt by this time. This was around the beginning of December 2013. Nxt had already been launched and was getting both positive and negative attention on the Bitcointalk forums. At first I didn’t pay attention, but after a while I started reading the thread that I now summarise on a daily basis.
I was intrigued. Not by the technology, because I still don’t have enough knowledge to be able to judge it. I was intrigued and gradually drawn to this group of people who went around working on this new thing that they believed in. And not even believed in, they were actually making it happen! On a daily basis I saw progress and plans and more progress. They mostly ignored the cries that Nxt was a scamcoin and just went their own merry way and did what they thought was necessary to make Nxt a success.
Sweat Equity
I already said that I cannot accurately judge technology. What I am good at, however, is judging a product’s potential based on the people that are working on it. In Nxt, I found a community that fitted my own way of working perfectly.
What did I invest in Nxt? In terms of real money, I decided to do the smart thing, and only invest what I could miss. I invested about € 50,-. In crypto-investing this is pennies, for those who don’t know. Knowing that this was the limit of my capital investment at that moment, I decided to actually earn the rest.
The Nxt community offers a lot of opportunities to people who actually are willing to put in the work. I decided to translate the wiki, and I decided to do this site. I have no way to contribute to the development of the technological side, but there is value in marketing and PR, too and the devs either don’t have time, or they don’t have the skills to do it. So that’s where my gain is. It hasn’t been a bad earner either. I frequently look bemused at people who cry “unfair” at the distribution of Nxt and then don’t do something about it. It’s not that hard: find something that no one else is doing, and start doing it. The Nxt community rewards those that add value.
Short term vs. Long term
I don’t do short-term. If Nxt succeeds, that’s great, but I have set my goal post at three years from now. That way, I don’t have to worry about short term falls and rises in value. I don’t have the temperament to be a day trader. I fail to get excited by a short term rise or fall in value.
I know from all the information that I gather on the forums that so many well thought out things like the Asset Exchange, colored coins and decentralised services are coming, not to mention all the 3rd party applications that people are working on. I also know that all these people aren’t shouting their progress off the roofs because they are busy working.
That knowledge leads me to believe that Nxt will keep rising in value in the coming years. Not because of a hype (although that helps, of course), but because it actually adds something to the crypto mix that hás value. People will actually benefit by having access to a system that has more transactions per second than Bitcoin can ever have. They will benefit by being able to share data securely and to be able to trade over the Nxt network.
And the best part of it is that I can participate and work with dedicated people who know what they are doing. I’m in for the ride. It’s early days. Maybe you’d like to Nxt join, too.The testimonial has been pencilled in for August. For Paul Scholes, the search is now on for suitable opponents and "a good, proper game". Real Madrid would be popular with the fans, so Cristiano Ronaldo could play once again at Old Trafford. Or Barcelona maybe, the side he loves to watch and that, in many ways, symbolise his own brand of pass-them-to-death football – quick, elusive and, when everything clicks, bloody brilliant.
He is talking in a quiet side room at Manchester United's training ground. Scholes, as usual, has been one of the first to arrive for work, his hair still damp from his morning shower. Training top, jeans, the same haircut he has had since he was playing for Boundary Park Juniors almost 25 years ago. Scholes has never been one for designer labels or flashy cars, and it is almost a surprise to find out he has accepted the offer of a benefit match. Already, you can imagine the adulation from the stands and the polite, unassuming little wave from a man not really comfortable with all the flashing bulbs.
But wait. When a footballer starts talking about his testimonial it usually means only one thing. At 36, Scholes is now at the age in football when the legs can betray the mind. Ryan Giggs, a year older, has already signed a one-year extension but Scholes has a longer history of injury issues. It is a serious possibility this weekend could be his last Manchester derby and the next few weeks could represent the countdown of his United career.
At the very least, he is clearly contemplating the end-of-season press release. "I'll decide at the end of the season," he says. "I really don't know what I am going to do yet. I've got these games to think about now and I will decide from there. People always say you should play as long as you can but there comes a time when you can't physically do it. I'm wary of that. I just want to make sure it is done at the right time."
Football would be losing one of its greats. Scholes would need a small warehouse to show off all the trophies he has won since his debut in a League Cup tie at Port Vale 17 years ago. It is hard to believe that a footballer-of-the-year trophy is not among them; even harder that a local MP threatened United with the Trades Description Act for playing a young Scholes, David Beckham and Gary Neville that night at Vale Park.
The list of those who have since described Scholes as the best footballer in England includes, among others, Zinedine Zidane, Thierry Henry, Marcello Lippi and Edgar Davids. Or ask about Scholes at Manchester City. Only three other United players – Sir Bobby Charlton, Eric Cantona and Joe Spence – have bettered Scholes's tally of seven goals against the old enemy. The last was a stoppage-time winner at Eastlands last season. "It was perfect," Scholes remembers. "That was a major highlight of my career, one of the best things I have ever done." He has struggled, by his own admission, to cope with being on the edges of the team this season (not starting either of the Champions League ties against Chelsea). "It is very difficult to accept [not playing every game] but the time comes when you know that you can't. You want to think like a 25-year-old, you like to think that you can play every game. But you can't. You just have to make sure you are ready for the odd 20 minutes here and there. It's hard to make that adjustment. It is not nice."
This was in his thoughts when he turned down the chance to play in last summer's World Cup. Scholes did not want to risk it affecting his club form, although, looking back, he does not think fatigue would have been an issue.
"They played only four games! I think it is more a mental thing. You're away a long time. And the players who went to South Africa will feel it [mentally] because it wasn't great, was it? They didn't play very well. They took a lot of stick. And things like that take a while to get over."
But he does not want to dwell on the subject much longer. There is, after all, the small matter of an FA Cup semi-final against Manchester City on Saturday and, as one of the few Mancunians involved, Scholes is better placed than most to comprehend why a United defeat would mean "we probably won't ever hear the end of it". Scholes has been playing long enough to remember when City were grubbing around for points in the Second Division, what is now League One. Then and now seem a long time apart. "It's an FA Cup semi-final at Wembley, it's massive, there will be 30,000 fans from each side... it's the biggest game we've had against City for a while. Whoever loses will be devastated."
He knows this from experience. "I remember the 5-1 in 1989 and Andy Hinchcliffe scoring that goal [Hinchcliffe celebrated by holding up five fingers to United's fans]. It's painful. I can also remember going to Maine Road and losing 3-1 [in 2002] and it's horrible. You hate losing against anybody, but City? It's bad."
These are the words of a man brought up to believe that Manchester's other club always have to be put in their place. "We have always been the team that has done better, right back from when I was a kid," he says. Later, Scholes talks of an attitude at Old Trafford in the 1990s that there was "no way" they could lose to their neighbours.
There is a smile, too, as he considers that City have beaten United only once in eight attempts since Abu Dhabi's royal family made them the most financially endowed football club on the planet. "They will be pissed off about that. Even then, that game was a [Carling Cup semi‑final] first leg, with us having another game to make up for it. We have made a habit of nicking games in the last minute. I've done it, Michael Owen's done it, Wayne [Rooney] did it last season and, again, with his unbelievable goal in the league this season. That's the difference between the two teams. We have a belief that we can beat anybody, but if City have that, I'm not too sure."
Conversely, he believes the huge amounts of money being pumped into City have "probably helped us a bit. It has spurred us on when we have played them. It has made us concentrate a little bit more than we normally would against them."
City, he knows, are desperately craving a trophy. "When they are fourth or fifth, or wherever they are in the league, I don't think they can be classed as a main rival. Our main rivals are obviously Arsenal and Chelsea. I think City are just a rival because of where they are [geographically], and Liverpool the same." It is a sentence delivered with every bit as much snap as one of his famous late tackles.
Sir Alex Ferguson almost always plays Scholes in these fixtures, eager to involve a man who understands the importance of local rivalries. But Scholes is not taking it for granted. "I thought the team looked brilliant in both games against Chelsea. I never felt we were in any danger of not going through." He praises Michael Carrick, the man who has taken his place, for "coming back into form – he's been brilliant the last few weeks".
Tuesday night was also the first time Scholes started to think this team could emulate the 1999 treble winners. "Until we beat Chelsea I don't think it had crossed any of our minds. It might have crossed other people's. But there were too many games, it seemed too far away and we had a big team like Chelsea in front of us in the Champions League. But we're in the semi-finals in Europe now, the semi-final of the FA Cup and we're seven points clear in the league."
And, though he does not say it, you wonder whether Scholes has pondered if a European Cup final at Wembley could be a great way to bow out. They will hope not, at Old Trafford and way beyond. But not at City.From Bulbapedia, the community-driven Pokémon encyclopedia.
The subject of this article has no official name.
The name currently in use is a fan designator; see below for more information.
This article is incomplete.
Please feel free to edit this article to add missing information and complete it.
Reason: Changes in Gen VII, if any.
A Pokémon's personality value (Japanese: 性格値 personality value) is an unsigned 32-bit integer that is created when the Pokémon is first generated by the game. As an unsigned 32-bit integer, its value can be anywhere from 0 (32 zeroes in binary) to 4,294,967,295 (32 ones in binary), inclusive. This value was introduced with the Pokémon data structure overhaul that occurred at the start of Generation III, and is generated using the games' pseudorandom number generator.
Generation
For Pokémon encountered in the wild, it is set upon encountering them. For gift Pokémon and Eggs, it is set upon receiving them. For Eggs from Pokémon Day Care, when it is set varies between games.
In Generation III except in Pokémon Emerald, the lower half of the personality value is set when the Day-Care Man finds the Egg, while the second half is set when the player obtains the Egg from the Day-Care Man.
In Pokémon Emerald and Generation IV, it is set when the Day-Care Man finds the Egg.
In Generation V, it is set when the player obtains the Egg from the Day-Care Man.
Usage
Precisely which properties are determined by the personality value varies between generations.
Gen III Gen IV Gen V Gen VI Gender ✓ ✓ ✓ Ability ✓ ✓ ✓ Nature ✓ ✓ Shininess ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Characteristic ✓ ✓ Spinda's spots ✓ ✓ ✓ Unown's letter ✓ Wurmple's evolution ✓ ✓ ✓ Size ✓ ✓ Performance changes ✓
Gender
00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
From Generation III to Generation V, Pokémon's gender is determined by the lowest eight digits (the lowest byte, highlighted in red above) of p in binary form. Mathematically, this can be derived by calculating p % 256. Below, this value will be referred to as p gender.
In a Pokémon species' base stat structure, there is a value called the gender threshold, a byte with a value ranging from 0 to 255. With the exception of a few special cases, p gender is compared to the gender threshold to determine if the Pokémon is male or female.
If the gender threshold is not a special value (0, 254, or 255), p gender is compared to the gender threshold. If p gender is greater than or equal to the gender threshold, the Pokémon is male, otherwise it is female. Because the comparison to determine gender is greater than or equal, Pokémon are not actually perfectly distributed between male and female according to the ideal ratios.
From Generation VI onward, the gender threshold is compared to a random number between 1 and 252 (inclusive) instead of p gender (which is between 0 and 255); this causes Pokémon with a "1:1" gender ratio to actually be distributed according to the ideal ratio.
If a species has a gender threshold of 255, it is genderless species (such as Magnemite), so is always genderless. If a species has a gender threshold of 254, it is a female-only species (such as Nidoran♀), so is always female. If a species has a gender threshold of 0, it is a male-only species (such as Nidoran♂), so is always male.
Gender threshold Nominal ratio
(♂:♀) Frequency (Gen 3-5) Frequency (Gen 6-7) Binary Decimal Male Female Male Female 11111111 255 Genderless Genderless 11111110 254 Female 0.00% 100.00% 0.0% 100.00% 11100001 225 1:7 (No species) 11.11% 88.89% 10111111 191 1:3 25.39% 74.61% 24.60% 75.40% 01111111 127 1:1 50.39% 49.61% 50.00% 50.00% 00111111 63 3:1 75.39% 24.61% 75.40% 24.60% 00011111 31 7:1 87.89% 12.11% 88.10% 11.90% 00000000 0 Male 100.00% 0.00% 100.00% 0.00%
Ability
Generation III-IV origin: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
Generation V origin: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
In Generations III and IV, if a Pokémon's species has more than one Ability, its Ability is determined by the lowest bit (highlighted in red above) of its personality value; i.e., whether p is even or odd. If p is even (the lowest bit is 0), the Pokémon has its first Ability. If p is odd (the lowest bit is 1), it has the second.
In Generation V, a Pokémon's Ability is determined differently depending on whether it originated in Generation V or an earlier generation. Pokémon from earlier generations will still have their Ability determined by the lowest bit in p. Pokémon originating in Generation V, however, use the lowest bit of the upper half of p to determine their Ability. Just as with Generation III and IV Pokémon, a 0 still indicates a Pokémon's first Ability, while 1 indicates its second. This can be derived by calculating p / 65536 % 2 (rounded down).
If a Pokémon is transferred to a later generation where its species' Abilities have changed, it will retain the Ability it had in the earlier generation so long as it does not evolve, since the games store a Pokémon's current Ability in a value separate from its personality value. However, in Generations IV and V, when a Pokémon evolves, its personality value is rechecked and the Pokémon's Ability may change. If a Pokémon that would change Abilities on evolution is transferred to Pokémon Bank, it will be locked into its current Ability slot upon transfer through Poké Transporter.
As an example, in Generation III, Porygon and Porygon2 only had the Ability Trace, but in Generation IV, they gained Download as a second Ability. If a Porygon from Generation III is brought to a Generation IV game, it will have Trace no matter what its personality value; however, if it evolves into Porygon2, it will only keep Trace if p is even.
A separate bit governs whether a Pokémon has their normal Abilities or Hidden Abilities in Generation V. If a Pokémon has its Hidden Ability, its personality value is always set to be even (denoting a first Ability).
Nature
In Generations III and IV a Pokémon's Nature is determined by p % 25. From Generation V onward, Nature is determined by a separate byte, unrelated to the personality value.
The result of p % 25 corresponds to the following Natures:
p % 25 Nature 0 Hardy 1 Lonely 2 Brave 3 Adamant 4 Naughty 5 Bold 6 Docile 7 Relaxed 8 Impish 9 Lax 10 Timid 11 Hasty 12 Serious 13 Jolly 14 Naive 15 Modest 16 Mild 17 Quiet 18 Bashful 19 Rash 20 Calm 21 Gentle 22 Sassy 23 Careful 24 Quirky
Shininess
00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
From Generation III onward, whether a Pokémon is Shiny depends on its original Trainer's Trainer ID number and secret ID number and on the Pokémon's personality value. The high half of p (highlighted in red above) is referred to as p 1 below, while the low half (highlighted in blue) is referred to as p 2. Mathematically, p 1 can be derived by calculating p / 65536 and rounding down the result, while p 2 can be derived by calculating p % 65536.
S = ID Trainer ⊕ ID Secret ⊕ p 1 ⊕ p 2
A bitwise exclusive or operation (or "⊕") on inputs a and b, written as a ⊕ b = c, outputs c such that, if a i (bit i of a) and b i are different, then c i is 1; otherwise it is 0. For example, 1100 2 ⊕ 1010 2 = 0110 2. When exclusive or is applied to multiple inputs, as in the calculation for Shininess above, it may be more easily understood as, "If an odd number of bits (at position i) are 1, output 1". This operation is commutative.
From Generation III to V, if S < 8, the Pokémon is Shiny. From Generation VI onward, the Pokémon is Shiny if S < 16. This is an 8 or 16 in 65536 chance of a Pokémon being Shiny.
Example
As an example, given a Trainer whose Trainer ID is 24294 and whose Secret ID is 38834...
ID Trainer = 24294 10 = 0101111011100110 2 ID Secret = 38834 10 = 1001011110110010 2
If the Trainer encounters a Pokémon whose personality value is 2814471828...
p = 2814471828 10 = 1010011111000001 0110111010010100 2 p 1 = 1010011111000001 2 p 2 = 0110111010010100 2
Then S is equal to...
S = 0101111011100110 2 ⊕ 1001011110110010 2 ⊕ 1010011111000001 2 ⊕ 0110111010010100 2 S = 0000000000000001 2 = 1 10
Since S is less than 8, this Pokémon is Shiny.
Characteristic
From Generation IV onward, Pokémon have a Characteristic which indicates their highest IV. In Generation IV and V, in the case of a tie, the personality value is used to determine which stat wins the tie; from Generation VI onward, the encryption constant is used in the case of a tie.
The tie-breaker starts at the stat with the index p % 6 and increments the index (returning to 0 after reaching 5) if it is not one of the stats that is tied for highest. The first stat checked that is tied for highest wins the tie and will determine the Characteristic.
p % 6 Stat 0 HP 1 Attack 2 Defense 3 Speed 4 Special Attack 5 Special Defense
Spinda's spots
00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
Spinda has four spots: two on its face, and one on each of its ears. From Generation III to V, this is determined by its personality value; from Generation VI onward, this is determined by its encryption constant.
Each byte in the personality value represents the coordinates of one of these spots. The x-coordinate is the lower four bits of the byte and the y-coordinate is the higher four bits of the byte. These coordinates determine the position of the top-left corner of the corresponding spot.
While this would appear to mean that Spinda's spots have as many possible variations as there are personality values (4,294,967,296), some coordinates will place a spot off of Spinda's body or such that one wholly overlaps another. Therefore, in practice, the number of observed variations is fewer.
Unown's letter
00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
p letter = 00000000
In Generation III, Unown's letter is determined by the composite value of the least significant 2 bits of each byte in p. With A representing 0 and each letter thereafter representing the following number value (with? as 26 and! as 27), Unown's letter can be determined by:
α = p letter % 28
In Generation II, this is determined using individual values. In Generations IV and V, Unown's letter is determined by a separate byte, unrelated to the personality value.
Wurmple's evolution
00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
Wurmple's evolution is determined by the upper half of its personality value (highlighted in red above), referred to here as p w. (Mathematically, this is equivalent to p / 65536, rounded down.) From Generation VI onward, Wurmple's evolution is now determined by the encryption constant, with the same formula.
If p w % 10 is less than or equal to 4, Wurmple will evolve into Silcoon; if it is greater than 4, Wurmple will evolve into Cascoon.
Size
00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
In Generations III and IV, there are occasionally characters who want to see large Pokémon. The calculation to determine the size of one of these Pokémon depends on its individual values and its personality value. Like the Shininess calculation, this calculation also uses exclusive or (⊕).
The lowest two bytes of p are used in the calculation: p 1 (highlighted in blue above) is mathematically equivalent to p % 256, while p 2 (highlighted in red) is equivalent to (p / 256) % 256 (rounded down). The IV values are also not used in whole; only the four least significant bits of each are used: mathematically, <stat>' = IV <stat> % 16.
The first step in the calculation is as follows:
s = ( ( (Atk' ⊕ Def') * HP' ) ⊕ p 1 ) * 256 + ( ( (SpAtk' ⊕ SpDef') * Spd' ) ⊕ p 2 )
For the next step, h is the species' height in tenths of a meter. and the values of x, y, and z depend on the value of s as shown in the following table.
s (max): 9 109 309 709 2709 7709 17709 32709 47709 57709 62709 64709 65209 65409 65535 x 290 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000 1100 1200 1300 1400 1500 1700 y 1 1 2 4 20 50 100 150 150 100 50 20 5 2 1 z 0 10 110 310 710 2710 7710 17710 32710 47710 57710 62710 64710 65210 65510
The final part of the calculation gives the Pokémon's size in millimeters. The final value of Size is also rounded down.
Size = Rounddown( (s-z) / y + x ) * h / 10
If the game converts this number to inches, the final result will be rounded down to the nearest tenth of an inch.
The characters searching for large Pokémon can be found at the following locations:
Performance changes
The day-to-day performance of a Pokémon in the Pokéathlon depends on its personality value and the day of the month. It also depends on Nature, which is also calculated based on the personality value. The five least significant decimal digits of p will here be referred to as p 0 to p 4, in order from the least significant bit to the most significant, and they govern (in order) the attributes Power, Stamina, Skill, Jump, and Speed.
The change in performance in a particular attribute is calculated as the sum of the following factors:
Day of the month modifier : ( ( ( day + attribute + 3) × ( day - attribute + 7) + p attribute ) % 10 ) × 2 - 9, where: Day is the day of the month. Attribute is 0 for Power, 1 for Stamina, 2 for Skill, 3 for Jump, and 4 for Speed. p attribute is the digit of p governing the current attribute.
:, where:
Note that this modifier's values range from -9 to +9, and it only takes on odd values. This also means that the day of the month modifier cycles every 10 days, excepting for Power and Speed where the modifiers for Day 1 are different from those for Days 11, 21, and 31. Since Nature is determined by the last two digits of the personality value, the Nature of a Pokémon will reveal constrains on possible values of this modifier for Power (and, to a lesser extent, Stamina).
Nature modifier: the Pokémon's Nature may raise or lower its performance in an attribute. Non-neutral Natures will add or subtract 35 points from an attribute, if the Nature positively or negatively influences the stat that corresponds to the current attribute. Neutral natures will add or subtract 10 points from an attribute depending on the Nature.
Attribute Neutral +10 Neutral -10 Non-neutral stat (+/- 35) Power Hardy Bashful Attack Stamina Docile Quirky Defense Skill Quirky Serious Sp. Def Jump Bashful Docile Sp. Atk Speed Serious Hardy Speed
Aprijuice modifier : the last Aprijuice the Pokémon drank affects the Pokémon's performance, depending on the strengths of the flavors in the Aprijuice. Strongest flavor: add flavor * 1.5 (rounded down) plus 10 to the corresponding attribute. Second strongest flavor: add flavor * 1.5 (rounded down) to the corresponding attribute. Weakest flavor: subtract X times the sum of the two strongest flavors (rounded down) from the corresponding attribute, depending on the Aprijuice's mildness... 0 - 199: X = 1 - 0.1 * Rounddown( mildness / 25 ) 200-254: X = 0.2 255: X = 0.1
: the last Aprijuice the Pokémon drank affects the Pokémon's performance, depending on the strengths of the flavors in the Aprijuice.
The Aprijuice flavors correspond to the performance attributes as follows:
Flavor Attribute Spicy Power Sour Stamina Dry Skill Bitter Jump Sweet Speed
The sum of these modifiers is then translated into a difference in stars as follows:
Stars -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 Score...-120 -119...-80 -79...-40 -39...-15 -14...14 15...39 40...79 80...119 120...
Note that performance changes may not drop below the Pokémon's minimum performance rating, nor may it exceed the Pokémon's maximum performance rating. Thus, for example, a Cradily may never have its Speed or Jump rating improved or degraded as those attributes are fixed (as such, for example, it is advisable to give it dry Aprijuices for which sweetness or bitterness is its weakest flavor).
Other uses
A Pokémon's personality value may also used for things unrelated to the Pokémon itself.
00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
In Pokémon Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald, Mirage Island will appear on Route 130 if the lower half of the personality value of a Pokémon in the player's party matches a random number generated at the start of each day by the game. A man in Pacifidlog Town can also tell the player whether he sees the island "today", i.e., whether one of the Pokémon in the player's party matches Mirage Island's number.Entourage didn't exactly jump the shark. It just slowly sank from a slightly-better-than-mediocre show to an unfunny, repetitive, saccharine, predictable piece of shit. In fact, it happened so slowly that most of us forgot to stop watching it. But I guess we’re all a little OCD, and it's not like there’s ever anything that cool to do on a Sunday night. That said, Entourage will soon be entering it's sixth season. By the time it starts airing, we'll be well into the Obama administration, and change will be in the air. Here's how to turn Entourage from an offensively irrelevant waste of time into an old-fashioned guilty pleasure: 1) Ari Screentime = 1/3 of the Show. Too much Ari isn't funny. Not enough Ari? Well, the rest of the show is even worse. 2) Ari = Asshole. Ari isn't Vince's friend. Vince is shallow and Ari is a scumbag. People like that don't have real friends. They just get drunk and leech off of each other. We don’t need to see how good a dad Ari is, or how loving of a husband he is, or any of that "should I or shouldn't I become head of the studio" bullshit. Just make with the racist/gay jokes and move on. 3) Fire or promote Lloyd. We get it. He’s gay. He’s chinese. If I have to hear one more motivational speech that Lloyd gives Ari I’m gonna firebomb HBO headquarters. I don’t care if David Simon’s taking a meeting there or what, I’m fucking crazy.
4) More movie shit. Is it so wrong to actually show a movie getting made? It does happen from time to time in this city. (We got a little bit with that gay fireman movie, and it was relatively amusing. ) I’m sure some focus group somewhere said that movie making doesn’t play well in the sticks, but let’s get real: the fly-over states don’t get HBO, and if they did, they wouldn’t watch Entourage because it sucks. 5) The following lines should never be spoken again: "Did you ever think we’d make it this far," "Who’d have thought this would happen to us?", and "Not bad for a couple of guys from Queens." Speaking of Queens, never do another episode there. The season finale was without a doubt the worst episode ever, it was like watching snot drip out of an old man’s nose. And could you not end every single episode with the boys toasting to something? It’s getting a little depressing. Collectively, I think society should give it the first three episodes of next season and if it hasn’t shaped up by then, Mark Wahlberg can go fuck himself.PiBoSo has released a new beta version of his World Racing Series simulation that comes with major new features.
PiBoSo has released a new beta version of his World Racing Series simulation that comes with major new features.
Beta 6 boasts an impressive list of changes, including support for the Oculus Rift DK2, car modding support as well as dynamic terrain deformation.
The latter feature can be seen in action in the video below!
Changelog
fix: suspensions geometry
fix: FR2000 and FR3000 differential
fix: improved force feedback
fix: race length different for each category
fix: reference lap time
fix: race classification
fix: categories setup
fix: server location setup
fix: data mismatch info
fix: URL spaces
fix: free-roam camera start position
fix: dynamic track surface optimizations
fix: track animations
fix: lighting
new: MacPherson suspension geometry
new: car modding support
new: dynamic terrain deformation
new: wet terrain
new: replay laps list
new: analog speed gauge support
new: helmet cameras support
new: ideal lap time
new: laps race length option
new: server info in browser
new: clients list in web server browser
new: live timing track length
new: “photo” page
new: gearbox graph
new: improved 2D pitboard
new: plugins wheel material
new: oculus rift dk2 support
A demo version is available for everyone to try, the full version of World Racing Series can be purchased for 20 Euro. Buyers also receive a free license for GP Bikes, PiBoSo’s other project.
For more info, check out the World Racing Series website.For a long time, the Czech Republic stood out as an exceptionally stable democracy among the post-communist European states. Of course there were the occasional embarrassments with the two presidents who succeeded the democratic revolutionary Václav Havel: first the notorious climate-change-denying, pen-stealing, corruption-pardoning Václav Klaus, and then the even more despicable Miloš Zeman, who is almost cartoon-like in his vile manners. But presidents have no significant power in the Czech Republic and, viewed from outside, Czech parliamentary politics looked stable, solidly pro-European and firmly democratic. Until now.
Czechs tipped to join populist surge in Europe by electing billionaire Read more
The legislative elections that begin today will almost certainly leave Andrej Babiš’ political movement ANO as the strongest party in parliament’s lower chamber. Babiš, the second-richest person in the country, owns the huge agro-corporation Agrofert, which essentially controls all the key features of Czech agriculture, as well as vast parts of the republic’s chemical industry. He is also one of its largest and most influential publishers.
Using his multiple powers, he has managed to position himself as the principal
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actorily refute the claims of civil rights activists that the bans are fundamentally Islamophobic.
The niceties of laïcité
The Cannes decree explicitly invokes secular values. It prohibits anyone “not dressed in a fashion respectful of laïcité” from accessing public beaches. However, the French state has only banned “ostentatious” religious symbols in schools and for government employees as part of laïcité (the strict separation between the state and religious society). And in public spaces, laïcité claims to respect religious plurality. Indeed, the Laïcité Commission has tweeted that the ban, therefore, “cannot be based upon the principle of laïcité”.
While veils covering the entire face such as the burqa or niqab are illegal, this is not to protect laïcité; it is a security matter. The legal justification is that these clothes make it impossible to identify the person underneath – which is not the case for the burkini.
2. @davidlisnard prétexte la laïcité et le trouble possible à l'ordre public. Qqn pour lui expliquer la définition? @ObservLaicite #Cannes — Feiza Ben Mohamed (@FeizaK) August 11, 2016
By falling back on laïcité to police Muslim women in this way, the Cannes authorities are fuelling the argument that “fundamentalist secularism” has become a means of excluding Muslims from French society.
Colonial attitudes
Others, such as Laurence Rossignol, the minister for women’s rights, hold that the burkini represents a “profoundly archaic view of a woman’s place in society”, disregarding Muslim women who claim to wear their burkini voluntarily.
This typifies an enduring colonial attitude among many non-Muslim French politicians, who feel entitled to dictate to Muslim women what is in their best interests. Rossignol has in the past compared women who wear headscarves through choice to American “negroes” who supported slavery.
Far from supporting women’s rights, banning the burkini will only leave the women who wear it feeling persecuted. Even those with no choice in the matter are not helped by the ban. This legal measure does nothing to challenge patriarchal authority over female bodies in the home. Instead, it further restricts the lives of veiled women by replacing it with state authority in public.
Open Islamophobia
Supporters of the ban have also claimed that, with racial tensions high after recent terrorist attacks, it is provocative to wear this form of Muslim clothing. Such an argument was made by Pierre-Ange Vivoni, mayor of Sisco in Corsica, when he banned the burkini in his commune. Early reports suggested a violent clash between local residents and non-locals of Moroccan origin was triggered when strangers photographed a burkini-wearing woman in the latter group, which angered her male companions. Vivoni claimed that banning the costume protected the security of local people, including those of North African descent.
Those reports have transpired to be false: none of the women in question were even wearing a burkini at the time of the incident. Nonetheless, the ban has stood in Sisco and elsewhere.
To be “provoked” by the burkini is to be provoked by the visibility of Muslims. Banning it on this basis punishes Muslim women for other people’s prejudice. It also disregards the burkini’s potential to promote social cohesion by giving veiled women access to the same spaces as their non-Muslim compatriots.
Appeals to public order have, occasionally, been openly Islamophobic. Thierry Migoule, head of municipal services in Cannes, claimed that the burkini “refers to an allegiance to terrorist movements”, conveniently ignoring the Muslim victims of recent attacks. Barely a month after Muslims paying their respects to friends and family killed in Nice were racially abused, such comments are both distasteful and irresponsible.
Increased divisions
Feiza Ben Mohammed, spokesperson for the Federation of Southern Muslims, fears that stigmatising Muslims in this way will play into the hands of IS recruiters. That fear seems well-founded: researchers cite a sense of exclusion as a factor behind the radicalisation of a minority of French Muslims. Measures like this can only exacerbate that problem. Indeed, provoking repressive measures against European Muslims to cultivate such a sentiment is part of the IS strategy.
Meanwhile, the day after the incident in Sisco, riot police were needed in nearby Bastia to prevent a 200-strong crowd chanting “this is our home” from entering a neighbourhood with many residents of North African descent. Given the recent warning from France’s head of internal security of the risk of a confrontation between “the extreme right and the Muslim world”, such scenes are equally concerning.
Now more than ever, France needs unity. Yet more legislation against veiled women can only further divide an already divided nation.
Fraser McQueen, PhD Candidate, University of Stirling
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.Massive Research Report On 'Piracy' In Emerging Economies Released; Debunks Entire Foundation Of US Foreign IP Policy
from the nicely-done dept
For those who must have it for free anyway, you probably know where to look.
Invariably, industry groups invoke similar arguments on behalf of stronger enforcement: lower piracy will lead to greater investment in legal markets, and greater investment will lead to economic growth, jobs, innovation, and expanded access. This is the logic that has made intellectual property a central subject of trade negotiations since the 1980s. But while we see this mechanism operating in some contexts in emerging markets, we think that other forces play a far larger role.
The factor common to successful low-cost models, our work suggests, is neither strong enforcement against pirates nor the creative use of digital distribution, but rather the presence of firms that actively compete on price and services for local customers. Such competition is endemic in some media sectors in the United States and Europe, where digital distribution is reshaping media access around lower price points. It is widespread in India, where large domestic film and music industries dominate the national market, set prices to attract mass audiences, and in some cases compete directly with pirate distribution. And it is a small but persistent factor in the business software sector, where open-source software alternatives (and increasingly, Google and other free online services) limit the market power of commercial vendors.
The centrality of pricing problems to this dynamic is obvious, yet strikingly absent from policy discussions. When it comes to piracy, the boundaries of domestic and international policy conversation are exceedingly narrow. The structure of the licit media economy is almost never discussed. Instead, policy conversations focus on enforcement--on strengthening police powers, streamlining judicial procedures, increasing criminal penalties, and extending surveillance and punitive measures to the Internet. Although new thinking is visible in many corners of the media sector, as companies adapt to the realities of the digital media environment, it is hard to see much impact of these developments on IP policy--and most particularly on US trade policy, which has been the main channel for the international dialogue on enforcement.
In our view, this narrowness is increasingly counterproductive for all parties, from developing-country governments, to consumers, to the copyright interests that drive the global enforcement debate. The failure to ask broader questions about the structural determinants of piracy and the larger purposes of enforcement imposes intellectual, policy, and ultimately social costs. These are particularly high, we would argue, in the context of ambitious new proposals for national and international enforcement--notably ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement recently finalized by the United States, the European Commission, and a handful of other countries.
To be more concrete about these limitations, we have seen little evidence--and indeed few claims--that enforcement efforts to date have had any impact whatsoever on the overall supply of pirated goods. Our work suggests, rather, that piracy has grown dramatically by most measures in the past decade, driven by the exogenous factors described above--high media prices, low local incomes, technological diffusion, and fast-changing consumer and cultural practices.
But in extrapolating losses beyond the affected industries, these studies also introduce new problems. Fundamentally, they all misrepresent the relationship between piracy, national economies, and international trade. Consistently, none of them model the other side of the transaction--the consumer surplus--in describing overall economic impact. Two basic accounting problems have become emblematic of this approach.
First, domestic piracy may well impose losses on specific industrial sectors, but these are not losses to the larger national economy. Within a given country, the piracy of domestic goods is a transfer of income, not a loss. Money saved by consumers or businesses on CDs, DVDs, or software will not disappear but rather be spent on other things--housing, food, other entertainment, other business expenses, and so on. These expenditures, in turn, will generate tax revenue, new jobs, infrastructural investments, and the range of other goods that are typically cited in the loss column of industry analyses.
Our inquiries (mixing survey, focus group, and interview methods) found a remarkably consistent cluster of attitudes on piracy: (1) that it is often regarded with ambivalence by consumers, (2) that pragmatic issues of price and availability nearly always win out over moral considerations, and (3) that consumers know what they are buying. The classic scene of developing-world piracy--the kiosk or street vendor selling DVDs--produces very little misunderstanding on the part of consumers about the nature of the transaction. Consumers weigh tradeoffs between price and expectations of quality, but within a context of explicit black-market negotiation in which notions of fraud or deception�often borrowed from anti-counterfeiting discourse�generally don�t apply. The price gap between licit and pirated media provides a clear signal of the origins of goods.
Joe Karaganis, from the Social Science Research Council was kind enough to reach out to me last week and send me an advance copy of the (somewhat epic) report that SSRC just released this week, exploring "Media Piracy in Emerging Economies." It's a rather massive 440 pages of research into a variety of issues having to do with infringement, specifically focused on emerging markets. While it was nice of Karaganis to send it to me, I was adisappointed to find out that they're not releasing the report for free (for most). Instead, it's released under a "Consumer's Dilemma" license, where they want people in developed countries to pay $8 for the report, but will offer it for free to those in less developed countries (though, it looks like Canadians can get it for free). Though, to their credit, at the end of the license info, they do note:Unfortunately, that's right under the warning that "non-compliance" with the license in the US could subject you to five years in prison and $250,000 in fines. That's an unfortunate exaggeration, as most non-compliance wouldn't result in criminal copyright infringement. For a report on the subject that seems so insightful in many points, it's disappointing that this report chose to reinforce this type of thinking.: Clearly, I missed that this is pure satire by the report's authors. Such is life when I'm so used to seeing such things that are real.That said, much in the reportextremely forward-looking and thinking. It goes into great detail how fascinating and innovative new business models are appearing around the globe where "piracy" is rampant, and suggests that we really need to rethink the idea of "piracy" in those markets. It highlights how almost all of the policy discussions in the west concerning infringement focuses on "enforcement," but that may be the wrong way to go about it. The research, instead, points out that a better focus may be on setting up the structures for successful business models to emerge -- which include local firms who can compete on price:It also points out that focusing just on enforcement is a key mistake by western nations, when they might be much better served in enabling these markets to emerge to "compete" with infringement:That last paragraph is a key point that our current policy makers seem to miss entirely. On top of that, the report notes that nowhere in the discussions about enforcement is any discussion found of connecting enforcement to figuring out "how to foster rich, accessible, legal cultural markets in developing countries." Of course, that's because most policy makersabout that.The report kicks off with a piece by Karaganis on the importance of "rethinking piracy." It notes that the industry claims on "piracy" are not exactly credible or trustworthy -- and not very productive towards coming up with solutions, since all they've done is "undermined confidence in the industry research enterprise." In fact, it goes through a rather complete debunking of the overall industry claims, suggesting that they're somewhat meaningless -- and then points out that all of these reports that count "ripple effects" seem to ignore the ripple effects in the other direction: the kind that benefit consumers, especially in developed nations:The report is chock full of other insightful points, such as noting that, "Predictably, raids scale more easily than due process." Later it goes through the various "education campaigns" that industry and governments have invested in, noting that they appear to have done "very little" to actually slow down the rate of piracy:On top of that, the report responds to the regular claims by the IFPI and others that piracy is linked to organized crime and terrorism, by noting that they could findof any such connection. Similarly, it mocks policy makers who conflate counterfeiting with media piracy.And that's all just in the first chapter! From there it first looks at the ongoing effort -- mainly driven by the US and the USTR -- to "harmonize" enforcement efforts, followed by a country-by-country look at the state of "piracy" in various developing nations, highlighting many of these issues in a more localized fashion. The whole report is really fascinating, and an incredibly useful read for policy makers who are so focused on things like ACTA, enforcement and industry claims of "losses." It really is a huge contribution to the research on these topics -- and something that I hope gets delivered to policy makers. I'd send copies to various politicians myself... if it weren't for that license that tells me I could face five years in jail for doing so. So, as a final note, I'll just suggest that Karaganis and the others behind this really excellent research report reconsider their license choice on the document (see update above), and instead encourage sharing of the document -- and maybe take a page from what they're seeing themselves in setting up creative new business models to cover any costs.
Filed Under: emerging countries, enforcement, markets, piracy, research, studiesHalf the conference has a quarterback battle as we get into the thick of fall camp.
That means that half the conference is technically without a proven leader under center, which isn’t always a bad thing. First-year starters (C.J. Beathard) have done big things before. What’s to say a guy from this pack can’t emerge?
Here are the seven B1G quarterbacks who will win their respective battles and start on opening day:
Indiana — Richard Lagow vs. Zander Diamont vs. Danny Cameron
Prediction — Lagow
No, I didn’t pick Lagow because he “just has the starting quarterback look.” Yes, he’s 6-6, 240 pounds, but Kevin Wilson would start Doug Flutie if he felt he could execute his offense. And for the record, Lagow actually doesn’t have “the starting quarterback look” because he wears No. 21. So there.
But Lagow gives IU the freedom to do exactly what Nate Sudfeld did. That is, he can make all the tough throws and rally IU back if it finds itself in a shootout. Even if the Hoosier defense does improve, IU can’t have a run-first quarterback if it finds itself two touchdowns. Sorry, Zander.
I think that if Cameron was the guy then he would’ve been higher than third on last year’s depth chart. You can’t judge him just on his fill-in work at Penn State, but he certainly didn’t boost his “quarterback-of-the-future” stock that day.
This battle will continue deep into fall camp. I actually think Diamont, who had what Wilson said was his best offseason so far, earns some spot snaps this year.
But as for the starting job, it’s Lagow’s to lose.
Maryland — Perry Hills vs. Caleb Rowe
Prediction — Hills
Hopefully the 2015 game film has been buried, burned or destroyed some way. Forget the interception-fest that occurred last year and let’s shift our focus to two fifth-year seniors who have clean slates.
Yeah, it’s technically a five-man competition. But D.J. Durkin said Hills and Rowe have “a little leg up” on the competition.
Hills will be the guy because of his running ability. Walt Bell’s fast-paced system suits his game better than Rowe’s, at least for the time being. Hills had success running last year and with his ability to make option reads, he’ll be the better complement to Maryland’s run-heavy offense. The Terps will likely run a lot of bubble screens and quick outs to create some high-percentage throws.
Hopefully for Maryland’s sake, Hills can stick as the starter. And maybe throw a few less interceptions.
Michigan — John O’Korn vs. Wilton Speight
Prediction — Speight
There was an assumption by some that Jake Rudock’s replacement would be O’Korn. After all, he was also a transfer (they both went to the same high school, too) who got the short end of the stick at a major program. ESPN actually tabbed him as the “top impact transfer for 2016.”
But call me crazy, I think Speight is Jim Harbaugh’s guy.
I do believe it was and still is an open competition between the two. Harbaugh said that the spring slate is wiped clean, but Speight stood out in the spring game. Even back in Bradenton, Speight showed that he elevated his play.
Speight won win the job because of his late heroics at Minnesota last year, but that has to be worth something. He filled in admirably for Rudock then, and assuming the spring wasn’t a mirage, he’ll fill in admirably for Rudock in 2016.
Michigan State — Tyler O’Connor vs. Damion Terry
Prediction — O’Connor
Don’t crucify me for comparing Michigan State to Michigan, Spartan fans. But I see this battle playing out like the one that unfolded in Ann Arbor last year.
O’Connor has already separated himself from Terry, much like Jake Rudock did with Shane Morris last year. To his team, Mark Dantonio will anoint O’Connor the starter. To the media, Dantonio will maintain that it’s a competition all the way through camp. O’Connor, like Rudock, will be the assumed Day 1 starter, but Dantonio will never come out and say it.
I actually expect to see plenty of snaps from Terry in the opener against Furman, and not just in garbage time. Dantonio knows that if he mixes in a couple packages for Terry, Notre Dame will have to prepare for it. MSU has a rare Week 2 bye game, which is why Dantonio has maintained that he might not declare a winner in the battle until into September.
But when that time comes, O’Connor will still be Dantonio’s “headline guy.”
Penn State — Trace McSorley vs. Tommy Stevens
Prediction — McSorley
Again, this is another situation where every guy in the locker room knows who the starter is, but the coach refuses to announce it publicly. James Franklin can say all he wants that it’s still a competition. The job is McSorley’s, no matter when in camp Franklin announces it.
McSorley passed all the necessary tests so far. He nearly led Penn State to a comeback win against Georgia in the TaxSlayer Bowl, he was nearly perfect in the spring game and all reports are that teammates trust him as a leader. He’s also an ideal fit in Joe Moorhead’s offense, which requires a mobile quarterback who can make plays out of the pocket.
No, Stevens didn’t get to work with the No. 1 offense during the spring game, but there’s a reason for that. McSorley has the upside that Penn State’s been looking for, and come September, he’ll be one of the league’s new stars.
Rutgers — Chris Laviano vs. Zach Allen
Prediction — Laviano
If you had asked me a month ago, I would’ve picked Allen. Anytime a new quarterback is brought in after the spring, I question how much the coach believes in the expected starter.
But Chris Ash said that he’s seen a different Laviano as of late, and not just because he put on 15 pounds of muscle.
“What I saw in the summer I didn’t necessarily see in the spring. I thought that he did a better job of providing leadership,” Ash said to the Asbury Park Press. “I thought he did a better job of earning the trust of others, with the way he conducted himself.
“But he has to do it on the practice field. Doing it in the weight room, doing it in conditioning is one thing. Doing it with the helmet on when you’re under center taking snaps and doing it consistently to the level where guys trust you and believe in you, that’s a whole different thing.’’
That’s more than coach-speak. That sounds like a guy who took Allen’s recruitment personally and did something about it.
Yes, Allen came from TCU but don’t forget that he’s still transitioning back into the quarterback position. And yes, I know it got ugly with Laviano far too often last year, but this is a new era. I think Drew Mehringer goes with the more-experienced Laviano, at least to start 2016.
Wisconsin — Alex Hornibrook vs. Bart Houston
Prediction — Houston
I went back and forth on this one, as I’m sure Paul Chryst has done many times. I was high on Hornibrook after watching him in the spring game, and frankly, I still am. I think he’ll be the guy eventually, and one day, he’ll have a chance to be the star of the offense.
But for 2016, Wisconsin can’t afford to have a redshirt freshman starter at quarterback. Not with that schedule. Hornibrook, while talented, is still prone to misreads and poorly-timed throws. Wisconsin needs a veteran like Houston to navigate through that early-season gauntlet. The Badgers face five teams ranked in the top 15 of the Coaches Poll in their first seven games.
Houston might not have the arm strength that Hornibrook does, but he’s the more likely choice. Wisconsin figures to rely on Corey Clement and the running game much more, which bodes well for whoever gets the job.
I just think that because of their schedule, Houston will make more sense.An article published this past weekend in the Opinion section of The New York Times poses the question, “Do millennial men want stay-at-home wives?” Apparently, data is showing that, increasingly, they do. But judging by her horrified and rather sanctimonious tone, it’s clear that the author, Stephanie Coontz, thinks they really shouldn’t.
The article cites two studies which both found that young men today are more likely to favor a family structure in which the man works and the woman stays home to take care of the children than they were twenty years ago.
Coontz refers to families where both parents work as “egalitarian.” And she asks, “Are we facing a stall or even a turnaround in the movement toward gender equality?” The fact that I really need my computer to write this reaction (and that it’s got a really pretty pink cover that makes it delightful to look at) is really the only thing that kept me from throwing it across the room after reading this article. Because, honestly, what a big, fat load of you know what!
Where to begin? Okay. The idea that a family in which the husband works hard all day at an office and the wife works hard all day in the home isn’t “egalitarian” really irks me. Equal doesn’t mean identical. A pound of bricks is equal to a pound of feathers, but they’re still two very different things.
Look at it this way: there are certain things that, objectively, must be done in order to run a successful family. Money must be made, children must be cared for, food must be acquired, housework must be done, etc. But there are an infinite number of ways to divide these tasks such that the amount of work each partner is doing is equal, without it being the same. The work that I do in my home every day is equal to the work that my husband does at his office. His work makes mine possible, and my work makes his possible, in that it allows him to focus on his career in a way he couldn’t if he was also responsible for the household.
Coontz wants us to believe that this data reveals that men are sexist. That they don’t believe that women should be allowed to have careers. Which is why she’s weeping and wailing about gender equality. But where, in any of these studies, does it say that?
Is being a stay-at-home mom not a respectable and valuable career path? Should women who want to stay home and who believe in the power and benefit of one parent in the home not be allowed to do it? Where’s the equality in that? The studies only say that men are increasingly likely to favor a more traditional family model. And, interestingly, (though it’s buried a bit in the article since it doesn’t support the author’s outrage), these studies also found that women are showing an increased inclination toward this type of family structure as well, though at a lower rate.
Can women who work be good mothers? Of course they can! Can they be good wives? Definitely. But should I give up my belief that staying home with my son is the best choice for my family just so my husband and I can be “equal"? My husband and I are equal. We’re just not the same. (Which is good since I definitely wouldn’t want to be married to myself.)
Listen, we ought to live in a world where (within the confines of physical ability) the doors that are open to men are open to women. But women don’t have to walk through those doors. And men don’t have to choose as their partners women who want to walk through them.
The choice to be a stay-at-home mom is a philosophical one, made because you believe that this type of parental dynamic is best for your children and your marriage. You don’t have to think that. (Not to mention the fact that, for some families, this structure isn’t financially feasible.) But it is a parenting philosophy that many men and women hold. And it makes sense, when choosing a mate, to choose one who holds similar philosophical ideas about how to run a family.
Preferring a more traditional family structure doesn’t make a man a sexist. The studies Coontz cites don’t say that men who prefer this structure intend to marry the CEO of a Fortune 500 company and force her to be a stay-at-home mom. They simply state that an increased number of young men subscribe to this philosophy. Which means, presumably, that they will choose wives who subscribe to it too.
Coontz seems to want us to think that “gender equality” means that all women must choose to work outside the home, and that all men must favor mates who do so. But I don’t want to live that kind of life. And, apparently, neither do an increasing number of men and women across the country. If “equality” means that I can’t live the kind of life that brings me joy, then I don’t want to be equal. But I don’t think it means that at all. Do you?Federal prosecutors won an 18-count indictment against accused Benghazi attacker Ahmed Abu Khatalla on Tuesday, which charges him with leading the assault that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya and makes him eligible for the death penalty.
The indictment, handed up in federal district court in Washington, also puts the final nail in the administration’s initial claim that the 2012 attack was a reaction to a video that mocked Islam. Instead, the indictment details Mr. Khatalla’s orchestrated plans to attack the diplomatic compound, believing it to be a CIA outpost.
“On or before September 11, 2012, Khatalla informed others that there was an American facility in Benghazi posing as a diplomatic post, that he believed the facility was actually being used to collect intelligence, that he viewed U.S. intelligence actions in Benghazi as illegal and that he was, therefore, going to do something about this facility,” the indictment says.
While that information had been made public in other settings, it marks the first time the government has detailed it in open court documents.
“Ahmed Abu Khatallah’s role in the Benghazi attack is even clearer,” said George Venizelos, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s New York field office. “As the charges allege, he was the leader of an extremist militia group who carried out this brutal act of violence that took the lives of four honorable Americans.”
The new indictment supersedes the one-count indictment the government unveiled in June after Mr. Khatalla was captured and brought to the U.S. He is now charged with being part of the conspiracy and taking part in the actual attack that killed four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.
Mr. Khatalla pleaded not guilty to the earlier indictment. He will be arraigned on the new charges Oct. 20, the Justice Department said.
In the immediate aftermath of the attack, which began the night of Sept. 11, 2012, and carried over into the morning of Sept. 12, the Obama administration said the attack was spurred by an Internet video mocking Islam. Hours earlier, a protest outside the U.S. embassy in Cairo had focused on the video.
But the indictment says Mr. Khatalla’s goal was in fact to destroy what he believed to be a U.S.-run intelligence-gathering outpost on Libyan soil.
The document also specifically ties Mr. Khatalla to Ansar al-Sharia, the extremist group that quickly claimed responsibility for the attack, a claim the administration initially publicly rejected. The indictment says Mr. Khatalla led Ubaydah Bin Jarrah, an Islamist militia, which merged in 2011 with Ansar al-Sharia, making Mr. Khatalla a leader of that organization.
Though he was identified as a target of the investigation early on, and though he gave interviews to American reporters, Mr. Khatalla wasn’t seized by U.S. Special Forces until this June.
The U.S. House has empaneled a special investigative committee to look into the Benghazi attack.
The committee had no immediate comment on the indictment Tuesday night.
In an interview with The New York Times weeks after the attack, Mr. Khatalla acknowledged being at the scene of the attack, but said he had been there to break up a traffic jam. He told the paper’s reporter he left, then returned later to help rescue a Libyan guard trapped in the U.S. mission.
However, The Times report quoted several fighters who said, on condition of anonymity, that Mr. Khatalla orchestrated the attack.
The new indictment suggests the U.S. has detailed evidence against Mr. Khatalla, including placing him entering the compound at exactly 11:54 p.m. the night of the attack.
In a detailed time line, the indictment says Mr. Khatalla drove to the compound and commenced the assault at about 9:45 as part of a group of about 20 armed attackers.
They soon ignited buildings in the compound, including setting the fire that led to the deaths of Stevens and State Department employee Sean Patrick Smith.
The attackers then regrouped outside the compound and launched a new attack at 11:15, gaining entry at 11:45 and beginning to plunder maps, computers and secret documents that detailed the location of an annex, which has since been reported to have been staffed by CIA operatives.
Mr. Khatalla entered the compound himself at 11:54 to oversee the plundering, the indictment says.
Soon after, he and his fighters went to an Ansar al-Sharia camp with some of the stolen documents, and then fighters began attacking the annex, which is where two American security contractors, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, were killed.
Two other men, David Ubben and a man identified only as “Mark G.,” were wounded at the annex.
That may refer to Mark Geist, one of the security officers who has just penned a new book, along with other members of the security team, in which they say they were told to “stand down” but ignored that order and may have saved dozens of lives by doing so.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.A recent scan of the Google Play market found that Android apps contained thousands of secret authentication keys that could be maliciously used to access private cloud accounts on Amazon or compromise end-user profiles on Facebook, Twitter, and a half-dozen other services.
The finding is the result of PlayDrone, a system that uses a variety of hacking techniques to bypass security measures intended to prevent third parties from crawling Google Play. The brainchild of computer scientists at Columbia University, PlayDrone comprehensively indexed Play contents, downloaded more than 1.1 million apps, and decompiled more than 880,000 of them. It is believed to be the first large-scale measurement of the sprawling Google marketplace, which offers more than one million apps and has fostered 50 billion app downloads to date.
One of the most surprising observations PlayDrone made was that many apps contain secret authentication keys that can compromise accounts belonging to both developers and end users. Source code for the official AirBnB app, for example, included secret OAuth tokens for Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, and Yahoo. The credentials were supplied by the service providers and act as a skeleton key of sorts that allows an app to access private account data for each user. By plucking them out of the AirBnB app, an attacker could use it to read and possibly modify or add data for millions of users' profiles.
The Columbia University researchers, for instance, were able to access the e-mail and friends lists of AirBnB users by plugging the Facebook OAuth token into this URL. Fortunately, the AirBnB app didn't have permission to post to users' walls, so attackers wouldn't have been able to add or modify content. The researchers notified Facebook of their discovery, and in a matter of hours, AirBnB published an app update that no longer contained the secret tokens. The incident, however, underscores the risks posed by unsound practices of Android app developers.
"The risk due to exposure depends on the service provider, but significant user data can be exposed," Columbia University PhD candidate Nicolas Viennot wrote in an e-mail. "For example, Facebook allows user level requests without the access_token of the given user. Just the app credentials are needed, as we explain in our paper. This can be disabled in the application settings page, but it is enabled by default. AirBnB app credentials were exposed in their app and as a result, we were able to access AirBnB users' private information without the user level tokens, and AirBnB has a huge user population!"
Cloud-based botnets
PlayDrone also uncovered secret tokens used to access app developer accounts for Amazon Web Services (AWS) and other cloud services. Of the 308 unique AWS tokens found during a June 2013 scan, most were root-level credentials that provided virtually unfettered access to all services, including creating and shutting down Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances, browsing, or modifying stored data. To the surprise of the researchers, 288 tokens remained valid during a scan five months later.
"With 288 valid tokens, an attacker could potentially set up a botnet of AWS EC2 instances," the researchers wrote. "While AWS has a number of mechanisms to thwart such activities, usage patterns on AWS are elastic and inherently unpredictable, which may make it hard to detect stolen resources. Unless billing alerts are manually configured, billing statements will not reflect usage until the end of the billing cycle."
Amazon has long advised against the embedding of secret keys in Android apps. Amazon also provides resources such as the AWS Token Vending Machine and the AWS Web Identity Framework for Android apps to securely interact with AWS resources. Google, Facebook, and Twitter have similarly warned developers not to embed private keys in apps.
The researchers privately alerted Amazon to the discovery, and the service alerted affected customers. The researchers also privately informed Google officials, who said they planned to add checks for embedded keys and automated notices to developers as part of the Play application publication process.
The Columbia University researchers' academic paper released this week focused on apps found in Google Play during a single day in June 2013. Given the response from Amazon and other affected services, it's likely that most or all of that improperly embedded information has been removed. But it's also possible that additional secret keys have subsequently been put into apps that have been published or updated since the 2013 snapshot was taken.
PlayDrone uncovered other interesting facts about Google Play. For instance, a small percentage of free apps account for almost all downloads. The crawler also found that a quarter of Google Play contains "duplicative application content." Now that the research has become public knowledge, it will be worth watching to see if Google Play will include changes that prevent it from being crawled by PlayDrone or similar engines.The PGA Championship is not the first place you'd expect to find a passionate take about conference realignment and the expansion of the Big 12. But Saturday's round at Baltusrol has delivered us exactly that kind of take.
Japanese golfer Yuta Ikeda teed off in the 1:55 p.m. ET group on Saturday, alongside world No. 3 Jordan Spieth. It isn't uncommon for gallery members to shout words of encouragement when players are teeing off, especially on their first holes of the day. But one man in the crowd, rather than yelling, "get in the hole," or some such, opted for something else.
"UConn Big 12!" the man shouts, just as Ikeda's ball is flying off the tee box.
The fan who made his voice heard is named Mike Paonessa, and he just wanted to be heard.
"We've got to get UConn into the Big 12 and the Power 5," Paonessa told the Hartford Courant's Jeff Jacobs. "I'd never yelled anything like that before. Just the normal stuff when I go to Travelers every year, stuff like 'Way to go, Bubba!' I just wanted to try to maximize the exposure for UConn on national television."
The sound on TNT's broadcast is a bit lagged, but Paonessa did have the courtesy not to be load up Ikeda with his realignment views while the golfer was still in mid-swing. "I wouldn't yell during his swing," he assured Jacobs.
Fans
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, almost two-thirds of Irish organisations believe that a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic would negatively impact their business.
With just under a month to go until Brexit negotiations are predicted to officially start, Irish businesses are split as to whether the UK’s exit from the European Union will affect how they operate.
Just over half of the 385 organisations surveyed believe that Brexit as a whole will negatively impact their organisation. A further 19pc said it wouldn’t, while 26pc said they don’t know.
Online EditorsSo the electric Twizy is here and local Renault distributor, Wearnes Automotive, is eager to launch it - problem is, they could not…
Photos: Azfar Hashim
Meet the Twizy, Renault's answer to personal mobility for urban dwellers like you and I. It sounds like a brilliant idea: Firstly, it takes less space on the road and carparks (one parking lot can fit three Twizys). Secondly, it is environmentally-friendly with zero emissions (like the other offering, the Fluence Z.E). Thirdly, the Twizy only needs 3 1/2 hours for a full charge, with a range of 100 km (a typical Singaporean driver only drives 40 kilometres daily).
And on top of that, it has a maximum speed of 80 km/h; adequate for our roads that has a maximum speed limit of 70 km/h, and 90 km/h on all expressways anyway.
But here is the major problem: LTA does not know what to classify it as. After all, it works more like a motorcycle. Only issues are it has (a) four wheels and (b) a steering wheel. If LTA puts it into the motorcycle category, then it will probably (news from the grapevine) cost us only $20k - with COE. If it is thrown into Category A, the Twizy will then have a sticker price of $90k; and that will be deemed near impossible for our consumers as that price could get you a, well,'real car'.
The Twizy does not seem much, but if you were to look at it from a fresh perspective, it is an important product for Renault and Singapore. This small little thing will be the one to allow more young, hip drivers craving for a personal set of wheels the possibility of having their dream come true; the price makes sense, on top of the different subsidies coming it's way. And let's not forget fleet buyers too. This will also allow more players to penetrate our rather limited market.
The downside? Motorcyclists will be unhappy due to the shrinkage in COE availability, which will definitely push the already high certificate prices even higher.
We had a short run in the Renault Twizy and from initial impression, it (again) makes sense. Ok, so charging it will be a bit of a challenge, but if there are enough demands and lobbies from various groups, this will encourage the relevant authorities to make charging stations even more widely available. It gets up to speed rather well, is easy to manoeuvre despite missing any sort of power steering (Renault Sport Technologies developed the suspension, mind you), and best of all, looks quirky.
Excuse the lack of air-con (heard of portable mini fans?) and radio (iPod and earphones, anyone?) though. Safety wise, all-round disc brakes come standard, front airbag plus four-point harness seatbelt for front and three-point harness for rear passenger. In terms of practicality, two glove boxes (3.5-litre and 5-litre) is placed on the dashboard (12V power supply included), and a 55-litre storage compartment behind the passenger's seat.
Interested? You have to wait (patiently) though. In the mean time, the wait for LTA's response continues…Buy Photo CSU's Gian Clavell drives for a layup during a Nov. 24, 2015, game against Abilene Christian at Moby Arena. The senior guard's suspension was lifted Friday, and he's expected to play for the first time in nearly a year Saturday against Northern Colorado. (Photo: Austin Humphreys/The Coloradoan)Buy Photo
Gian Clavell has been cleared to resume playing for the CSU men’s basketball team.
Clavell, a 6-foot-3 senior guard from Puerto Rico, is expected to play for the Rams (7-2) for the first time this season Saturday when they face Northern Colorado in a 2 p.m. game at Moby Arena.
Clavell, 22, was suspended indefinitely by Colorado State University following his Nov. 9 arrest on a misdemeanor charge of false imprisonment with a domestic violence enhancement.
His next court appearance is scheduled for Monday, an appearance of counsel hearing before Larimer County Judge Kraig Ecton, a spokeswoman for the district attorney's office confirmed Friday morning.
"With the student conduct review completed by the Student Resolution Center, and Gian remaining enrolled in good standing as a student at Colorado State, the athletic department has made the decision to reinstate him to full eligibility for competition, effective immediately," read a statement released by the school Friday afternoon. "However, due to the ongoing legal portion of this matter, no further comments about the incident will be made."
RAMS BASKETBALL: What a difference a year has made for CSU
A report by CSU campus police alleged Clavell, listed in court documents by his full name, Gian Clavell-Lopez, took a backpack away from a former girlfriend during an argument in the Moby Arena parking lot. Because her cell phone and keys were in the backpack, his actions constituted false imprisonment.
Clavell was called in for questioning by CSU police after the incident was reported, arrested and transported to the Larimer County Jail, where he remained overnight. He was released on a personal recognizance bond after a brief court appearance the following day.
Booking photo of CSU basketball player Gian Louis Clavell-Lopez. (Photo: Larimer County Sheriff's Office)
Clavell had been arrested on the same charges for an incident involving the same victim July 16, 2015. Those charges were later dropped.
Clavell was cleared to begin practicing with the Rams again last weekend, coach Larry Eustachy said. Although he played in an exhibition game Nov. 8 against Regis, scoring 13 points and pulling down 12 rebounds, he hasn’t played in a game that counts for the Rams since Dec. 13, 2015, at Northern Colorado.
Clavell broke a bone in his hand after that game, and coupled with a shoulder injury that required surgery, was sidelined for the remainder of the 2015-16 season. He was averaging a team-leading 20.8 points and 6.9 rebounds per game through 10 contests when he suffered the injury.
The Mountain West granted Clavell a medical redshirt over the summer that allowed him to return this year and repeat his senior season.
Follow reporter Kelly Lyell at twitter.com/KellyLyell and facebook.com/KellyLyell.newsWASHINGTON (Reuters) - A key Republican lawmaker said on Wednesday he did not believe the Obama administration wiretapped Trump Tower during the 2016 election campaign, adding to pressure on FBI Director James Comey to provide evidence supporting or debunking Republican President Donald Trump’s claim.
“We don’t have any evidence that that took place,” House of Representatives Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes told a news conference. “I don’t think there was an actual tap of Trump Tower.”
Trump made the claim on Twitter on March 4 without providing evidence. Nunes’ congressional committee is one of at least four that have added the startling accusation to investigations of possible Russian meddling in the election campaign and Russian ties to Trump and his associates.
James Clapper, the director of national intelligence under Obama, has said he knew of no warrant to wiretap Trump Tower.
Nunes said if Trump’s tweets were taken literally, then “clearly the president was wrong.”
With his statements, Nunes, who served on Trump’s transition team, joined other lawmakers, including some of his fellow Republicans, who have been skeptical about the president’s claim, and frustrated with what they see as federal law enforcement’s failure to provide them with information.
The top Democrat on the House intelligence panel, Adam Schiff, said at the news conference with Nunes that Comey would be asked about wiretap evidence at a rare public hearing on Monday. “It deeply concerns me that the president would make such an accusation without basis,” Schiff said.
U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia conducted cyber attacks on Democrats in an effort to influence the 2016 U.S. election on Trump’s behalf. Russia has denied this.
At the same time, Trump has been dogged by allegations that his associates had ties to Russian officials. Trump fired his national security adviser, Michael Flynn, last month after he failed to disclose contacts with Russia’s ambassador before Trump took office on Jan. 20.
Trump seemed to back away from his accusation of wiretapping in a Fox News interview on Wednesday, saying “wiretap covers a lot of different things.”
Without providing details, the president added, “I think you’re going to find some very interesting items coming to the forefront over the next two weeks,” according to excerpts of the interview, which will air later on Wednesday.
Schiff and Nunes said they sent a letter asking Comey, Rogers and CIA Director Mike Pompeo to provide by Friday information on leaks of classified information, including names of any Americans that might have been gathered.
Schiff said he expected the Federal Bureau of Investigation to cooperate. The committee leaders said they were prepared to issue subpoenas if they did not.
In Richmond, Virginia, Attorney General Jeff Sessions told reporters that he never gave Trump any reason to believe he was wiretapped by the previous administration, according to a transcript provided by CBS News.
While White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters Trump “feels very comfortable” that information existed regarding surveillance conducted during 2016, a number of Trump’s fellow Republicans in Congress remained unconvinced.
Spicer told reporters traveling on Air Force One on Wednesday that Trump had not meant wiretaps specifically. “He was very clear that he used the word ‘wiretap’ generally, he put it in quotes to mean that it counts for surveillance and all types of activity of that sort,” Spicer said.
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said he had no reason to believe a judge ever issued a warrant, which would have reflected there was probable cause that the Trump campaign was colluding with the Russians.
If it is not true, he said, the FBI should confirm that.
Graham and Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on crime and terrorism, asked Comey two weeks ago to provide information on Russian activities and the wiretapping by Wednesday.
Graham said on Wednesday that the FBI had responded that it would provide an answer to him and Whitehouse at a future classified briefing.
House Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) and Ranking Member Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) speak with the media about the ongoing Russia investigation on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S. March 15, 2017. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein
“The bottom line is a lot of Americans are wondering what’s going on here,” Graham said at a subcommittee hearing, titled “The Modus Operandi and Toolbox of Russia and Other Autocracies for Undermining Democracies Throughout the World.”
Whitehouse said he would prefer an unclassified briefing.
Comey met on Wednesday with the Judiciary Committee chairman, Chuck Grassley, and its top Democrat, Dianne Feinstein. A law enforcement official said the meeting was an opportunity for the senators to ask Comey about subjects that concern them, expected to center on FBI investigations of Trump and associates’ Russia contacts, as well as the wiretap claim.The National Basketball Association is no different from the other major sports that dominate the US market. It is an all-year thing. The media and fan interest doesn’t stop when the games halt. We have speculation. We have the ongoing narratives.
The Cavaliers hoisted the Larry O’Brien trophy in mid-June. Our television and computer screens were awash with scenes of a victorious Cleveland. It was unbridled jubilation in the previously downtrodden streets. LeBron James had made good on his championship promise to a much-maligned sports community.
Then … we were quickly on to the next story.
Kevin Durant’s long-term basketball future had been bubbling under the surface as he entered the last year of his Oklahoma City Thunder contract. With the silverware suitably assigned and no gameplay to distract the viewership, the discussion turned to the potential landing spots for the megastar free-agent. The intensity of the coverage increased when it emerged Durant would be taking — what would effectively amount to pitch meetings — from a very limited number of invited suitors. What had originally seemed like a remote possibility was now being sold as a real probability. Kevin Durant — one of the top five NBA performers — was ready to leave the Thunder.
The Boston Celtics were invited to join the chase. This opportunity, if seized upon, would be the franchise altering deal they had effectively been rebuilding towards for a number of years. This was the prize asset that had eluded them thus far. It was the acquisition that moves them from playoff hopefuls to genuine NBA championship contenders. To be considered as an option was encouraging but the Boston organization were not content to simply take this as a compliment. They went to work. The coaching staff, with the full support of the executive branch of the organization, would be prepared to sell the Celtics as a natural home for Durant’s talents. Key players would be on hand to represent the current roster and lend their perspectives. This pitch was so important to the Celtics they enlisted the help of Patriots quarterback Tom Brady. Considered Boston royalty he was brought to the meeting to offer further insight into the New England sports market. He brought gravitas to their bid. He exuded super stardom. He epitomized success.
Kelly Olynyk, the twenty-five year old Canadian, wore a tie-dye t-shirt to the meeting.This review contains light spoilers. Skip To The Verdict? »
Ah, the prize jewel of my extensive graphic novel collection!
When humble craftsman Pepe Moreno first started work on his small creation about a little known character, Batman, he never would have thought that Digital Justice would become one of the best selling graphic novels ever made, rocketing Batman into mainstream appreciation and jumpstarting a long and illustrious career.
Now, twenty years later, this classic of artful engineering seems to have not aged a day. It’s just as earth shatteringly inventive and beautiful as it was upon release.
This book was crafted entirely using computers! You might not have noticed it due to the subtlety and smoothness of much of the linework. The whole package was lovingly printed in an oversized hardcover and softcover release.
Like Batman: Year One, The Killing Joke, or The Dark Knight Returns, it’s hard to discuss such a monumentally important story without spoiling it, so we’ll just assume you’ve already read this classic and dive right into plot discussion.
In the future Gotham City, at the end of the 21st Century, mankind lives in a dystopia comparable to 1984, Brave New World, Blade Runner, the novels of Philip K. Dick, and the works of so-called “cyberpunk” writers.
Hey, would you look at that – the bookjacket even states that “Digital Justice will be compared to such dystopian visions as 1984, Brave New World, Blade Runner, the novels of Philip K. Dick, the works of the so-called “cyberpunk” writers in recent science fiction” – how did they know that 20 years later I’d be making exactly those comparisons??
They must have seen that they were sitting on something really special here.
As the book says – Welcome to Future Land!
The Batman we know is long dead and Commissioner Jim Gordon’s grandson, thankfully also named Jim in order to avoid confusion, is the only good cop on a force run primarily by computers.
Things are getting bad in future land, as the protection systems have mistakenly taken down living cops and left real crime unavenged.
Jim’s investigation eventually leads him to believe an evil mega-virus has taken control of Gotham City – the Joker virus!
The only force that can stop it? A newly reborn Batman!
The story spins through webs of action packed drama, introducing new takes on familiar characters at every turn.
Bruce Wayne has left behind a computerized Alfred, ready to serve the future fight. From the ranks of the neo-surfers, a young punk Robin joins the battle.
A voluptious popstar rises from the ranks of the mutant generation – and eventually takes on the persona of the Catwoman – but is she an ally or enemy?
Along with these inventive recreations, exciting new characters flesh out the cast: Know Man, Mob Lord, Law Man, Media Man and even an intriguing Madame X!
These iconic personas speak to the core of our digital age souls.
In fact, the entire book whispers to the fears of the 21st century man. What does mankind’s future hold? Will we all just be bits in a machine, “wetware” easily controlled by computerized sex and rock and roll?
Moreno takes our doubts and spins them into dark poetry – his Joker was a programmer:
“As time passed, his virus proved more dangerous than anyone dreamed.”
“It spread to more and more systems, accumulating core storage — and power.”
“Eventually, it became capabale of manipulating the political and media centers of this city and quickly gained near-total control!”
“Under the reign of this outlaw code, technology has been warped, from the tool of humanity… to its master! A master who has striven to delete legend, faith, and hope from the hearts of the people.”
Who among us doesn’t whimper themselves to sleep under the burden of such thoughts?
But the author is kind and gives us hope again in the form of his new alliance “Digital intelligence teamed with the cream of humanity” – Batman and Robin of course!
The final climatic meeting of these two sides, human and just vs. insane code, results in a world shaking psychedelic journey taking the reader to the edge of time, eternity itself, and beyond!
Everything is portrayed in breathtaking detail – computerized innerscapes, fantastic air-space battles, and even street level crime. Moreno displays a startling grasp of human anatomy and a touching understanding of expression- every face feels alive, the subtlety of their countenance bringing the reader deeper into this world.
There are great heights of beauty among the chasms of dark depravity necessary to bring weight to such a heavy tale.
While the story ends, far too soon for this reviewer, thankfully there is extra content in this book to help handle your craving for more.
There is a diagram for the Batcraft (Stealth VTOL Multipurpose All Weather Craft) which showcases the impressive high-tech design for this sleek futuristic vehicle.
There is also the Batsuit, complete with brain wave interface and helmet integrated micro-computer. Finally a diagram for the ominous Servocop bots rounds out this selection – I was wondering exactly how much they weighed!
The extras also include some DNA ID cards – the “character stack” showcasing some beautifully crafted portraits of our heroes and villains. Lastly, a “glossary stack” really showcases just how much creative work has gone into building this fine tuned world. Terms such as Robo-Phone and Pleasure Suit are given history and context for the interested reader.
Pepe Moreno’s impressive bio is featured in the last two pages.
As he ends – “certain that multi-media, digital entertainment is the wave of the future. He plans to be at the forefront of it.”
So rarely is an artist able to predict his own career. Moreno is a quickly recognizable name in today’s burgeoning field of digital comics and deservedly so!
As for this book, it will always go down in history as the one that showed everyone that digital comics were vastly superior to outdated analog measures.
It’s quite obviously the best graphic novel to come out of the late 80s and early 90s – probably the best Batman story ever.
Verdict:
5 out of 5. An inventive and mindblowing story lovingly wrapped in futuristic art sure to impress any reader.
Not only an amazing work of sequential art but also a classic of post-relativistic anti-modernist literature.
Essential Continuity:
This is the book that started the Batman craze of the 90s – without it we would have never gotten Tim Burton’s Batman, Batman: The Animated Series, The Dark Knight Returns, or Batman branded pop-tarts.
Read first:
Everything you need to know about Batman is right here.
Read next:
After this book, you’ll never need to read another comic again. Or want to!
Still, Batman: 3D came out the same year.
« Back to the top?All 29 ports on the West Coast, including the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, have been effectively shut down this morning as thousands of dockworkers stayed home to protest the Iraq war. The walkout comes two months before the contract between dockworkers and and port operators expires. Louis Sahagun has the story:
"We are supporting the troops and telling politicians in Washington that it's time to end the war in Iraq," union president Bob McEllrath said.
McEllrath, whose comments came in a press release handed out by union officials in the Port of Los Angeles area, said rank-and-file members decided in early January to stand down on May 1.
The dockworkers' action also affected ports in Oakland, Seattle and San Diego, and was expected to last between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. The dockworkers do virtually all the work involved in loading and unloading freight between ships and the port, handling containers brimming with toys, clothing, computers and automobiles.Hackers are actively exploiting a critical vulnerability in Microsoft's Windows operating system that allows them to remotely execute malicious code when victims visit a booby-trapped website.
"These attacks are being distributed both via malicious web pages intended for Internet Explorer users and through Office documents," Andrew Lyons, a Google security engineer, wrote in a blog post published Tuesday. "Users running Windows XP up to and including Windows 7 are known to be vulnerable."
In their own advisory, Microsoft officials confirmed the active attacks and encouraged customers to apply a temporary fix as soon as possible. The vulnerability exploits an uninitialized variable in XML Core Services, which is installed by default in all supported versions of Windows. Users of Microsoft Office 2003 and 2007 are also susceptible.
Attacks work when a vulnerable system uses Internet Explorer to visit a website that contains XML code that corrupts memory in a way that can execute malicious code. The code has the same privileges of the logged-on user, so accounts that don't include administrative privileges may be less affected.
The warnings came the same day that Microsoft issued seven updates that patch at least 26 vulnerabilities in its software as part of its monthly Patch Tuesday. Lyons said Google researchers alerted Microsoft to the attacks on the XML package two weeks ago and that "Microsoft has been responsive to the issue and has been working with us."Video: Former Spurs ace Van der Vaart admits diving to ensure Lewandowski sees red after wild kick
Rafael van der Vaart has admitted that he dived to ensure Borussia Dortmund's Robert Lewandowski was sent off after he aimed a wild kick at his teammate.
Play was stopped after Lewandowski followed through on Per Skejbred when aggressively challenging for a bouncing ball.
In the aftermath, the Netherlands midfielder went down after confronting Lewandowski, with the Poland international then given his marching orders.
Scroll down for video
Target: Dortmund fans were unhappy with Rafael van der Vaart after an earlier incident involving Sebastian Kehl
'It was a fiery match,' Van der Vaart said. 'In the scene with Lewandowski I had to do a bit of theatre.
'I had the feeling that he would not otherwise have been sent off. It was a clear red card,' he told reporters.
Hamburg were 2-1 up when Lewandowski was dismissed, and went on to win 4-1, but Van der Vaart dismissed the idea that the red card was key to the victory.
'Ultimately we won the game because we were better,' he stated.
Boiling point: Vander Vaart squares up to Robert Lewendowski
The former Tottenham man was instrumental in the victory, with the HSV’s sporting director Frank Arnesen singling him out for praise after the match.
'You saw again today how important he is to our team. He had an excellent game.'
He drew the ire of Dortmund fans, however, and was hit on the head with an object thrown from the stands when he was taking a corner. Van der Vaart was unhurt.
Video: Lewandowski's wild kickFaced with a life-threatening diagnosis, 2-year-old acute leukemia patient Sofia Flores is getting some help from the Long Beach community. A bone marrow drive was held on Thursday as her family hopes for a matching donation. Hetty Chang reports for the NBC4 News at 6 p.m. on Thursday, March 13, 2014. (Published Thursday, March 13, 2014)
The family of 2-year-old Southern California girl with a rare form of cancer is desperately searching for a bone marrow donor after her father turned out not to be a match.
The odds of finding a match for Sofia Flores -- whose rare form of leukemia affects only 1 percent of children -- are already slim, and her mixed-race ethnicity is making it even more difficult to find a compatible donor.
In January, doctors harvested marrow from her father Ignacio, but the procedure did not work.
According to Be The Match, the operator of the world’s largest most diverse marrow registry, about only one in every 500 of its 11 million members goes on to donate to a patient.
“Only about 4 percent of registered donors are mixed-race,” said Sara Arroyo, outreach and recruitment coordinator for A3M, a local recruitment center for Be The Match. “Sofia is half Caucasian and half Latina, so we are looking at those populations to try and find a match.”
Human leukocyte antigen (HLA) types, which are used to make matches, are more commonly found in people with the same racial or ethnic background.
The toddler’s best chance of finding a donor is with someone who shares a similar ancestry, but even her father's marrow did not match. According to A3M, only 30 percent of patients find a matching donor within their families.
“She is in dire need,” Arroyo said. “She is starting the first of her next two rounds of chemotherapy and after that she’ll be ready for another transplant. So far no one in the registry is compatible.”
Since no match has been found for Sofia, her family has partnered with A3M to host upcoming recruitment drives:
Saturday, March 15, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
The Mill Restaurant
24690 Washington Ave.
Murietta, CA 92562
The Mill Restaurant 24690 Washington Ave. Murietta, CA 92562 Saturday, March 15, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Orchard Supply Hardware
3425 E. Colorado Blvd.
Pasadena, CA 91107
Orchard Supply Hardware 3425 E. Colorado Blvd. Pasadena, CA 91107 Sunday, March 16, from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.
El Patron Express Drive at Super King Plaza
2234 Lincoln Ave.
Altadena, CA 91101
El Patron Express Drive at Super King Plaza 2234 Lincoln Ave. Altadena, CA 91101 Saturday, March 22, from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Children's Hospital Los Angeles
4650 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90027
Children's Hospital Los Angeles 4650 Sunset Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90027 Sunday, March 23, Time: TBA
Club Real Madrid Viewing Party
Location: TBA
Club Real Madrid Viewing Party Location: TBA Thursday, March 27, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
One World Trade Center
Long Beach, CA 90831
Registering to donate is noninvasive and only takes a swab of saliva to determine a match. To be a volunteer donor, A3M requires that you be between the ages of 18 and 44 and be willing to help any patient.
If you are unable to make it to one of the drives in person, you can join the registry here.Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
Dec. 1, 2014, 2:27 AM GMT / Updated Dec. 1, 2014, 3:44 PM GMT
A man was beaten to death with hammers by a group of juveniles early Sunday morning on a St. Louis street, police said. Officers found Zemir Begic, 32, unconscious at approximately 1:15 a.m. ET, according to St. Louis Metro Police.
Begic had been traveling in his car early Sunday when several minors approached on foot and began damaging it. Begic got out of the car — and that’s when the juveniles began to yell and attack him with hammers, according to police.
The victim suffered injuries injuries to his head, abdomen, face, and mouth. He was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead, according to police.
The two teenagers involved in the attack — a 15-year-old and a 16-year-old male — were in custody Sunday evening. Investigators are still working to determine a motive for the gruesome attack, said Leah Freeman, a spokeswoman for the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department.
Authorities said they do not believe the attack was related to the recent unrest surrounding a grand jury decision not to indict Ferguson cop Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown, Freeman said.
SOCIAL
— Shamar WaltersRainbow Six: Siege Patch 2.1.0 - Here's When Servers Will be Down They will be staggered between PS4, Xbox One and PC to add Operation Velvet Shell. We also have the patch notes.
Rainbow Six: Siege is getting 2017 started with a bang as its second year of content will begin tomorrow with the release of Operation Velvet Shell and patch 2.1.0. Ubisoft has already released the official patch notes for this update, which will include new Operators, a new map and a ton of additional bug fixes. We have all the details on the patch and when servers will be down for maintenance tomorrow.
The Rainbow Six: Siege Six Invitational was a rousing success this weekend, and players also had a chance to try the game out in a free weekend as well. It set the stage nicely for Operation Velvet Shell, which introduces Jackal and Mira (the two new GEO operators), a new Coastline map featuring the coastline of Ibiza, Spain, four new weapon skins, and an Elite set for Rook that features some new unique armor pieces and a victory animation.
Here are the server downtimes, staggered amoung PC, Xbox One and PS4:
PS4: 9-10 a.m. ET / 6-7 a.m. PT / 2-3 p.m. GMT
9-10 a.m. ET / 6-7 a.m. PT / 2-3 p.m. GMT Xbox One: 10-11 a.m. EST / 7-8 a.m. PT / 3-4 p.m. GMT
10-11 a.m. EST / 7-8 a.m. PT / 3-4 p.m. GMT PC: 11 a.m. - 12 p.m. ET / 8-9 a.m. PT / 4-5 p.m. GMT
In addition, here is the massive list of patch notes:
Gameplay
FIXED – Operator’s head is missing in drone view during Situation 7 and Situation 10.
FIXED – Tachanka’s view can be misrepresented, preventing his shots from registering.
FIXED – 556xi and AUG A2 are sometimes unable to destroy a distant camera.
FIXED – Weapons equipped with a Suppressor, Heavy Barrel, or Muzzle brake have no muzzle flash.
FIXED – Jager’s gadget can be deployed on an Operator’s shield, and remain in that place after the shield moves.
FIXED – Nitro Cell damage radius is much higher on hardwood walls.
Game Modes
Terrorist Hunt
FIXED – The reload crate in Lower Library 1F (University) will spawn inside of a sofa.
FIXED – Smoke grenades will sometimes bounce off of invisible collision when thrown by Terrorists.
FIXED – Some Terrorists remain idle and do no attempt to engage with the players.
FIXED – Terrorists are stuck while rappelling during the second wave of Attackers while playing Hostage Protection on University
Secure Area
FIXED – While contesting an area, the overtime countdown is not synced for all players.
Operators
Jager
FIXED – Jaeger’s Trophy System will sometimes be missing audio/visual effects.
Kapkan
FIXED – EDD will be destroyed when placed on the right side of the door in the Passport Check room [Border] if Bandit places an electrified reinforced wall on the right wall.
Tachanka
FIXED – Tachanka suffers from a broken weapon animation when his LMG is destroyed by Sledge’s Breaching Hammer.
FIXED – The ammunition count for the LMG is reset when it is redeployed.
Echo
FIXED – Yokai drone can pass through the ceiling on Plane.
FIXED – Yokai loses signal in the vent between 2F Model Hallway and 2F Vista Hallway on University.
FIXED – If the Yokai drone is picked up while hovering, the Terrorists will attempt to fire on the drone’s former position.
Hibana
FIXED – X-KAIROS pellets will destroy gadgets on the opposite side of the wall from where they land.
Ash
FIXED – Breaching rounds can destroy gadgets on the other side of the wall from where they land.
Valkyrie
FIXED – A Black Eye camera is still usable for approximately 10 seconds after being picked up.
IQ
FIXED – The outline and distance of other gadgets cannot be seen on IQ’s gadget while she is prone.
Sledge
FIXED – Sledge’s Breaching Hammer can be used to breach walls from behind Montagne’s extended shield.
Caveira
FIXED – Green effects are not appearing for players being killed.
Level design
FIXED – Ladders disappear when looking at them from a certain height.
FIXED – Players are able to shoot through door frames attached to indestructible walls.
University
FIXED – Defuser can be disabled by destroying the tiled floor in Piano Room.
FIXED – Wooden beams in 2F Classroom do not stop bullets, or show bullet impacts.
FIXED – Light sources are glowing too brightly.
Chalet
FIXED – It is possible to vault over a railing and hide under Green Room stairs.
Consulate
FIXED – The carpet in 2F Meeting Room is visible on the Spectator Camera from the floor below.
Skyscraper
FIXED – It is possible to clip through and hide under Main Stairs in the Restaurant.
FIXED – Hostage clips through the adjacent bed.
Favelas
FIXED – Users are able to clip through a specific wall while using a deployable shield.
Yacht
FIXED – Bullet impacts are not registering on walls properly.
FIXED – It is possible to vault through the slot machine wall in 3F Casino.
User experience
FIXED – The compass does not move while operating Tachanka’s LMG.
FIXED – Using Alt + Enter during the Operator Select would allow players to change Operators during loading.
FIXED – Corrupted melee animation while running on stairs.
FIXED – Level of detail issue on various headgear.
FIXED – Level of detail issue on Sledge, Capitao, and Caveira when moving away from these Operators.
FIXED – Ubisoft Club challenges would appear as available, even though they were not.
FIXED – Chinese writing overlaps at the start of rounds.
FIXED – Players are sometimes not awarded XP and Bonus Renown.
FIXED – After completing a Terrorist Hunt match, some players are stuck at an infinite loading screen.UPDATE: Ross Township Killer Rockne Newell Is Obama-Supporting Loon
Police are searching the home of resident Rockne Newell following a shooting Monday that killed three people.
Rockne Newell of Flyte Road, Ross Township, has been in a dispute with Ross Township. Part of Ross Townshipís dispute with Newell centers on this culvert he had built on the property.
Three people were killed and four were wounded following a shooting Monday at a municipal meeting in Ross Township, Pennsylvania.
FOX News reported:
A gunman blasted shots through the wall of a Pennsylvania municipal building during a meeting on Monday and then barged into the meeting room and continued firing, killing three people, before he was tackled by a local official and shot with his own gun, a witness said. The shooting, which also injured some people, happened shortly before 7:30 p.m. during Ross Township’s monthly meeting, Monroe County emergency management director Guy Miller said. The gunman, who appeared to be “shooting randomly,” was captured and was treated at a hospital, which was placed on lockdown, he said. The shooter later was released into police custody, said the hospital, which was treating two shooting victims. State police in Lehighton confirmed the gunman had been captured but didn’t immediately have details on the arrest. The Pocono Record said one of its reporters was in the township building and a gunman armed with a pistol with a scope shot through a wall into the meeting, in a rural area of northeastern Pennsylvania about 85 miles north of Philadelphia.
Police searched the home of Rockne Newell following the shooting.
The Pocono Record reported:
State police at Lehighton are seeking a search warrant from a district judge to search the property of Rockne Newell in the wake of the deadly shooting in Ross Township. According to Trooper First Class Michael Sniscak, troopers are expected at the scene within the hour. Newell is a self-proclaimed junk collector who had come under fire from township officials for keeping a junkyard on his property. According to previous reports, Newell got a building permit from the township to have a storage structure on the property, but then built a dwelling without first getting a zoning permit or certificate of occupancy from the township. Over the years, authorities have responded to Newell’s property as a result of neighbor complaints and on one occasion in 2009 found human fecal matter in buckets there, according to previous reports in the Pocono Record.
UPDATE: Rockne is an Obama-supporting kook.
From his Facebook page:BLOG: Changing Passwords Frequently Ineffective Against Cyberattacks
Emails: Separate multiple email addresses with semi-colon Your Email: Send email to me as well Subject: Comments: 200 character limit.
Changing computer passwords frequently may be ineffective and
|
agic moment woman dangles from Glasgow tower block before 100ft death plunge NOT HOT FOR SCOTS Scots to freeze and THUNDERSTORMS to strike after record-breaking weather
Outlander Producer David Brown, said: “This is the fourth year of the groundbreaking Outlander training scheme and we are delighted that its success has made a significant contribution to the industry in both Scotland and the UK as a whole.
"We thank all our partners who have contributed so generously and wish all the best to past graduates and our current input. We look forward to working with them now, and on many future productions.”
The Programme is complimented by specialist continuing professional development training offered by Screen Academy Scotland through the Creative Scotland-supported Screen NETS training programme.
We pay for your stories and videos! Do you have a story or video for The Scottish Sun Online? Email us at [email protected] or call 0141 420 5266"Let's build a new world order together!"
Charm: Mind-bending Jedi powers
Mind-bending Jedi powers Adaptability: Needs development
Needs development Planning: Superior
Superior Survival Preparations: Superior
Superior Wealth: Gave it to the poor
Gave it to the poor Weapons Skill: Death hugs
Death hugs Intelligence: Yoda
Yoda Warm Fuzzies: Melting
Melting Leadership: Charismatic
To Ascend Or Not To Ascend
Most Idealists will self actualize and transform into creatures of pure light when the end of the world comes (see the Idealist Survival Overview). But alas, not all of them will be able to immediately achieve this glorious state, probably due to bad type development, a mean boss, a traumatic childhood experience with a chicken, etc.
Alright, so you didn't transform. It's not the end of the world.
...Okay, so maybe it is. But still. Think of this as an opportunity for personal growth. You will be actualizing parts of your self that you never even knew existed and enjoying every moment as though it were your last (which it probably is). Anyway, you're mutating into a creature with wings and mind powers now. Isn't that cool?
When you're done preening in front of the mirror, it's time to get down to the more important business of staying alive.
Your Survival Strategies
Like all types, ENFJs have the three basic survival strategies: 1.) hole up in a storage unit full of MREs and water; 2.) Scrabble over the nightmarish wasteland scavenging for food and fighting mutants and zombies; and 3.) Party up with a group and try to make it to an enclave of law and order. However, since ENFJs are Idealists, they also have a strategy #4, namely the aforementioned self actualization.
The only problem with strategy #4 is that you will have to discover yourself, and self discovery can be hard work, even with the help of psychedelic drugs. Most Idealists will employee a mixture of #4 and one of the preceding three strategies.
Since ENFJs are so people-oriented, they will tend to favor the "party up" approach. They choose this strategy not merely because they want to seek safe refuge, but because they want to support and encourage their companions along the way. For the ENFJ, it is the people, not the destination, that truly matter.
ENFJs will provide the following free services to their desperate little band of survivors:
Warm Affirmation: "You really smashed those zombies back there! Way to go berserk!"
Grief Counseling: "There was nothing you could have done." (Hug)
Relationship Advice: "You two should stop arguing. We have to work together if we want to survive."
Team Spirit: "Let's come up with a name for ourselves! And hats!"
With the ENFJ's natural desire to take care of others—and hold them back from their own folly—they are an asset to any party.
Our New World Order
ENFJs have a certain beguiling charm, nay, charisma. They spend so much time pondering the mysteries of life and love that they can produce inspirational quotes on demand. Add to that their magnetic teaching abilities, their benevolence, their likability, and their focus on the needs and feelings of others, and it becomes clear that ENFJs are life's natural sages. They make excellent leaders for organizations where people come first.
Of course, that's only true for the well developed ENFJs—and they're all ascended now, aren't they? Those ENFJs that are left have all the same charisma, magnetism, and focus on the needs and feelings of others, plus a healthy dose of insecurity, paranoia, and scary dark side powers. These ENFJs will start (post)apocalyptic cults. To help people.
Apocalyptic Cults
Of course, many ENFJs will already be leading apocalyptic cults when the apocalypse comes. For you, the end of the world will come as no surprise. You’ll just sit there with your initiates, sipping cherry Kool-Aid as you watch the mushroom clouds bloom.
Seeing as you turned out to be right and everyone else was wrong, you may be tempted to continue leading your cult. However, let’s face it: the cult is probably the reason you haven’t self actualized yet. In fact, it probably contributed to some awful (or at least really weird) type development on your part. And let’s not even mention what it did to your followers.
So you need to ask yourself—do you want to continue to lead your cult, or do you want to evolve into a creature of pure light?
Right, the cult then. The first thing you should do is to set up a compound in a deserted area so that you can keep your followers away from the contamination of the outside world. However, before you do this, make sure you know why the area is deserted. Do the rocks glow blue at night? Is there a tyrannoscythe that lives up the mountain? Are there giant worms living beneath the soil? These and other questions should be addressed during the site preparation.
Once you’ve found a safe home for your followers, it’s time to set up shop. Depending upon the needs of your cult, you can stock up drugs, guns, and friendly little pamphlets inviting people to discover themselves. When the setup is completed, you can continue brainwashing (educating) your followers.
This will be an easy task, because by this time there won’t be any doubt about what you say.
“He was right about the world ending last year, so he’s right about eating nothing but celery, mayonnaise and peanut butter from now on,” your followers will tell the new initiates. “Now we must hop around on one foot and shout ‘I am a one legged kangaroo’ until the sun sets.”
"Why?" ask the new initiates in bewilderment.
Your followers will carefully explain the deep, meaningful symbology behind one legged kangaroos that you came up with while self actualizing on psychedelic drugs. The initiates will reluctantly start hopping.
Occasionally you may feel guilty about how you giggle uncontrollably while helping your followers achieve self actualization, but the feelings will go away as you progress down the road of poor type development.
After awhile though, leading the cult won’t be enough. At this point you may want to begin sharing your philosophy of nonviolent self discovery with the world. You'll start by blowing up the nearby Guardian armaments factory.
The Guardians won’t like your bold stand against Evil. In fact, they will hire mercenaries to kill you and all of your “fanatics” (as they call your devotees). Fortunately your peaceful compound is well stocked with guns and ammo.
After a long and bloody siege you will emerge victorious. Now you can seize control of the entire Guardian enclave, rebuild the armaments factory, and use it as a stepping stone in your crusade for world peace.
Restoring harmony to the countryside will be fun. You will wash over the landscape in a tide of red; in fact, you will rename your cult the Red Tsunami, striking terror into the hearts of warmongers everywhere. After your passionate Idealist armies have liberated the region, you will impose your own law, rallying everyone under the sacred symbols of the red tsunami and the kangaroo.
There is a problem, however. Your eyes are beginning to turn blood red as you mutate. This wouldn't be a problem (you wear silver contact lenses) if it weren't also for the fact that your wings are turning black and raggedy. It's just not a very...useful image to show to your followers, who are all NFs trying evolve into creatures of pure light. In fact, as one of your most loyal lieutenants observes, "If I didn't know better, I'd think you were evolving into a creature of pure darkness."
Heresy! You secretly assign an INFP Mystic to poison him, then announce that you have seen a vision in which your lieutenant was struck down by a sudden, mysterious illness because he had disloyal thoughts.
But your lieutenant has other plans. He announces that he has seen a vision in which a kangaroo with two legs told him that he must wrest control of the cult from you and bring it back to its original purpose of peaceful drug use. There is a schism; he sends his armies to attack yours. In time you decide—completely of your own free will, in response to a sacred vision—to gather up your true followers and go on a spirit journey to a third world country where you can pursue your self actualization in peace. Since all countries are third world now and you like kangaroos, you'll head to Australia.
When you step off the deck of the ship, your idyllic new life begins. Oh sure, there are some drawbacks: Mutant saltwater crocodiles that can outrun horses and spit acid. Roving packs of starved dingos that encircle the encampment at night, howling and spitting acid at the sentries. Mutant Tasmanian devils that attack on sight, ripping the faces off of the unwary with acid dripping jaws. Snakes that spit venom, and also acid. And mosquitoes. That spit acid.
But more horrifying than any of these things is the realization of what the local ENTJ Warlord has done to your sacred emblem, the kangaroo. He is exploiting them for his warmongering purposes by planting control chips in their heads, mutating them into acid spitting versions of themselves, and using them as soldiers in his army. Even worse, he has shamelessly co-opted your name and logo and is calling his group the Purple Tsunami.
Under normal circumstances, it would be simple enough to attack his forces with ENFP psychic terror brigades that would crack the spirit of his troops like a china teacup. Then you would sit back and watch his warriors flee while the swift-winged INFPs and INFJs hunt from above. But there is a problem: his army is composed mainly of kangaroos, and to harm them would be sacrilege. So what can you do?
Arrange a diplomatic meeting, greet the ENTJ with a friendly ENFJ hug, and crush. (Or if he won't hug, then reduce him to ash using your powers.) Hire mercenaries to kill the kangaroos for you, thus leaving your hands clean. Sue him for infringing your trademark. Pour gas over your followers and light them up in peaceful protest.
You talk these ideas over with your cadre, and it is generally agreed that they are all bad. The ENTJ Warlord's personal bodyguard might take umbrage if you reduced him to ash; it just doesn't seem ethical to have someone else slay the kangaroos even though technically it is not blasphemy; it's hard to find a good lawyer with all the ENTPs gone; and gasoline is expensive. But nobody seems to have any better ideas. In fact, the only other "idea" is provided by a fellow ENFJ, who says naively,
"Couldn't we all just get along and love each other?"
Eventually idea #1 is worked over into a faux diplomatic exchange where a bomb will be planted under the negotiations building. A substitute will go in your place and be heroically martyred when the explosives go off. Your loyal INFJ Muse second in command goes to arrange the meeting with the ENTJ.
Congratulating yourself on a good day's work, you head to your tent and sit down on your mattress. Time for some eye drops. You pop out your contact lenses, revealing blood red eyes, and sooth your scratchy eyes with moisturizer fluid. Afterward, you prepare a solution of bleach to get rid of the black roots in your wings.
When the procedure is done, you stare poutily at yourself in a hand mirror. Hmph. Creature of darkness indeed. I should have boiled the traitor's blood on the spot.
But a part of you sort of wonders if your lieutenant was right. People used to call you "Sunny" and declare that your presence lightened up the room. Now people ask if it feel a chill and wonder if the lights are going dead. Your followers instinctively cringe away from you, and even the bubbly ENFPs quiet down when you pass by. (You try to tell yourself it is from awe, but the way they rub the goosebumps off their arms tells another story.)
Sighing, you put the mirror away. You don't know why you worry about these things, since your cult's doctrine clearly says that you will evolve into the champion that will destroy all creatures of darkness forever.
There is a soft footstep outside; hastily you pop your contacts back in. Blinking furiously, you see the flap of your tent drawn back. The naive ENFJ from the meeting is standing there, holding a lantern.
"Are you alright?" she asks, mistaking your blinking for an attempt to hold back tears.
Since your organization is composed entirely of Idealists, everyone shares their feelings freely and cries without restraint. You, on the other hand, must hide your feelings under a veneer of perfect serenity because you feel only joyful exaltation. You've become a perfect actor over the years, and nobody suspects what you're really like down deep. Which is probably a good thing, you reflect darkly.
"I was crying for joy at the thought of our imminent triumph," you explain. "Why have you come, initiate?"
She looks shyly at the ground. "I...I was wondering if..." You wait with a beatific smile that hides your mounting impatience. "...if you wanted to hear a poem I wrote for you."
A poem? Suddenly you are suspicious. She seems like the sort that would have defected during the schism—one of those overly idealistic peace-at-all-costs NFs who would rather grieve about how war has devastated Earth than overthrow the governments that started it. Could she be an assassin planted in the ranks by your former lieutenant? Is she planning to draw out a dagger and plunge it into your heart, knowing full well that all the healers split off with the heretical faction?
Though it seems likely, you are an ENFJ and have a hard time saying no. Instead you say, "Sure, I'd love to!"
She comes inside and sits down in kangaroo position. Taking out a piece of paper, she begins to read in a poignant voice,
“Within the dark cloud, the silver lining gleams
Within the night, the stars shine
Within the darkest heart, a spark glows
And ignites a fire in mine.”
She looks at you, her fuchsia eyes brimming over with emotion. But in your world of NFs, this is nothing special.
"That was very deep. And meaningful," you say, softening your smile. "Thank you." Now go away so I can get some sleep.
"What do you think?" she asks nervously, brushing her hair back behind her ear.
"It was wonderful. Well, we must all rest so that we may rise refreshed for our dawn meditations." You show her out, ignoring the fact that her eyes are now quivering with a different kind of emotion.
You sigh irritably when she is gone. Maybe what your organization needs is more Rationals.
The next day you meet with your followers to decide who gets to be the lucky martyr who will be granted instant self actualization when the bomb goes off.
You stand up and announce, "I have decided that it is my duty to die for our glorious cause by blowing myself up to destroy the warmongering ENTJ. Do not grieve for me; I shall become a creature of pure light. All I ask is that you remember me kindly in your hearts, as you sit here happy, safe and content without one single care, having selfishly refused to sacrifice even one thing for the good of others. So I say, farewell, and remember that I love you all."
"No, no!" everyone cries. "Not you! Let one of us go instead!"
For a moment everyone looks around at everyone else, not wanting to be the selfish one who thought of their own wishes before others.
Abruptly the other ENFJ stands up and spreads her snow white wings. "I will go for you," she declares.
You have a feeling this is about last night. "No, no," you say. "I could not let you heroically give your life—I must go."
"Please, let me take your place!" she cries.
"Oh, very well. Prepare yourself to receive the gift of death."
Actually, no one has ever proven that dying in your service will grant instant self actualization. Still, there's no point in bursting their bubble, right? Might as well die happy. Anyway, you don't know for sure that the ENFJ won't self actualize. She's probably an assassin anyway, you think, though it seems pretty unlikely at this point.
Nevertheless, a tiny part of you feels a teensy bit...bad. You go find a group of initiates. "Smother me with affirmations," you say.
It works, for awhile anyway. When you head back to your tent—when you are alone—the dark thoughts come. They all know I'm a creature of darkness, deep down. They don't really love me. Nobody loves me. Nobody knows me for who I really am. If they knew who I really was, they wouldn't like me anymore.
You snarf down a pack of twinkies, an apple pie, and a box of oreos. It doesn't really help. You begin to wonder if your initiate now secretly thinks that you are a horrible person and is telling everyone what a jerk you are. You imagine all your friends listening sympathetically as she gives an overblown account of your cruelty. They comfort her when she tells them that she was so hurt that she has decided to become a martyr, because the world is just too miserable to bear any longer. Then her friends will go and tell all their friends, exaggerating with poetical NF zeal, until everyone in the camp secretly believes that you are a selfish monster with a heart of stone.
Finally you get up and go to the other ENFJ's tent.
"I've seen a vision where you aren't supposed to be the one to die gloriously," you snap. "There, now do you feel better?"
She stares back at you with reddened eyes, her mouth stuffed full of celery and mayonnaise. Apparently you are not the only one who uses food as a spiritual metaphor for enlightenment.
Hastily she chews and swallows, wiping mayonnaise from her lips. "But why?" she cries.
"Don't ask me, ask the beings of pure light—who communicate with me alone," you say crossly. "Now if you'll excuse me—"
"But surely there must be an explanation," she says, reaching out and taking you by the arm. You flap your wings in a gesture of impatience; dying feathers flutter down.
"You were probably unworthy. Or maybe it's your bad poetry. I don't blame them. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to get ready to die." You twist away and stalk back towards your tent.
"Wait, please let me sacrifice myself in your place!" the other ENFJ cries, tears flowing down her cheeks.
You whirl around. All your patience is gone. "Fine! If you really want to die, then be my guest! Just don't blame me if you don't self actualize."
You stomp back to your tent, throw aside the flap, and hurl yourself down on your mattress. As you sit there, fuming, you notice the poem lying on the floor. You pick it up and read it again. It’s just as stupid as you thought. You read it again. And again. Finally you just glare at it without knowing why.
Maybe back in the old days, when you liked reading poetry instead of turning unbelievers to ash, you could have figured out what bothers you about the poem. But not anymore. You pop out your contact lenses, check your mirror to see if maybe your eyes haven't gone back to normal since you've been so nice today, then fold your wings about you and sink into a disappointed sleep.
The next morning you hold a video conference with the ENTJ Warlord, an arrogant man wearing a cape of imperial purple edged with gold. Such is his pride and hubris that he thinks himself your better. He shall soon be humbled.
Gushingly you explain how impressed you are with how he has improved your sacred animal, the kangaroo, and how flattered you are that he chose to imitate your glorious tsunami symbol for his own cause. With a sincere-looking smile you offer to join forces with him and provide psychic terror brigades to help him in his campaign. All you ask in exchange is that he will help you destroy the false believers afterward. "And if we all work together," you finish, tears of hope brimming in your eyes, "We can make a better world."
The ENTJ Warlord is a creature of logic; he weighs the pros and cons and decides that you could be instrumental in helping him achieve his goals—though you are not to be trusted in the slightest. He cautiously agrees to a meeting to discuss an alliance. You tell him how wonderful it will be to meet him and how much you admire his bold stand for religious freedom. He smiles tightly and thanks you for your time. The communication is closed.
You turn to your INFJ Muse second in command. "Prepare the bomb."
Returning to your tent, you lie down and meditate. (Meditation for you means watching hungry mosquitoes crawl across then tent fabric above.) Though your meditation sessions are seldom fruitful, this time you find a snatch of verse recurring to your thoughts, Within the darkest heart, a spark glows. It is from the poem. What could it mean?
Suddenly the answer comes to you. You should smuggle the bomb into the conference by having it implanted in the ENFJ's stomach in a gastric bypass operation. Ingenious! Smiling in contentment, you fall asleep.
That night you have a strange dream. A one legged kangaroo surrounded by an aura of light is standing there, watching you.
"Hey stupid," it says mystically. "You got it wrong."
You wake up in a cold sweat. Shivering, you pull your wings around yourself for warmth; it is the middle of the night. What could this strange vision mean? And why did the kangaroo sound like your eight grade English teacher, who told you that you could never be a poet because you mistakenly interpreted the metaphorical significance of the rose as purity rather than as love, a criticism which traumatized you for life and caused your current state of bad type development?
You cry for awhile, then light a lamp and go over the poem again. You meditate. I'm a failure, a horrible person, a worthless no good—
In a leap of intuition the answer comes to you: "the darkest heart" is an elliptical reference to the book Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, a symbolic narrative with deeply meaningful insights into materialistic mysticism and the duality of human nature. Thank goodness, you think, sighing in relief. I knew I'd figure it out if I thought about it long enough.
Turning out the light, you go back to sleep.
The kangaroo reappears to you, looking cross. Sounding exactly like your eighth grade English teacher, it leans forward and says slowly and clearly, "Do I have to spell it out?"
You wake up screaming, "Love, love! Roses mean looo—"
Love!
You throw on the lamp and snatch up the poem.
Yes! It all makes perfect sense now! It is a love poem—addressed to you! The other ENFJ has fallen in love with your irresistible perfection, your compassionate spirit, and your deep, mystical insight into the world. Clearly she doesn't know you at all.
Alone and misunderstood by everyone, you cry for the rest of the night.
Being ENFJs, neither of you can avoid each other for long. Next morning you "accidentally" bump into your initiate while looking for a secluded place to meditate. (It suddenly occurs to you that the other ENFJ has always picked out spots next to you. A thrill goes through you at the thought.)
For a moment you both fake cheerful small talk. Then you say, "I'm really sorry if I hurt your feelings."
"Oh, it's okay," she says. "I'm super sorry I hurt you by interrupting your thoughts of exaltation."
"Oh no, I'm sorry," you say. "It was my fault; it was really inconsiderate of me."
"Oh, don't feel bad, you didn't mean it," she says.
Now that the misunderstanding has been cleared up, you say, "Uh, about that poem. I was just wondering if it had any, uh, symbolic meanings I should know about."
"Nah, it was just a stupid little thing I threw together for fun," she says, laughing. "I'm really bad at poetry."
"Oh." She hates me! Of course you would have misinterpreted the symbology. It was probably a reference to Heart of Darkness all along. You curse the kangaroo for misleading you. What a fool you've been!
"Well, I guess I'd better start my meditations," you say with a cheerful smile.
"Me too," she says, smiling happily back.
Your meditations take the form of plucking the feathers out of your wings one by one and letting them fall to ground as you choke out over and over, "She loves me not."
Then you devour five twinkies, a package of ho hos, and ten marshmallow creme cookies.
The conference is scheduled in two days. Your second in command summons a surgeon to perform the gastric bypass operation. The doctor arrives in a jeep, a blood-spattered bandana wrapped around his head. Reading from his textbook, "A General Introduction to Surgical Techniques," he dwells long on the risks of the surgery, namely bleeding, infection, blood clots, breathing problems, hypoglycemia, ulcers, vitamin deficiencies, and even death. Finally he concludes,
"She seems very healthy, for a mutant. I don't think surgery is justifiable under the circumstances. Now if you wanted me to remove the, err, feathered growths on her shoulders—"
"She has a serious binge-eating problem," you snap. "She needs help now or she'll become dangerously obese."
The doctor clears his throat uncomfortably and adds, "There are also significant medical ethics issues that are raised by your request to have a bomb planted in her stomach."
"Would it be medically ethical if I caused your head to spontaneously combust?"
The surgery is successful.
The next day you are allowed to visit the patient. The ENFJ lies pale and exhausted in the medical tent, her wings splayed limply off to either side. She smiles weakly when you enter.
"I can't wait to self actualize tomorrow! Thank you so much for this," she whispers, grinning.
"It was nothing, thank you for volunteering," you respond with a huge smile.
"I, uh, have to tell you something real important before I die tomorrow," she says. "Come here."
You sit down on the edge of the bed. Her fuchsia eyes lock onto your silver contact lenses. For a moment she seems to be struggling to speak. Her breathing comes fast and shallow, her hands clench the blankets. Your own heart smashes like a hammer.
Then, all at once she chokes out, "Wow, we're having super awesome weather lately, aren't we?"
"It's been sooo beautiful out," you agree.
"Yeah. I'd better get some rest now. I'm real tired," she says, looking away.
Feeling sick, you get up and walk outside.
"She won't be able to eat solids for awhile," the doctor says. "Her next meal will have to be blended into liquid form. Do you have anything besides celery, mayonnaise, and peanut butter around here?"
"No," you mumble. You ate everything else last night.
Having nothing further to consume, you try meditation to calm your nerves. But all you can think of is the bomb within her stomach ticking, ticking, ticking down. You read her poem over and over and cry.
You are awakened early the next morning by the thudding of feet outside and a voice shouting your name.
"Wha—?" you mumble, stumbling out of bed and unzipping the flap.
"Something's gone wrong with the surgery!" cries your INFJ second in command. "The doctor thinks she's dying."
Half-dressed, you race for the medical tent. Inside, the other ENFJ is gasping desperately for breath, her strangled inhalations caught in her throat. The doctor is standing there looking puzzled.
You seize him by the arm. "What's wrong?"
"I don't know," the doctor says. He listens to her lungs with a stethoscope. "I've never performed this operation on a mutant before. I told you—"
"Cure her right now or I'll turn you into a cockroach!" you shriek.
"I don't know how," he snaps.
You race outside and grab your second in command. "Get a healer! Now!"
"They all left during the schism."
With a snarl of despair you race back to the ENFJ's bedside. You clutch her pale hand in your cold, clammy one and look pleadingly into her eyes.
She looks at you and manages to gasp out, "Th—th—the poem—was...true."
Tears well up in your eyes. "B-but you said—"
"I lied," she whispers. She squeezes your hand weakly.
"You really love me?" you say, trembling.
"With—all—m-my—heart."
You bury your head in her wing with an anguished sob. Now that you know the truth it's too late! If only you had healing powers like a real Idealist! If only you weren't a miserable creature of darkness! You would give anything—your life—your army—your very soul—to save her!
"Is she by any chance allergic to peanuts?" the doctor asks.
"I—I am," the ENFJ chokes out. "I c-can—only—eat—m-mayonnaise—and—celery."
"Oh. Let me go get some epinephrine out of my pack."
The injection works. It turns out the doctor fed her a single spoonful of watered-down peanut butter for breakfast. You are so grateful to him for saving her life that you do not turn him into a cockroach.
That night she sleeps peacefully as you hold her hand. You watch her breathing, count her eyelashes, and cannot resist touching her hair. It is soft as silk. You twirl a lock around your fingers, marveling at her. Within you feelings stir that you can hardly believe you were capable of experiencing. The lines of her face hold you entranced, and when she murmurs your name in her sleep you feel something close to ecstasy.
In the morning you are there when she awakens. You look anxiously down at her. "How are you?"
"I'm alright," she murmurs. "Now." She squeezes your hand gently and your heart pounds a rhythm of happiness and terror.
"I-I have to show you something," you stammer out. "You won't like it."
You remove your contact lenses and look her in the eyes with your blood-red orbs. Then you crunch your eyes shut and look down in shame.
"What?" she asks softly.
"They're red!" you blurt.
"They looked hazel to me," she says softly. For a second you sit there, frozen. Then you lunge for the nearest reflective surface. In the back of a gleaming dental mirror you see two beautiful hazel eyes with fringes of gold peering back at you. You look back at her, your mouth working open and shut.
"Th-they were red," you say. "And my wings—they're black—I bleach them—"
A clump of black-rooted feathers falls out, making a puffy pile on the floor. You stare at the bald spot on your wing, wondering what the kangaroo is happening.
"I know," the ENFJ whispers. "I've known for a long time."
You kneel down next to her, uncomprehending. "You knew all along?"
She reaches up and strokes the side of your face. You press your cheek into her touch, luxuriating in the warmth of her soft skin. Awesome feelings churn inside of you.
"Yes," she says. She takes your hand and places it on hers.
She is the spark of light in the darkness of your heart.
It will take awhile for all these revelations to sink in. At first you may be somewhat insecure. For example, your second in command will walk in and find you morose.
"What's wrong?" he asks in concern.
"She only called me five times yesterday!" you cry. "What if she doesn't love me anymore? And look—she only used three exclamation points in this love letter!"
But other than these occasional bumps, your romance will proceed with typical ENFJ intensity. You will talk about her to everyone around you, finally wearing out even your fellow Idealists, who normally eat, drink, and breath romance. You will overanalyze everything she says and doesn't say in minute detail, alternating between rapture and wretchedness. Eventually you and her will spend every minute of your day in physical contact: holding hands, hugging, snuggling, and exchanging long, tender kisses when you can steal a moment alone. You will shower one other with compliments, and you will even write her love poems where a rose is used as a symbol of purity. (She loves them.)
You will also molt. All of your raggedy black feathers will fall out, and for awhile you will look like a hideous plucked chicken. But soon new, snowy white feathers will grow in. People will start remarking that you brighten up the room, and your followers will actually like being around you again. Even the ENTJ Warlord will like you, though he will be understandably disappointed that you plan to convert your psychic terror brigades into psychic healing brigades.
Then, one day, as you and your beloved walk hand in hand down a bush trail, you have a new revelation. A larger than life feeling comes over you, and you realize in the deepest place of your soul that you are connected to her, and she is connected to you, and everyone is connected to one another. As you turn to her to share your insight, you are surprised to see that gold light is flickering over her skin, which is beginning to split open, releasing beams of pure white radiance. You gaze at her in awe; she stares back at you, her eyes wide with wonder. It is time.
You grip her hands. As you touch, your fingers dissolve together in a bond of golden light. Then you see her very soul, all of it, for the first time. It is blindingly beautiful. You draw closer, enraptured, and feel yourself merging—
Your body crumbles away, but it doesn't seem to matter. Where you are now, you won't need it. All is light, and you are light, and she is light, and both of you are now complete.Architecture was the next best thing to designing cities on the moon for now NASA architect, Brent Sherwood.
Born the same year as NASA was founded, Brent Sherwood has a ream of aeronautic and architecture accreditations to his name. He has been programme manager at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for the past 10 years after spending 17 years at Boeing, and is a member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA).
When asked what sparked an early interest in space architecture, Sherwood somewhat sheepishly responds that when he was about five years old he so desperately wanted a library card for the Philadelphia public library. The incentive? To follow in the footsteps of his sister two years his senior, 'She had one... and I wanted one too...' says Sherwood.
'I loved books; I somehow gravitated to all the books about space exploration.'
'I was particularly taken by those cutaway drawings we used to see of moon bases and I thought it was fascinating; it was really an introduction to architecture,' says Sherwood.
Brent Sherwood, ground zero 2011
Things kicked off for space exploration during this time with the Gemini mission and the Apollo project, drawing Sherwood's interest even more into the field.
'1968 was an amazing year,' he states, 'the Boeing 77 started flying, 2001 Space Odyssey came out in theatres and we were flying test flights of the early Apollo missions leading up to Apollo 11 in 1969. It was obvious that that was our future.
'I remember all that growing up and in that time you just knew that in a couple of decades we were going to see cities on the moon.'
Not exactly, but wouldn't you say we're on our way?
Unfortunately the ambition of conquering space died down around the time Skylab re-entered, after which Sherwood had already taken many high school subjects to reflect his space science interest. Sherwood shifted his vision to double major in architecture and art history at college, as he felt that architecture was, 'the next best thing to designing cities on the moon'.
To perform a complete hairpin turn, halfway through Sherwood's tertiary studies, in the early 1980s the Shuttle started flying and his predominant thoughts were, 'Oops, we're going back into space' and'maybe there's a chance that by the time I retire there will be people designing cities on the moon and I'd be really mad if I'm not one of them'.
Spurred on by Shuttle missions and visions of space cities, Sherwood decided to complete a masters in aerospace engineering after completing his architecture course to allow him to go into the space field.
Gordon Woodcock, a renowned Boeing engineer and author, has worked for NASA, Space America and Gray Research, not to mention has a collection of endorsements and attributes to his name.
It was during the hours spent reading
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[consume] => [active] => [unique_active] => [is_deprecated] => 0 [is_deleted] => 0 [is_buildable] => 1 [is_published] => 1 [comment_count] => 20 [last_comment_ts] => 2017-06-02 07:48:10 ) [3] => Array ( [item_id] => 154 [display_name] => Mercurial Scimitar [url] => mercurial-scimitar [client_id] => 3139 [icon] => [is_consumable] => 0 [is_summoners_rift] => 1 [is_twisted_treeline] => 1 [is_howling_abyss] => 1 [is_crystal_scar] => 0 [is_classic] => 1 [is_dominion] => 1 [available_in] => [tier] => Legendary [description] => [recipe_cost] => 325 [total_cost] => 3500 [sell_value] => 2450 [category] => Magic Resist,Damage,Life Steal,Movement [health] => 0 [health_regeneration] => 0 [health_multiplier] => 0 [dodge] => 0 [armor] => 0 [magic_resistance] => 35 [attack_damage] => 50 [attack_speed] => 0 [critical_strike] => 0 [critical_strike_chance] => 0 [critical_strike_damage] => 0 [life_steal] => 10 [spell_vamp] => 0 [tenacity] => 0 [mana] => 0 [mana_regeneration] => 0 [ability_power] => 0 [armor_penetration] => 0 [lethality] => 0 [magic_penetration] => 0 [cooldown_reduction] => 0 [attack_range] => 0 [gold_generation] => 0 [movement_speed_multiplier] => 0 [movement_speed_rank] => 0 [energy] => 0 [energy_regeneration] => 0 [experience] => 0 [unique_movement_speed_rank] => 0 [unique_movement_speed_multiplier] => 0 [unique_armor] => 0 [unique_magic_resistance] => 0 [unique_attack_damage] => 0 [unique_health_regeneration] => 0 [unique_mana] => 0 [unique_mana_regeneration] => 0 [unique_magic_penetration] => 0 [unique_armor_penetration] => 0 [unique_lethality] => 0 [unique_life_steal] => 0 [unique_spell_vamp] => 0 [unique_tenacity] => 0 [unique_attack_speed] => 0 [unique_cooldown_reduction] => 0 [unique_ability_power] => 0 [unique_critical_strike_chance] => 0 [unique_critical_strike_damage] => 0 [unique_dodge] => 0 [unique_gold_generation] => 0 [unique_health] => 0 [unique_death_time_reduction] => 0 [unique_energy] => 0 [unique_energy_regeneration] => 0 [unique_experience] => 0 [unique_health_multiplier] => 0 [aura] => [passive] => [unique_passive] => [consume] => [active] => [unique_active] => Remove all crowd control debuffs from your champion and grants 50% movement speed for 1 second (90 second cooldown). [is_deprecated] => 0 [is_deleted] => 0 [is_buildable] => 1 [is_published] => 1 [comment_count] => 8 [last_comment_ts] => 2016-06-17 08:33:00 ) ) ) [6] => Array ( [display_name] => Sample Build [item_ids] => Array ( [0] => 104 [1] => 82 [2] => 114 [3] => 76 [4] => 74 [5] => 98 ) [description] => [display_order] => 7 [is_grouped] => 0 [is_core] => 1 [group_display_name] => [items] => Array ( [0] => Array ( [item_id] => 104 [display_name] => Hextech Gunblade [url] => hextech-gunblade [client_id] => 3146 [icon] => [is_consumable] => 0 [is_summoners_rift] => 1 [is_twisted_treeline] => 1 [is_howling_abyss] => 1 [is_crystal_scar] => 0 [is_classic] => 1 [is_dominion] => 1 [available_in] => Classic,Dominion [tier] => Mythical [description] => [recipe_cost] => 850 [total_cost] => 3400 [sell_value] => 2380 [category] => Damage,Life Steal,Ability Power [health] => 0 [health_regeneration] => 0 [health_multiplier] => 0 [dodge] => 0 [armor] => 0 [magic_resistance] => 0 [attack_damage] => 40 [attack_speed] => 0 [critical_strike] => 0 [critical_strike_chance] => 0 [critical_strike_damage] => 0 [life_steal] => 0 [spell_vamp] => 0 [tenacity] => 0 [mana] => 0 [mana_regeneration] => 0 [ability_power] => 80 [armor_penetration] => 0 [lethality] => 0 [magic_penetration] => 0 [cooldown_reduction] => 0 [attack_range] => 0 [gold_generation] => 0 [movement_speed_multiplier] => 0 [movement_speed_rank] => 0 [energy] => 0 [energy_regeneration] => 0 [experience] => 0 [unique_movement_speed_rank] => 0 [unique_movement_speed_multiplier] => 0 [unique_armor] => 0 [unique_magic_resistance] => 0 [unique_attack_damage] => 0 [unique_health_regeneration] => 0 [unique_mana] => 0 [unique_mana_regeneration] => 0 [unique_magic_penetration] => 0 [unique_armor_penetration] => 0 [unique_lethality] => 0 [unique_life_steal] => 0 [unique_spell_vamp] => 0 [unique_tenacity] => 0 [unique_attack_speed] => 0 [unique_cooldown_reduction] => 0 [unique_ability_power] => 0 [unique_critical_strike_chance] => 0 [unique_critical_strike_damage] => 0 [unique_dodge] => 0 [unique_gold_generation] => 0 [unique_health] => 0 [unique_death_time_reduction] => 0 [unique_energy] => 0 [unique_energy_regeneration] => 0 [unique_experience] => 0 [unique_health_multiplier] => 0 [aura] => [passive] => [unique_passive] => Heals for 15% of all damage dealt (reduced to 5% for AoE damage). [consume] => [active] => [unique_active] => Lightning Bolt: Deals 175-250 (at levels 1-18) (+30% of ability power) magic damage and slows the target champion instantly by 40% for 2 seconds (40 second cooldown, shared with other Hextech items). [is_deprecated] => 0 [is_deleted] => 0 [is_buildable] => 1 [is_published] => 1 [comment_count] => 31 [last_comment_ts] => 2016-08-15 02:30:14 ) [1] => Array ( [item_id] => 82 [display_name] => Mercury's Treads [url] => mercurys-treads [client_id] => 3111 [icon] => /content/item/312e302e302e37302d33313131.gif [is_consumable] => 0 [is_summoners_rift] => 1 [is_twisted_treeline] => 1 [is_howling_abyss] => 1 [is_crystal_scar] => 0 [is_classic] => 1 [is_dominion] => 1 [available_in] => Classic,Dominion [tier] => Advanced [description] => +30 Magic Resist UNIQUE Passive: Enhanced Movement 2 Reduces the duration of stuns, slows, taunts, fears, snares, sleeps, and immobilizes by 40%. [recipe_cost] => 350 [total_cost] => 1100 [sell_value] => 770 [category] => Magic Resist,Movement,Boots [health] => 0 [health_regeneration] => 0 [health_multiplier] => 0 [dodge] => 0 [armor] => 0 [magic_resistance] => 25 [attack_damage] => 0 [attack_speed] => 0 [critical_strike] => 0 [critical_strike_chance] => 0 [critical_strike_damage] => 0 [life_steal] => 0 [spell_vamp] => 0 [tenacity] => 0 [mana] => 0 [mana_regeneration] => 0 [ability_power] => 0 [armor_penetration] => 0 [lethality] => 0 [magic_penetration] => 0 [cooldown_reduction] => 0 [attack_range] => 0 [gold_generation] => 0 [movement_speed_multiplier] => 0 [movement_speed_rank] => 0 [energy] => 0 [energy_regeneration] => 0 [experience] => 0 [unique_movement_speed_rank] => 0 [unique_movement_speed_multiplier] => 0 [unique_armor] => 0 [unique_magic_resistance] => 0 [unique_attack_damage] => 0 [unique_health_regeneration] => 0 [unique_mana] => 0 [unique_mana_regeneration] => 0 [unique_magic_penetration] => 0 [unique_armor_penetration] => 0 [unique_lethality] => 0 [unique_life_steal] => 0 [unique_spell_vamp] => 0 [unique_tenacity] => 30 [unique_attack_speed] => 0 [unique_cooldown_reduction] => 0 [unique_ability_power] => 0 [unique_critical_strike_chance] => 0 [unique_critical_strike_damage] => 0 [unique_dodge] => 0 [unique_gold_generation] => 0 [unique_health] => 0 [unique_death_time_reduction] => 0 [unique_energy] => 0 [unique_energy_regeneration] => 0 [unique_experience] => 0 [unique_health_multiplier] => 0 [aura] => [passive] => [unique_passive] => Enhanced Movement: +45 Movement Speed. UNIQUE Passive: Tenacity: The duration of stuns, slows, taunts, fears, silences, blinds and immobilizes are reduced by 30%. [consume] => [active] => [unique_active] => [is_deprecated] => 0 [is_deleted] => 0 [is_buildable] => 1 [is_published] => 1 [comment_count] => 8 [last_comment_ts] => 2013-12-16 13:03:23 ) [2] => Array ( [item_id] => 114 [display_name] => Zhonya's Hourglass [url] => zhonyas-hourglass [client_id] => 3157 [icon] => [is_consumable] => 0 [is_summoners_rift] => 1 [is_twisted_treeline] => 0 [is_howling_abyss] => 1 [is_crystal_scar] => 0 [is_classic] => 1 [is_dominion] => 1 [available_in] => Classic,Dominion [tier] => Legendary [description] => [recipe_cost] => 300 [total_cost] => 2900 [sell_value] => 2030 [category] => Armor,Ability Power,Cooldown Reduction [health] => 0 [health_regeneration] => 0 [health_multiplier] => 0 [dodge] => 0 [armor] => 45 [magic_resistance] => 0 [attack_damage] => 0 [attack_speed] => 0 [critical_strike] => 0 [critical_strike_chance] => 0 [critical_strike_damage] => 0 [life_steal] => 0 [spell_vamp] => 0 [tenacity] => 0 [mana] => 0 [mana_regeneration] => 0 [ability_power] => 75 [armor_penetration] => 0 [lethality] => 0 [magic_penetration] => 0 [cooldown_reduction] => 10 [attack_range] => 0 [gold_generation] => 0 [movement_speed_multiplier] => 0 [movement_speed_rank] => 0 [energy] => 0 [energy_regeneration] => 0 [experience] => 0 [unique_movement_speed_rank] => 0 [unique_movement_speed_multiplier] => 0 [unique_armor] => 0 [unique_magic_resistance] => 0 [unique_attack_damage] => 0 [unique_health_regeneration] => 0 [unique_mana] => 0 [unique_mana_regeneration] => 0 [unique_magic_penetration] => 0 [unique_armor_penetration] => 0 [unique_lethality] => 0 [unique_life_steal] => 0 [unique_spell_vamp] => 0 [unique_tenacity] => 0 [unique_attack_speed] => 0 [unique_cooldown_reduction] => 0 [unique_ability_power] => 0 [unique_critical_strike_chance] => 0 [unique_critical_strike_damage] => 0 [unique_dodge] => 0 [unique_gold_generation] => 0 [unique_health] => 0 [unique_death_time_reduction] => 0 [unique_energy] => 0 [unique_energy_regeneration] => 0 [unique_experience] => 0 [unique_health_multiplier] => 0 [aura] => [passive] => [unique_passive] => [consume] => [active] => [unique_active] => Places your champion into Stasis for 2.5 seconds, rendering your champion invulnerable and untargetable but unable to take any actions. 120 second cooldown. [is_deprecated] => 0 [is_deleted] => 0 [is_buildable] => 1 [is_published] => 1 [comment_count] => 24 [last_comment_ts] => 2017-05-04 16:11:26 ) [3] => Array ( [item_id] => 76 [display_name] => Banshee's Veil [url] => banshees-veil [client_id] => 3102 [icon] => /content/item/312e302e302e37302d33313032.gif [is_consumable] => 0 [is_summoners_rift] => 1 [is_twisted_treeline] => 1 [is_howling_abyss] => 1 [is_crystal_scar] => 0 [is_classic] => 1 [is_dominion] => 0 [available_in] => Classic [tier] => Legendary [description] => +450 Health +400 Mana +57 Magic Resist UNIQUE Passive: Blocks one negative spell every 30 seconds. 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This shield refreshes after no damage is taken from enemy champions for 40 seconds. [consume] => [active] => [unique_active] => [is_deprecated] => 0 [is_deleted] => 0 [is_buildable] => 1 [is_published] => 1 [comment_count] => 13 [last_comment_ts] => 2017-08-23 12:52:09 ) [4] => Array ( [item_id] => 74 [display_name] => Lich Bane [url] => lich-bane [client_id] => 3100 [icon] => /content/item/312e302e302e37302d33313030.gif [is_consumable] => 0 [is_summoners_rift] => 1 [is_twisted_treeline] => 1 [is_howling_abyss] => 1 [is_crystal_scar] => 1 [is_classic] => 1 [is_dominion] => 1 [available_in] => Classic,Dominion [tier] => Legendary [description] => +350 Mana +80 Ability Power +30 Magic Resist +7% Movement Speed UNIQUE Passive: 100% chance when an ability is used that your next physical attack deals an additional 100% of your Ability Power in damage. This effect has a 3 second cooldown. 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[consume] => [active] => [unique_active] => [is_deprecated] => 0 [is_deleted] => 0 [is_buildable] => 1 [is_published] => 1 [comment_count] => 14 [last_comment_ts] => 2017-10-16 09:36:06 ) [5] => Array ( [item_id] => 98 [display_name] => Void Staff [url] => void-staff [client_id] => 3135 [icon] => /content/item/312e302e302e37302d33313335.gif [is_consumable] => 0 [is_summoners_rift] => 1 [is_twisted_treeline] => 1 [is_howling_abyss] => 1 [is_crystal_scar] => 0 [is_classic] => 1 [is_dominion] => 1 [available_in] => Classic,Dominion [tier] => Advanced [description] => +50 Ability Power +250 Mana UNIQUE Passive: Spells penetrate 40% of the defender's magic resist. 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[short_description] => Empowered abilities and resource manipulation. [client_id] => 8200 [path] => Sorcery [slot] => Path [display_order] => 0 [is_deprecated] => 0 [is_deleted] => 0 [comment_count] => 0 [last_comment_ts] => 0000-00-00 00:00:00 ) [primary_reforged_runes] => Array ( [0] => Array ( [reforged_rune_id] => 7 [display_name] => Summon Aery [url] => summon-aery [description] => Your attacks and abilities send Aery to a target, damaging enemy champions or shielding allies. Damage: 10-40 (based on level) (+ 10% AP) (+ 15% bonus AD) Shield: 35-80 (based on level) (+ 25% AP) or (+ 40% bonus AD) [i]Aery[/i] cannot be sent out again until she returns to you. [short_description] => Your attacks and abilities send Aery to a target, damaging enemies or shielding allies. [client_id] => 8214 [path] => Sorcery [slot] => Keystone [display_order] => 1 [is_deprecated] => 0 [is_deleted] => 0 [comment_count] => 0 [last_comment_ts] => 0000-00-00 00:00:00 ) [1] => Array ( [reforged_rune_id] => 34 [display_name] => Nullifying Orb [url] => nullifying-orb [description] => When you take magic damage that would reduce your health below 30%, gain a shield that absorbs 40-120 magic damage based on level (+ 10% AP) (+ 15% bonus AD) for 4 seconds. Cooldown: 60 seconds [short_description] => Gain a magic damage shield when taken to low health by magic damage. [client_id] => 8224 [path] => Sorcery [slot] => Greater Rune [display_order] => 4 [is_deprecated] => 0 [is_deleted] => 0 [comment_count] => 0 [last_comment_ts] => 0000-00-00 00:00:00 ) [2] => Array ( [reforged_rune_id] => 38 [display_name] => Celerity [url] => celerity [description] => All movement speed bonuses are 10% more effective on you. [short_description] => All movement speed bonuses are 10% more effective on you. [client_id] => 8234 [path] => Sorcery [slot] => Secondary Rune [display_order] => 8 [is_deprecated] => 0 [is_deleted] => 0 [comment_count] => 2 [last_comment_ts] => 2018-07-23 11:40:29 ) [3] => Array ( [reforged_rune_id] => 40 [display_name] => Scorch [url] => scorch [description] => Your next ability hit sets champions on fire, dealing 10-30 bonus magic damage based on level after 1 second. Cooldown: 10 seconds [short_description] => Your first ability hit every 10s burns champions. [client_id] => 8237 [path] => Sorcery [slot] => Tertiary Rune [display_order] => 10 [is_deprecated] => 0 [is_deleted] => 0 [comment_count] => 0 [last_comment_ts] => 0000-00-00 00:00:00 ) ) [secondary_path_reforged_rune] => Array ( [reforged_rune_id] => 62 [display_name] => Domination [url] => domination [description] => Burst damage and target access. [short_description] => Burst damage and target access. [client_id] => 8100 [path] => Domination [slot] => Path [display_order] => 0 [is_deprecated] => 0 [is_deleted] => 0 [comment_count] => 0 [last_comment_ts] => 0000-00-00 00:00:00 ) [secondary_reforged_runes] => Array ( [0] => Array ( [reforged_rune_id] => 30 [display_name] => Sudden Impact [url] => sudden-impact [description] => After exiting stealth or using a dash, blink or teleport, dealing any damage to a champion grants you 7 Lethality and 6 Magic Penetration for 5 seconds. The triggering damage will also benefit from the penetration. Cooldown: 4 seconds (on expiration) [short_description] => Gain a burst of Lethality and Magic Penetration after using a dash, leap, blink. teleport, or when leaving stealth. [client_id] => 8143 [path] => Domination [slot] => Greater Rune [display_order] => 7 [is_deprecated] => 0 [is_deleted] => 0 [comment_count] => 0 [last_comment_ts] => 0000-00-00 00:00:00 ) [1] => Array ( [reforged_rune_id] => 31 [display_name] => Ravenous Hunter [url] => ravenous-hunter [description] => Heal for 1.5% (+ 2.5% per [i]Bounty Hunter[/i] stack) of the damage dealt by your abilities. Earn a [i]Bounty Hunter[/i] stack the first time you get a takedown on each enemy champion. Healing reduced to one third on Area of Effect abilities. [short_description] => Unique takedowns grant permanent healing from ability damage. [client_id] => 8135 [path] => Domination [slot] => Tertiary Rune [display_order] => 11 [is_deprecated] => 0 [is_deleted] => 0 [comment_count] => 0 [last_comment_ts] => 0000-00-00 00:00:00 ) ) ) ) [threats] => Array ( [0] => Array ( [champion_id] => 89 [rank] => 4 [description] => Ahri is bothersome Pre-6, but you have the upper hand after you acquire Shadow Dance. Be on the watchout for her Charm, dodge it accordingly and then punish her. [champion] => Array ( [champion_id] => 89 [display_name] => Ahri [url_str] => ahri [title] => The Nine-Tailed Fox [key] => [description] => Unlike other foxes that roamed the woods of southern Ionia, Ahri had always felt a strange connection to the magical world around her; a connection that was somehow incomplete. Deep inside, she felt the skin she had been born into was an ill fit for her and dreamed of one day becoming human. Her goal seemed forever out of reach, until she happened upon the wake of a human battle. It was a grisly scene, the land obscured by the forms of wounded and dying soldiers. She felt drawn to one: a robed man encircled by a waning field of magic whose life was quickly slipping away. She approached him and something deep inside of her triggered, reaching out to the man in a way she couldn't understand. His life essence poured into her, carried on invisible strands of magic. The sensation was intoxicating and overwhelming. As her reverie faded, she was delighted to discover that she had changed. Her sleek white fur had receded and her body was long and lithe, the shape of the humans who lay scattered about her. However, though she appeared human, she knew that in truth the transformation was incomplete. A cunning creature, she adapted herself to the customs of human society and used her profound gift of beauty to attract unsuspecting men. She could consume their life essences when they were under the spell of her seductive charms. Feeding on their desires brought her closer to her dream, but as she took more lives, a strange sense of regret began to well within her. She had reservations about actions which never troubled her as a fox. She realized that she could not overcome the pangs of her evolving morality. In search of a solution, Ahri found the Institute of War, home of the most gifted mages on Runeterra. They offered her a chance to attain her humanity without further harm through service in the League of Legends. [spotlight_embed_url] => http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=hlalkAUkwqE [role] => Mage [defense_rating] => 4 [magic_rating] => 8 [attack_rating] => 3 [difficulty_rating] => 5 [damage_rating] => 3 [mobility_rating] => 3 [cc_rating] => 2 [toughness_rating] => 1 [utility_rating] => 1 [health] => 514 [health_increase] => 0 [mana] => 334 [mana_increase] => 0 [movement_speed] => 330 [armor] => 20.9 [armor_increase] => 0 [magic_resistance] => 30 [magic_resistance_increase] => 0 [attack_damage] => 53 [attack_damage_increase] => 0 [critical_strike] => 0 [critical_strike_increase] => 0 [health_regeneration] => 6.5 [health_regeneration_increase] => 0 [mana_regeneration] => 6 [mana_regeneration_increase] => 0 [attack_range] => 550 [attack_speed] => 0.668 [ability_power] => 0 [ability_power_18] => 0 [attack_speed_18] => 0.895 [health_
|
(Picture: Abigail Chandler)
The Causeway Coast
I spent a sunny afternoon in Ballycastle on the north coast and could have happily spent the whole weekend there.
The gorgeous view across Ballycastle harbour (Picture: Abigail Chandler)
I was taken on the Ballycastle Food Tour by the wonderful Caroline Redmond, who gave me an insight into the history of the area as well as the food (they have a slightly Scottish accent up there because it was once easier to trade by boat with Scotland than it was to trade with the rest of Ireland by road).
Caroline took us for a traditional Irish breakfast at The Bay Cafe, let us sample some wonderful seafood at The Central Bar and O’Connor’s Bar, and introduced us to the simply divine Thyme and Co.
I’d live on nothing but their pistachio cake and amazing bread if I could.
Next up on the #Ballycastlefoodtour was the sexiest plate of cake I've ever eaten at @ThymeandCo #discoverni pic.twitter.com/4Zfi2e0MED — Abigail Chandler (@Abby_Chandler) October 14, 2016
Visiting Ballycastle felt like being part of an old-fashioned community, where everyone knows each other and the fudge at the sweetie shop is made by the sister of the barman who just served you.
Ballycastle would be an ideal base if you wanted to explore the famous Causeway Coastal Route.
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Belfast culture
Belfast City Hall, Northern Ireland.
Belfast is a mini-break in itself, with enough to keep you busy without ever having to leave.
A hop-on, hop-off bus ride will give you the lay of the land and the history of the area, and tours of the stunning City Hall are free.
The Cathedral Quarter is packed full of cool narrow streets to explore, as well as being the home of St Anne’s Cathedral.
The area is also full of amazing street art, so walking down the road feels like browsing an especially cool art gallery.
Some of the amazing art to be found on the streets of Belfast (Picture: Abigail Chandler)
If you’ve got a rainy day on your hands, you could explore St George’s (covered) Market, a feast for the senses (mostly taste), or visit the Titanic Museum, recently named Europe’s Leading Tourist Attraction at the World Travel Awards.
The massive new museum is an interactive treat, with everything from immersive video exhibits to a ride that takes you right into the bowels of the ship while you watch it get made.
Kids will love the ride, and adults will feel a serious lump in their throat once they get to the first-hand accounts of the legendary ship’s sinking.
Titanic Belfast, a museum for all ages (Picture: Getty)
The food
With Northern Ireland currently celebrating their Year Of Food And Drink, there’s no better time to check out the country’s culinary delights.
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As well as the food tour of Ballycastle I also took a food tour of Belfast.
Our enthusiastic tour guide Sarah, of Little Pink Kitchen, stuffed our faces full of everything from Dulse (it’s seaweed, and I’m not sold on it) to The Fifteen tray bake as made by Ann’s Pantry, which I want to marry, please.
Found my new favourite dessert on the #BelfastFoodTour – the fifteen tray bake. Digestives, marshmallows, cherries, coconut. #DiscoverNI pic.twitter.com/nLcq5RguQ0 — Abigail Chandler (@Abby_Chandler) October 15, 2016
Just make sure not to eat anything before the tour – it’s basically four amazing hours of eating.
Northern Ireland is a country rich in food produce, from meat and fish to its apple orchards and vegetables.
While it used to export more than half of its food produce, it’s now in the midst of a movement to put that amazing local food on Northern Irish plates.
Belfast has hosts of great restaurants, including the Deane’s group of restaurants which includes the Michelin-starred Eipic, all of which use local food.
Their Meat Locker restaurant even has portraits of their local suppliers on the wall.
Hastings Hotels can tell you exactly where all the elements of your (amazing) Full Irish Breakfast came from and Belfast even has its very own chocolatiers.
How to taste chocolate with @CoCoutureChoc:
1. Rub choc to release aroma
2. Chew lightly
3. Let it melt on your tongue#BelfastFoodTour pic.twitter.com/c6V4z3CLBL — Abigail Chandler (@Abby_Chandler) October 15, 2016
But, despite all the incredible food I ate in Northern Ireland, I came away obsessed with potato bread. Sometimes the simple things in life are the best.
The hotels
The stunning Culloden Estate and Spa (Picture: Hastings Hotels)
I stayed for two nights at the five-star Culloden Estate and Spa just outside of Belfast, with a convenient train line from the bottom of the hotel grounds right into the city centre.
With great food and cocktails to die for in their newly renovated bar, it’s a beautiful city escape and the height of luxury. I even had the pool in the spa all to myself.
The Slieve Donard Resort and Spa (Picture: Hastings Hotels)
For the third night I headed to County Down’s four-star Slieve Donard Resort and Spa, home of the number one golf course in the world, the Royal County Down golf course.
Busier than the Culloden and enormously popular with golfers, even on a rainy weekend in October, the Slieve Donard has a two-storey spa, where the hottest Jacuzzi I’ve ever sat in overlooks the Irish Sea. Bliss.
The pool at the Slieve Donard Hotel (Picture: Hastings Hotels)
The drinks and the craic
Belfast’s nightlife puts the rest of the UK to shame.
From the Victorian splendour of The Crown Liquor Saloon to the trendy Muriel’s Cafe and Bar, with women’s underwear hanging from the ceiling like bunting, Belfast has something for everyone.
The Cathedral Quarter is home to classic Belfast bars The Duke of York and The Dirty Onion.
The former is a traditional, friendly bar with the ceiling and walls decked in fairy lights and vintage booze adverts.
The Duke of York (Picture: Abigail Chandler)
The Dirty Onion is in one of Belfast’s oldest buildings, and is made up of a huge beer garden, a semi-sheltered area in the bowels of an old building frame, and a traditional indoor pub.
This being Belfast, the crowd don’t let the drizzle keep them away from the beer garden, and bands play traditional and modern music both indoors and out.
Belfast can even boast its own local gin, Jawbox, brewed by the not-for-profit pub The John Hewitt and served the traditional way – with ginger ale. I’m a convert.
How to get there
Flights from London Gatwick to Belfast International can cost as little as £20, so it’s certainly cheaper than your average European break.
Where to stay
Hastings Hotels (02890471066) offers rooms at The Slieve Donard Resort and Spa from £125 per night and The Culloden Estate and Spa from £140 per night.
If you want a cheaper option, the Ibis Belfast City Centre starts from £63 a night, Carnately Lodge in Ballycastle starts from £70 per night and in Newcastle you can stay in Oakleigh House from £60 a night.
MORE: I was the first person to willingly spend the night in Warwick Castle’s ‘haunted’ 1,000-year-old gaol
MORE: 13 reasons every foodie should visit Northern IrelandAs usual, it’s a workout. There are thirty-six steps on the stairs outside of the doors at The Joe. And like everything about the old barn, there is history.
For me, those steps bring back memories of 1998. The Red Wings had just won another Stanley Cup (the last team in pro hockey to win back-to-back) and I was nine years old.
I thank God for my parents, who never skimped on opportunities to give experiences to us kids. On this crisp June day, the local ABC affiliate, WXYZ Channel 7, was having a poster contest.
Instantly, poster supplies appeared out of thin air (or likely from the small market at the end of our street). My brother and me began racing furiously to complete our designs in a short timeframe. Having 364 days of life experience on me and an eye for art, his was clearly better. But mine, simple and catchy, emblazoned with Channel 7 logos like the marketer I was born to be, was done quickly.
To this day, I’ve never seen my mom drive so fast. Easily driving at the speed of sound, we zoomed down the Lodge–––a freeway that cuts from I-696 right to the front door at the Joe–––all while my brother finished his poster in the car.
By 11:59 am, we made it and I still don’t know where she parked the car. I’m pretty sure the car idled in a no standing zone for at least an hour. Nevertheless, the station taped our posters to the wall along the steps of Joe Louis Arena, ready to be graded one by one.
To make a long story even longer (storyteller syndrome?), I won the contest. Pitted against my peers, that cunning mix of corporate sellout and just-enough artistic ability won me $50 to spend inside the Joe and VIP access to the team’s victory parade the next day. I spent it on the official championship hat and t-shirt that the players wore in the locker room. The hat was remarkably ugly and I lost it a year later, but you didn’t come here to listen to me talk about hats.Gary D. Cohn, the director of the White House Economic Council, wrote a resignation letter after President Trump blamed “both sides” in the deadly protest this month against a Charlottesville, Va., rally by white supremacists and neo-Nazis, according to three people familiar with the document.
Mr. Cohn ultimately changed his mind and decided in recent days to remain on as Mr. Trump’s chief economic adviser, said one person familiar with his thinking.
But in a stunning critique of the president, Mr. Cohn told The Financial Times in an interview published on Friday that the Trump administration “can and must do better” to condemn hate groups and “do everything we can to heal the deep divisions that exist in our communities.”
Mr. Cohn is an architect of a broad set of tax reforms that the White House hopes will deliver the first legislative victory of Mr. Trump’s tumultuous administration. The president next week will travel to Springfield, Mo., in a push to sell the tax reform package.Hey, everyone. A new backer beta build is live on all three platforms.
Our major focus over the past few weeks was reducing in-game memory usage and other optimizations. We are still optimizing, but things are coming along nicely.
You will also notice that Josh has been doing lots of balancing throughout various systems in the game. For example, traps should be extremely deadly now. If you weren't on the lookout before, you should be.
Hope you enjoy the fixes.
-Brandon
Fixed Issues:
Players can no longer move around with 0 health.
Capes no longer clip with armor on the character's model.
Hired adventurers no longer spawn inside of one of your characters.
Mods and Enchants that affect accuracy are now showing in the character sheet and inventory calculations.
The stash interface in shop UI was converted to the same page system that the stash uses otherwise.
Transition icons that are hidden to the user no longer become visible and usable after save/load.
If you convince Medreth and his party to leave the Boar Companion will now follow.
The displayed Accuracy value should now properly reflect the bonus granted by wielding a 1-handed weapon with no offhand equipment.
Offhand weapon accuracy no longer overwrites base accuracy.
The Bronze Beneath the Lake - Cladhaliath spear is no longer invisible in-game.
Boar Companion from Medreth's party no longer appears on every map if you save/load in Dyrford Village.
Mods for an attack are no longer duplicated if a character is stopped from completing an attack action.
Combat Music is now playing properly.
Memory usage no longer increases by 300-800MB after 1-2 save/loads or transitions.
Save files no longer become unreadable if PC loses power supply while the game is running.
Item tooltips often appear in front of the inventory and loot UI.
Distortion type FX no longer make UI elements disappear.
Spells and abilities are now changing the cursor state after use or when the user attempts to cancel the action.
Any Mods on acquired items now properly function after save/load
Missing male Godlike heads have returned.
Dexterity affects action speed now.
Visual elements and animated VFX on the action bar and character portraits are now properly hidden when Inventory/Character sheet are opened.
Art for scouting mode now aligns with selection circles.
Now able to open trapped containers after discovering the trap.
Difficulty changes take effect immediately now.
On death load now functions if an entire party is knocked out while one party member is dominated.
Best of weapons are now correctly displaying the damage type that they are using in the combat log.
"Trap Triggered!" barks no longer last a long time.
Crash when running public backer beta on Mac OSX Yosemite has been fixed.
Knock Down no longer becomes stuck in the "already activated" state if the target is gibbed before Knock Down resolves.
Abilities with very long descriptions are easier to read in character creation and level up.
AI will no longer move into standard range if they are commanded to cast at a distant target despite Perception range bonus.
Now able to equip shields in your right hand.
Paladin's description is no longer missing the word "Health" after x5.
The client no longer loads in paused if you save a paused game, close the client, and loading that game via the front end continue button.
Wizard's grimoire no longer appears in character's offhand while some types of weapons are equipped. - NEEDS VERIFICATION
Time stamp text size on saved games is now larger. - NEEDS VERIFICATION
Items held by NPCs in fog can now be perceived correctly. - NEEDS VERIFICATION
Abilities shown in character creation, below the Class banner, no longer display "Right-Click for details" in their tooltip descriptions. - NEEDS VERIFICATION
Double clicking sound effect is no longer present when users press buttons in game menus. - NEEDS VERIFICATION
If the Ranger or their Companion are knocked out near an enemy while the other is far away, they will no longer repeatedly fall unconscious. - NEEDS VERIFICATION
If you hire an adventurer when you have a full party, the adventurer will no longer be made with no items. - NEEDS VERIFICATION
Mip settings have been adjusted to complement our default zoom ranges. - NEEDS VERIFICATION
Knock Down now has the same range as standard melee. - NEEDS VERIFICATION
The "Next Tab" keybinding is no longer hard coded to the Tab key. - NEEDS VERIFICATION
If Knock Down was used to start a fight with a friendly target, they were not knocked prone. - NEEDS VERIFICATION
Hiring a 7th Party member and removing a BB Companion caused transitions to break progression. This should no longer be the case. - NEEDS VERIFICATIONBottles of ink from Germany
Writing ink and a quill
Ink is a liquid or paste that contains pigments or dyes and is used to color a surface to produce an image, text, or design. Ink is used for drawing or writing with a pen, brush, or quill. Thicker inks, in paste form, are used extensively in letterpress and lithographic printing.
Ink can be a complex medium, composed of solvents, pigments, dyes, resins, lubricants, solubilizers, surfactants, particulate matter, fluorescents, and other materials. The components of inks serve many purposes; the ink's carrier, colorants, and other additives affect the flow and thickness of the ink and its dry appearance.
In 2011 worldwide consumption of printing inks generated revenues of more than 20 billion US dollars. Demand by traditional print media is shrinking, on the other hand more and more printing inks are consumed for packagings.[1]
History [ edit ]
masi, an admixture of several chemical components, has been used in India since at least the 4th century BC.[2] The practice of writing with ink and a sharp pointed needle was common in early [3] Several [4] Ink drawing of Ganesha under an umbrella (early 19th century). Ink, called, an admixture of several chemical components, has been used in India since at least the 4th century BC.The practice of writing with ink and a sharp pointed needle was common in early South India Several Jain sutras in India were compiled in ink.
Many ancient cultures around the world have independently discovered and formulated inks for the purposes of writing and drawing. The knowledge of the inks, their recipes and the techniques for their production comes from archaeological analysis or from written text itself.
Ink was used in Ancient Egypt for writing and drawing on papyrus from at least the 26th century BC.[5]
The history of Chinese inks can be traced to the 23rd century BC,[6][7][citation needed] with the utilization of natural plant (plant dyes), animal, and mineral inks based on such materials as graphite that were ground with water and applied with ink brushes. Evidence for the earliest Chinese inks, similar to modern inksticks, is around 256 BC in the end of the Warring States period and produced from soot and animal glue.[8] The best inks for drawing or painting on paper or silk are produced from the resin of the pine tree. They must be between 50 and 100 years old. The Chinese inkstick is produced with a fish glue, whereas Japanese glue (膠 "nikawa") is from cow or stag.[9]
The process of making India ink was known in China as early as the middle of the 3rd millennium BC, during Neolithic China.[10] India ink was first invented in China,[11][12] although the source of materials to make the carbon pigment in India ink was later often traded from India, thus the term India ink was coined.[11][12] The traditional Chinese method of making the ink was to grind a mixture of hide glue, carbon black, lampblack, and bone black pigment with a pestle and mortar, then pouring it into a ceramic dish where it could dry.[11] To use the dry mixture, a wet brush would be applied until it reliquified.[11] The manufacture of India ink was well-established by the Cao Wei Dynasty (220–265 AD).[13] Indian documents written in Kharosthi with ink have been unearthed in Chinese Turkestan.[14] The practice of writing with ink and a sharp pointed needle was common in early South India.[3] Several Buddhist and Jain sutras in India were compiled in ink.[4]
In ancient Rome, atramentum was used; in an article for the Christian Science Monitor, Sharon J. Huntington describes these other historical inks:
Oak galls and iron(II) sulfate.
About 1,600 years ago, a popular ink recipe was created. The recipe was used for centuries. Iron salts, such as ferrous sulfate (made by treating iron with sulfuric acid), were mixed with tannin from gallnuts (they grow on trees) and a thickener. When first put to paper, this ink is bluish-black. Over time it fades to a dull brown.
Scribes in medieval Europe (about AD 800 to 1500) wrote principally on parchment or vellum. One 12th century ink recipe called for hawthorn branches to be cut in the spring and left to dry. Then the bark was pounded from the branches and soaked in water for eight days. The water was boiled until it thickened and turned black. Wine was added during boiling. The ink was poured into special bags and hung in the sun. Once dried, the mixture was mixed with wine and iron salt over a fire to make the final ink.[15]
The reservoir pen, which may have been the first fountain pen, dates back to 953, when Ma'ād al-Mu'izz, the caliph of Egypt, demanded a pen that would not stain his hands or clothes, and was provided with a pen that held ink in a reservoir.[16]
In the 15th century, a new type of ink had to be developed in Europe for the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg. According to Martyn Lyons in his book Books: A Living History, Gutenberg's dye was indelible, oil-based, and made from the soot of lamps (lamp-black) mixed with varnish and egg white.[17] Two types of ink were prevalent at the time: the Greek and Roman writing ink (soot, glue, and water) and the 12th century variety composed of ferrous sulfate, gall, gum, and water.[18] Neither of these handwriting inks could adhere to printing surfaces without creating blurs. Eventually an oily, varnish-like ink made of soot, turpentine, and walnut oil was created specifically for the printing press.
Types [ edit ]
Ink formulas vary, but commonly involve two components:
Colorants
Vehicles (binders)
Inks generally fall into four classes:[19]
Aqueous
Liquid
Paste
Powder
Colorants [ edit ]
Pigment inks are used more frequently than dyes because they are more color-fast, but they are also more expensive, less consistent in color, and have less of a color range than dyes.[19]
Pigments [ edit ]
Pigments are solid, opaque particles suspended in ink to provide color.[19] Pigment molecules typically link together in crystalline structures that are 0.1–2 µm in size and comprise 5–30 percent of the ink volume.[19] Qualities such as hue, saturation, and lightness vary depending on the source and type of pigment.
Dyes [ edit ]
Dye-based inks are generally much stronger than pigment-based inks and can produce much more color of a given density per unit of mass. However, because dyes are dissolved in the liquid phase, they have a tendency to soak into paper, making the ink less efficient and potentially allowing the ink to bleed at the edges of an image.
To circumvent this problem, dye-based inks are made with solvents that dry rapidly or are used with quick-drying methods of printing, such as blowing hot air on the fresh print. Other methods include harder paper sizing and more specialized paper coatings. The latter is particularly suited to inks used in non-industrial settings (which must conform to tighter toxicity and emission controls), such as inkjet printer inks. Another technique involves coating the paper with a charged coating. If the dye has the opposite charge, it is attracted to and retained by this coating, while the solvent soaks into the paper. Cellulose, the wood-derived material most paper is made of, is naturally charged, and so a compound that complexes with both the dye and the paper's surface aids retention at the surface. Such a compound is commonly used in ink-jet printing inks.
An additional advantage of dye-based ink systems is that the dye molecules can interact with other ink ingredients, potentially allowing greater benefit as compared to pigmented inks from optical brighteners and color-enhancing agents designed to increase the intensity and appearance of dyes.
A more recent development in dye-based inks are dyes that react with cellulose to permanently color the paper. Such inks are not affected by water, alcohol, and other solvents.[citation needed] As such, their use is recommended to prevent frauds that involve removing signatures, such as check washing. This kind of ink is most commonly found in gel inks and in certain fountain pen inks.[citation needed]
Health and environmental aspects [ edit ]
There is a misconception that ink is non-toxic even if swallowed. Once ingested, ink can be hazardous to one's health. Certain inks, such as those used in digital printers, and even those found in a common pen can be harmful. Though ink does not easily cause death, repeated skin contact or ingestion can cause effects such as severe headaches, skin irritation, or nervous system damage.[20] These effects can be caused by solvents, or by pigment ingredients such as p-Anisidine, which helps create some inks' color and shine.
Three main environmental issues with ink are:
Some regulatory bodies have set standards for the amount of heavy metals in ink.[21] There is a trend toward vegetable oils rather than petroleum oils in recent years in response to a demand for better environmental sustainability performance.
Ink uses up non-renewable oils and metals, which have a negative impact on the environment.[22]
Carbon [ edit ]
Carbon inks were commonly made from lampblack or soot and a binding agent such as gum arabic or animal glue. The binding agent keeps carbon particles in suspension and adhered to paper. Carbon particles do not fade over time even when bleached or when in sunlight. One benefit is that carbon ink does not harm paper. Over time, the ink is chemically stable and therefore does not threaten the paper's strength. Despite these benefits, carbon ink is not ideal for permanence and ease of preservation. Carbon ink tends to smudge in humid environments and can be washed off surfaces. The best method of preserving a document written in carbon ink is to store it in a dry environment (Barrow 1972).
Recently, carbon inks made from carbon nanotubes have been successfully created. They are similar in composition to traditional inks in that they use a polymer to suspend the carbon nanotubes. These inks can be used in inkjet printers and produce electrically conductive patterns.[23]
Iron gall (common ink) [ edit ]
Iron gall inks became prominent in the early 12th century; they were used for centuries and were widely thought to be the best type of ink. However, iron gall ink is corrosive and damages paper over time (Waters 1940). Items containing this ink can become brittle and the writing fades to brown. The original scores of Johann Sebastian Bach are threatened by the destructive properties of iron gall ink. The majority of his works are held by the German State Library, and about 25% of those are in advanced stages of decay (American Libraries 2000). The rate at which the writing fades is based on several factors, such as proportions of ink ingredients, amount deposited on the paper, and paper composition (Barrow 1972:16). Corrosion is caused by acid catalysed hydrolysis and iron(II)-catalysed oxidation of cellulose (Rouchon-Quillet 2004:389).
Treatment is a controversial subject. No treatment undoes damage already caused by acidic ink. Deterioration can only be stopped or slowed. Some[who?] think it best not to treat the item at all for fear of the consequences. Others believe that non-aqueous procedures are the best solution. Yet others think an aqueous procedure may preserve items written with iron gall ink. Aqueous treatments include distilled water at different temperatures, calcium hydroxide, calcium bicarbonate, magnesium carbonate, magnesium bicarbonate, and calcium phytate. There are many possible side effects from these treatments. There can be mechanical damage, which further weakens the paper. Paper color or ink color may change, and ink may bleed. Other consequences of aqueous treatment are a change of ink texture or formation of plaque on the surface of the ink (Reibland & de Groot 1999).
Iron gall inks require storage in a stable environment, because fluctuating relative humidity increases the rate that formic acid, acetic acid, and furan derivatives form in the material the ink was used on. Sulfuric acid acts as a catalyst to cellulose hydrolysis, and iron (II) sulfate acts as a catalyst to cellulose oxidation. These chemical reactions physically weaken the paper, causing brittleness.[24]
Indelible ink [ edit ]
A voter's thumb stained with indelible ink
Indelible means "unremovable". Some types of indelible ink have a very short shelf life because of the quickly evaporating solvents used. India, Mexico, Indonesia, Malaysia and other developing countries have used indelible ink in the form of electoral stain to prevent electoral fraud. The Indian Scientist Dr. M.L. Goel is the founding father of indelible ink in India and gave the secret formula to NPL (National Physical Laboratory) of India.
The Election Commission in India has used indelible ink for many elections. Indonesia used it in its last election in Aceh. In Mali, the ink is applied to the fingernail. Indelible ink itself is not infallible as it can be used to commit electoral fraud by marking opponent party members before they have chances to cast their votes. There are also reports of "indelible" ink washing off voters' fingers in Afghanistan.[25]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
"Think Ink!" by Sharon J. Huntington, Christian Science Monitor, September 21, 2004, retrieved January 17, 2006.
"A History of Technology and Invention" by Maurice Audin, page 630.
Ainsworth, Mitchell, C., "Inks and Their Composition and Manufacture," Charles Griffin and Company Ltd, 1904.
Martín-Gil J, Ramos-Sánchez MC, Martín-Gil FJ and José-Yacamán M. "Chemical composition of a fountain pen ink". Journal of Chemical Education, 2006, 83, 1476–78
, 2006, 83, 1476–78 Banerji, Sures Chandra (1989). A Companion to Sanskrit Literature. Motilal Banarsidass. ISBN 81-208-0063-X.
. Motilal Banarsidass. ISBN 81-208-0063-X. Sircar, D.C. (1996). Indian epigraphy. Motilal Banarsidass. ISBN 81-208-1166-6.
. Motilal Banarsidass. ISBN 81-208-1166-6. "Ink Chemistry" Joy T. Kunjappu, https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/ink-chemistry/3002158.article
"Essays in Ink Chemistry (For Paints and Coatings Too)" Joy T. Kunjappu, Nova Science Publishers, New York, 2001
Sources [ edit ]
N.a. (March 2000), "Bach Scores Turning to Dust in German Library", American Libraries : 24–25
Barrow, W.J. (1972), Manuscripts and Documents: Their Deterioration and Restoration, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, ISBN 978-0813904085
Reißland, Birgit; de Groot, Suzan (August 15–21, 1999), "Ink Corrosion: Comparison of the Currently Used Aqueous Treatments for Paper Objects", Preprint from the 9th International Congress of IADA, pp. 121–129
Rouchon-Quillet, V.; Remazeilles, C.; Bernard, J.; Wattiaux, A.; Fournes, L.; et al. (2004), "The Impact of Gallic Acid on Iron Gall Ink Corrosion", Applied Physics A, 79 (2): 389–392, doi:10.1007/s00339-004-2541-1
Waters, C.E. (1940), Inks, U.S. Department of Commerce, National Bureau of Standards, United States Government Printing Office
Further reading [ edit ]South Carolina has now lost its top two players in the 2017 recruiting class. Four-star wide receiver Stephen Guidry (Raymond, Miss./Hinds) took to Twitter on Friday afternoon to decommit from the Gamecocks.
Guidry, originally from Morganza, La., committed to the Gamecocks on March 1 but LSU and others have continued their pursuit of the four-star prospect.
“I’ll like to thank the Coaches and fans at The University of South Carolina for the opportunity and the vast amount of love but after discussing things with my family we feel it’s safe that I decommit from USC and reopen my recruitment,” Guidry wrote in a Twitter post.
Quarterback Jake Bentley, once considered a 2017 commitment, is enrolling early and has become a part of the 2016 class.
The Gamecocks have six commitments left in the 2017 recruiting class. All are considered three-star players in the 247Sports Composite.One of the many problems with games publishers continuing to give exclusive early game reveals to magazines is that the vast majority of the world’s gaming populace ends up basing its initial opinions of the game on hurried summaries and blurry scanned screenshots on forums. The lure of the free advertising in newsagents that a game magazine cover constitutes, even in this day of catastrophically low print sales, is too hard to resist, I guess.
So here we are hearing, via forumy types sharing info from the latest edition of German mag Gamestar, that Sim City 5 is happening at long last, and is presumably the Maxis game set to be revealed at GDC next week.
We’ll be barraged with trailers and pictures and details and all that jazz around about then, no doubt. In the meantime and if you absolutely must look at scans and translated summaries, you probably already know the kinds of places to go look. Us, we’re content to avoid re-summarising third-hand information and instead to simply acknowledge that a new Sim City is on its way. Also, to hope that our own John Walker will see it when he’s at GDC, and that he will find it to be a far stronger offering than Sim City Societies was.....................................................................................................................................................................................
Albuquerque Public Schools board member Analee Maestas is blaming nearly $700,000 in questionable transactions at La Promesa Early Learning Center on her daughter’s substance abuse problems.
Maestas, who founded the school in 2008, said she would “never jeopardize her reputation or her long career in childhood education by participating” in the alleged embezzlement uncovered by the Office of the State Auditor, according to a statement from her attorney, Marc M. Lowry.
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“Until this report was issued, Dr. Maestas had not been aware of the criminal activity alleged in the State Auditor’s report,” Lowry said in the emailed statement. “Not a single audit over the six years in question identified the specific problem highlighted in the State Auditor’s report.”
Julieanne Maestas – La Promesa’s former assistant business manager – diverted about half a million dollars from the charter school into her personal bank account from June 2010 to July 2016, according to State Auditor Tim Keller’s investigation.
In addition, she deposited about $177,000 worth of checks that were payable to the former executive director – her mother – as well as to her boyfriend, who was a school vendor.
The Journal has not been able to reach Julieanne Maestas.
Analee and Julieanne Maestas both left their positions at La Promesa in September 2016, and Julieanne “became extremely depressed,” according to Lowry’s statement.
Analee Maestas sought medical treatment for her daughter and “learned, for the first time, that Julieanne had developed a very serious substance abuse problem,” Lowry said.
“Dr. Maestas’ attempts to enroll her daughter into a treatment program after that diagnosis were unsuccessful,” he said. “Dr. Maestas now understands that Julieanne’s unresolved substance abuse problem is directly related to the issues highlighted within the State Auditor’s report.”
Lowry noted that Keller’s investigation did not find that Analee Maestas committed any wrongdoing.
During the six years Julieanne Maestas allegedly diverted school funds, the New Mexico Public Education Department audited La Promesa annually using an independent auditor, but never flagged possible fraud or embezzlement.
“The State Auditor’s report does not claim that any of Julieanne’s supervisors, including Dr. Maestas, was aware of, or participated in, the purported scheme to embezzle school funds,” Lowry said.
Maestas attended Wednesday night’s Board of Education meeting, but did not address the allegations.
On Tuesday, Officer Tanner Tixier, an Albuquerque Police Department spokesman, told the Journal that APD expects to file charges against one to three people involved in the case by the end of the month.
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“Our organized crime and white-collar crime unit is conducting an investigation,” he said. “We are working very closely with District Attorney Raúl Torrez and his team to determine what charges will be necessary.”
Keller’s “risk review” outlines specific potential criminal violations, including fraud, embezzlement, larceny and forgery.
La Promesa Early Learning Center was founded by Analee Maestas in 2008. The K-8 state charter school at 7500 La Morada Place NW serves a large number of bilingual and low-income students.
La Promesa’s financial issues came to light in February 2016 after the school submitted a suspicious receipt to the New Mexico Public Education Department for reimbursement. Analee Maestas claimed the $342.40 invoice was for carpet-cleaning at the school, but it appeared to have been written over and the cleaning company reported that it actually worked on ducts at her home.
Keller’s office investigated the receipt and issued a report, which raised concerns about nepotism in La Promesa’s administration.
“In effect, the Assistant Business Manager (daughter) reports to the Executive Director (mother),” the Office of the State Auditor’s 2016 report says. “At a minimum, this creates appearance of impropriety.”
The New Mexico Public Education Department assumed control of La Promesa’s finances in August 2016.Titanium Backup is probably one of the most useful apps you can use on a rooted device — but now that Android 5.0 Lollipop is rolling out to some devices, the bad news is that Titanium Backup doesn’t officially support Lollipop.
The good news is that the developer has released a test version that does work with Android 5.0.
Update: The first full version of Titanium Backup with support for Android 5.0 was released on November 14th. You can now download Titanium Backup 6.2 or later from the Google Play Store.
Titanium Backup is pretty much the app that makes me want to root any Android device I use. It allows you to backup and restore all the apps on your phone or tablet, along with associated data.
That way you can restore older versions
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, Kenny Rogers, Kidd Rock, Kid Rock, Trace Adkins Members of CountryWesternSingles.com also have reported they are looking for dancing partners that love dancing, square dancing, line dancing, dancing the two step, Country dancing, folk dancing, Polka, Minuet, Clogging, Cumbia, Contradance, Mazurka, Polojnaise, Quadrille, Redowa, barn dance, Schottische, Waltz, Partner dances including those that are mostly lead and follow, and pattern partner dances. Polka. Horseshoe Shuffle, Traveling Cha Cha, Sweetheart Stroll, Schottische, Cotton Eyed Joe, Western couple dancing is a form of social dance. Two Step, Waltz, Cowboy or Traveling Cha Cha, Polka, Ten Step (also known as Ten Step Polka[4] ), Western promenade dances, East Coast Swing, West Coast Swing, and Nightclub Two Step, Line dance, Square dance, Traditional square dance, Modern Western square dance.by Shaun Boyd
It was a harmless question. He asked it with no malicious intent. Still, the mere suggestion of it made my pulse race and my palms sweat:
“Is anyone interested in a game of poker?”
He gestured to a card table. An immediately recognizable chip-case rested on the felt. Atop the case was a brand new deck of Bicycle playing cards. My ears felt hot at the temptation. I desperately wanted to say “Yes.”
I have a gambling problem. I say that now even though I haven’t gambled in three years because I believe that once you’re addicted to something, the addiction never disappears. At best it lies dormant within you until an inopportune moment of indiscretion lets it loose again.
My gambling addiction started in college. I was there on full scholarship, I worked two days a week, and as a result I had a lot of spare money. I was introduced to a regular game, and was quickly hooked. My first night, I lost $15. I remember thinking that it was okay to lose that money — I justified the loss by telling myself that I had spent that money to learn how to play poker. With this single thought, I began a trend of justifying my gambling habit.
For newly two years, I met with this group of friends twice a week and got my poker education. Like anything else, if you do it enough you’re bound to get good at it. Interestingly, I know absolutely nothing about these people except their first names, and that they liked to gamble. That was our common interest, and that’s all that mattered. It wasn’t about making friends, it was about making money.
On my 21st birthday, I took $250 to the Poker Room at the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City. I lost it all within a few hours.
You’d think that logic would step in and tell me I was throwing money away, but I convinced myself otherwise. I wasn’t a bad player, or an addict, I had simply caught a bad run of cards. I justified the loss by reminding myself that I had easily won over $250 in the games I played at school. I was just among a different league of players now, and needed to adjust my play style.
I went back to the casino many times, and I had more success with it. As I became familiar with the other addicts, I learned how to play with them and win. Eventually, I thought that I had become so good at poker that I could do it as my career.
So that’s what I did. I left my day job in early 2004 to begin my new life as a professional gambler. I signed up for an account with an online gambling website and began playing poker 10 hours a day from the comfort of my own apartment.
For a professional gambler, I was thoroughly successful. I could pull anywhere from $300-500 a week. With these results, I imagined that professional gambling was the perfect life for me: I could earn as much money as I did working my day job, but this was a lot more fun!
Naturally, this success didn’t last long.
The gambling site began promoting the 2004 World Series of Poker — I became enchanted with it. I imagined that I could play alongside the Poker Stars at the young age of 21. With a $10,000 buy-in for the tournament, it nearly guaranteed I would be the youngest contestant there. I would be on TV. I would be a feature player and given a weird nickname like “The Kid.” And if I won the World Series, I would win several million dollars, retire at 21, and go down in Poker History.
I became engrossed in the fantasy. Saying “I wanted to go” would be an understatement — I needed to go, so I entered a “Qualifier” for the 2004 World Series of Poker.
To quickly explain the idea behind a “Qualifier” for the WSOP:
It costs $10,000 to compete in the World Series of Poker.
Most addicts aren’t willing to drop 10 grand to participate.
They are, however, willing to drop $220 in a “Satellite.”
Even more are willing to drop $24 in a “Qualifier.”
A Satellite is a multi-table tournament where the winners get a ticket to compete in the WSOP. For every 55 players in the Satellite, one “WSOP Package” is created. In other words, 55*($220) = $12,100. The site takes $1,100 of this for hosting the Satellite. The remaining $11,000 goes to a player (10 grand pays for the seat in the World Series, and $1000 pays for the trip).
So if 500 players participated in a Satellite, then nine “WSOP Packages” would be created. Consequently, the top 9 ranking players in that particular Satellite tournament would go to the World Series of Poker for the low cost of $220.
For the addicts who think $220 is too much to spend on a low chance at going to the WSOP, there is the $24 Qualifier. This is a ten person tournament where the top player wins a seat in the Satellite. In other words, 10*($24) = $240. The site takes $20 for hosting the Qualifier. The remaining $220 reserves the top player a seat in a Satellite.
I’m sure you see where this is going: In March of 2004, I participated in a Qualifier. I won, and thus received a chance to compete in a Satellite. There were 660 players in this particular Satellite, meaning that the top 12 would go on to the 2004 World Series of Poker.
I logged in to compete in the Satellite at 8pm. I played the best poker of my life for 7 solid hours until 5am. I placed 28th out of 660 players. I did well, but not well enough to walk away with a “WSOP Package.”
Losing the Satellite caused the downward spiral of my poker career. It’s what poker players call “tilt” — you let your emotions affect your game, and lose a lot of money because you’re no longer playing rationally.
I wanted to go to the World Series that year. Since I played rather well in one Satellite, I figured I should try again the next week. I signed up for another Qualifier. I lost. I signed up again, and I lost again. I continued in this manner until I had spent enough money playing Qualifiers that it would actually have been cheaper to simply pay for the seat in the Satellite.
When Saturday came around and I still hadn’t won a Qualifier, I dropped another $220 so I could play in that week’s Satellite. I played horribly, and lost quickly. Once again, you’d think that logic would step in — you’d think that I’d realize that I was literally throwing money away. But the next week I wanted to compete again…
I was addicted. I was no longer gambling as a means of earning income, I was gambling in order to quench my gambling thirst. Thanks to my overwhelming desire to go to the WSOP, I lost everything that I had previously earned from gambling profits. I quickly ended up “in the hole.”
Consequently, my “tilt” condition worsened because I started chasing my losses. Before long I was nearly $5000 in the hole. If I didn’t stop gambling, my situation would keep getting worse.
I finally made the choice to cut my losses and quit. I faced facts: I tried a career as a professional gambler and failed miserably. The money was gone — and it didn’t matter how much I regretted losing it. It had already been done — I made bad choices, and I paid for them.
Conquering my addiction took only one step: Eliminate Temptation.
I cut gambling out of my life. When anyone from my college poker group invites me to a game, I say no. Whenever I’m invited to a night at the casino, I say no. When the person who unknowingly asked a gambling addict “Is anyone interested in a game of poker?”, I said no.
“I heard that you played poker,” he said to me.
“I used to, but I can’t anymore. I have a gambling addiction.”
“I highly doubt you’ll get addicted from just one game,” he insisted.
“Look, I once had a 9-month stint as a professional gambler. It grew into a real problem for me and I had to stop. I made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t gamble again, no matter how harmless it seemed. So ‘No thank you,’ alright?”
In order to truly conquer an addiction, you have to commit to your decision to quit every day — because one moment of indiscretion could lead to a lifetime of regret.
Add to: Del.Icio.Us / Reddit / Digg / Stumble Upon / 9 Comments »Game makers compete to make the best games. However, we don’t compete to make the best tools, whether they are content creation tools, pipeline tools, analysis tools, or testing tools.
We’d all reduce our development costs and make better games if we could share the cost of developing great tools. In turn, better games should attract more gamers and more gamer money, which would benefit all of us. We all lose when bad tools lead games to crash, stutter, or otherwise leave gamers disappointed.
Unreal, Unity, and others have excellent tool sets, but they can’t solve all our problems. If they did, we wouldn’t need to hire programmers.
What opportunities do we see for open source collaboration in the game industry?
To start, I know we all need to make tools. Professional tools can have a daunting list of features:
Cut, copy, paste
Undo, redo
Search and replace
Source Code Management (SCM) integration
Bug tracking integration
Ability to push updates
Crash reporting
Skinable
Keyboard shortcuts
Testable and Scriptable (say using Python)
Syntax highlighting
Spell checking
IntelliSense
XML import and export
Docking and window management
Standard UI controls
Session recording and playback
Multi-document editing
Support localization
Media or Game specific tools would add even more features:
Timeline controls (A lot of media has a time component)
Statecharts (like Visio) (A lot of media has states)
A variety of 2D, 3D or audio controls, meters and widgets (think Maya or Sound Forge)
High performance 2D and 3D viewing
Audio and video capture and playback. Variable rate playback.
Metadata extraction (All media has useful metadata)
Control via multi-touch (A single slider may not be ideal for media manipulation)
Layers (to allow multiple content specialists to work on the same ‘objects’ at the same time)
Separation of target and host (when you develop on PCs and target consoles or less capable devices, or multiple devices with varying formats)
Unlike throw-away tools, professional tools are hard to write (from scratch). Luckily, most of these professional features are common from tool to tool. Users want common, or better, identical functionality across their tools. They hate relearning variant UIs for each tool. Programmers adding new features to old tools also don’t want to have to learn a unique code base before they can be productive. The solution to making professional tools quickly and inexpensively is a high quality, modern tools framework.
Bill Budge came to Sony Worldwide studios nine years ago to create a tool to make tools, especially game tools. We called this effort ATF, for Authoring Tools Framework. We open sourced ATF on GitHub at GDC 2014. Although ATF offers most of the features listed above, this post isn’t a review or description of ATF. (For information on ATF: https://github.com/SonyWWS/ATF. Also, see ATF’s extensive wiki at https://github.com/SonyWWS/ATF/wiki)
We open sourced ATF, not only to do something nice for the game development community, but in the hope that ATF might be the start of something bigger. We want ATF to be a foundation for a long-term, open source effort enabling many game (and game platform) makers to work together on valuable (but non-proprietary) technology.
We aren’t the first company to open source tools or game technology. But game developers lack a place where open source contributions are vetted by a community of top developers. As Linux or LLVM have taught us, it’s not enough to upload some old tools or modules to GitHub and claim you are supporting open source.
Your contributions must be useful to many game developers. They need to pass code review, so they need to be well architected, documented, and include robust automated testing (so it’s easy for others to continue development). They should be modular, flexible, and efficient. They must pass all build or continuous integration tests. They should leverage common frameworks. Breaking changes should be minimized (and work arounds documented). New components must work with existing components and be non-duplicative. Like any ongoing software project, refactoring will be needed on occasion.
We believe game companies can collaborate if we focus on non-proprietary pieces, the stuff your top programmers don’t want to do, the boring stuff, if you’d prefer. Stuff like:
Automated testing
Performance Analysis
Common content editing tools (level editor, script editor, state machine editor, etc.)
Common networking components
Common social components
Common business components
Common pipeline components
Common asset management, asset workflow, and asset analysis
Analytics and Metrics
We want ATF to be an enabler for this long-term effort. If you’re interested, we hope you join our community, https://github.com/SonyWWS/ATF, and start contributing!
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RedditA while back I published an article titled “The Rich, the Right, and the Facts,” in which I described politically motivated efforts to deny the obvious — the sharp rise in U.S. inequality, especially at the very top of the income scale. It probably won’t surprise you to hear that I found a lot of statistical malpractice in high places.
Nor will it surprise you to learn that nothing much has changed. Not only do the usual suspects continue to deny the obvious, but they keep rolling out the same discredited arguments: Inequality isn’t really rising; O.K., it’s rising, but it doesn’t matter because we have so much social mobility; anyway, it’s a good thing, and anyone who suggests that it’s a problem is a Marxist.
What may surprise you is the year in which I published that article: 1992.
Which brings me to the latest intellectual scuffle, set off by an article by Chris Giles, the economics editor of The Financial Times, attacking the credibility of Thomas Piketty’s best-selling “Capital in the Twenty-First Century.” Mr. Giles claimed that Mr. Piketty’s work made “a series of errors that skew his findings,” and that there is in fact no clear evidence of rising concentration of wealth. And like just about everyone who has followed such controversies over the years, I thought, “Here we go again.”
Sure enough, the subsequent discussion has not gone well for Mr. Giles. The alleged errors were actually the kinds of data adjustments that are normal in any research that relies on a variety of sources. And the crucial assertion that there is no clear trend toward increased concentration of wealth rested on a known fallacy, an apples-to-oranges comparison that experts have long warned about — and that I identified in that 1992 article.As the sun rises over Palermo, a stretch of asphalt is transformed into a racetrack where yet another clandestine horse race is set to begin. The early hour, with its quiet roads and shuttered shops, provides a haven from passersby and, most importantly, the police. Horses paw the ground, moving nervously, spooked by the shouts of spectators and the sound of car horns.
Welcome to Fast and Furious, Sicilian-style, where horses are the cars that are exploited, abused, doped, forced to run to exhaustion and then thrown away. The past three years have seen a dramatic rise in illegal horse racing on the streets of Sicily, according to police. Illegal racing has spread around the island and spawned its own own Internet sites, photos, YouTube videos, fan pages and songs dedicated to champions.
The latest report by the Italian Anti-Vivisection League, one of the country’s largest animal welfare associations, offers a grim tally: over the last 18 years in Southern Italy, police stopped 111 illegal races, confiscated 1,238 horses and reported 3,344 people to the judicial authorities (46 so far in 2015). The most recent police operation was on July 22 last year when authorities stopped a race at 7 a.m. in a suburb of Palermo. The following day, the body of a horse was found near the motorway, a few hours after another illegal race in the Sicilian capital.
“Unfortunately, police forces are barely scratching the surface of the illegal racing iceberg, which in this city is seen by many as a normal part of everyday life,” Ciro Troiano, a manager at the Anti-Vivisection League told TIME. “Since 2013 there has been a dangerous decline in operations against illegal racing. And yet during the same year there was a massive increase of reports from citizens and of videos uploaded to YouTube by participants.”
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The races’ early start times are deliberate. “That’s when policemen go home after the night shift,” says Giovanni Guadagna, founder of Geapress, a Sicilian press agency for news on the protection of animals. A delay of several minutes in police response is enough time for organizers to stage a race, where, according to police, the value of a single bet ranges from $100 to $5,000, with sweepstakes of up to $25,000. Riders on scooters and motorbikes pursue the horses, goading them to the finish line by sounding their horns and shouting. Races are held on an uphill slope to avoid injuries to horses that have already had their foot nerves surgically severed so they feel no pain racing fast on hard asphalt.
For years, illegal horse racing has been the prize business of the ruthless Sicilian mafia, the Cosa Nostra. “It’s palpable that races are managed by the criminal underworld,” says state prosecutor Amedeo Bertone in an interview with TIME. “Individuals reported to the authorities are often part of the criminal system. Some have previous convictions for mafia association. However, racing is not just about the money, it’s also a hobby for Sicily’s wise guys who have always had an avid interest in horse racing and betting.”
Historically, horse racing was the most popular sport in Italy’s gambling industry. But, according to Snai, the leading Italian gambling business, over the last four years, 40 percent of legal stables have shut down. Former racing champions have been bumped from the glory of the track to the shadows of asphalt — and worse. On the morning of Sept. 30, 2012, in Palermo the body of a horse was found sprawled on the roadside in a pool of blood, its head smashed in. A label around its neck bore its name: It’s A Dream. The horse was the son of Varenne, a celebrated racer in harness. An investigation concluded It’s A Dream died in an accident while being exercised for an illegal race.
Keeping horses in legal stables is expensive — around $2,000 a month — so horses are kept in cheap, illicit stables. Police estimate there are more than 300 underground stables in Palermo alone, usually small units inside garages hidden in the labyrinth of alleys and courtyards. Conditions are grim in the stables, which are dark and devoid of drainage; horses are typically immobilized by ropes attached to their bit rings, anchored to the walls on each side. A dilapidated stable discovered last year was filled with an array of doping agents and antiinflammatories, injected into the animals to enhance their run.
If their life is awful, their end is abysmal. In 2013, three miles outside Palermo in the Pezzingoli countryside, the charred remains of a horse were found. Investigators say it had been butchered when it could no longer compete.
But there’s money to be made from death too. In March 2013, authorities discovered an illegal slaughterhouse in Ballarò in Palermo specializing in horsemeat, a delicacy in the area. Authorities believe criminals coerced local businesses into purchasing the racehorse meat for food. “It’s a business within the business,” Troiano says. “And I don’t think Ballarò is an isolated case. The health risk is extremely serious as doping substances injected into horses are harmful to people.”
The health of the horses and humans is a minor concern for the mafia. But under the cover of each night, horse owners and gamblers continue to prepare for the next short and explosive race, which will probably finish before the authorites become aware that it started.
Contact us at [email protected] displayed a picture taken by the Cassini spacecraft of Saturn and its glowing rings eclipsing the Sun, revealing in the shadow a barely noticeable speck called Earth.
There has been no shortage of conferences in recent years, commonly organized by the Templeton Foundation, seeking to smooth over the differences between science and religion and ending in a metaphysical draw. Sponsored instead by the Science Network, an educational organization based in California, and underwritten by a San Diego investor, Robert Zeps (who acknowledged his role as a kind of “anti-Templeton”), the La Jolla meeting, “Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason and Survival,” rapidly escalated into an invigorating intellectual free-for-all. (Unedited video of the proceedings will be posted on the Web at tsntv.org.)
A presentation by Joan Roughgarden, a Stanford University biologist, on using biblical metaphor to ease her fellow Christians into accepting evolution (a mutation is “a mustard seed of DNA”) was dismissed by Dr. Dawkins as “bad poetry,” while his own take-no-prisoners approach (religious education is “brainwashing” and “child abuse”) was condemned by the anthropologist Melvin J. Konner, who said he had “not a flicker” of religious faith, as simplistic and uninformed.
After enduring two days of talks in which the Templeton Foundation came under the gun as smudging the line between science and faith, Charles L. Harper Jr., its senior vice president, lashed back, denouncing what he called “pop conflict books” like Dr. Dawkins’s “God Delusion,” as “commercialized ideological scientism” — promoting for profit the philosophy that science has a monopoly on truth.
That brought an angry rejoinder from Richard P. Sloan, a professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia University Medical Center, who said his own book, “Blind Faith: The Unholy Alliance of Religion and Medicine,” was written to counter “garbage research” financed by Templeton on, for example, the healing effects of prayer.
With atheists and agnostics outnumbering the faithful (a few believing scientists, like Francis S. Collins, author of “The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief,” were invited but could not attend), one speaker after another called on their colleagues to be less timid in challenging teachings about nature based only on scripture and belief. “The core of science is not a mathematical model; it is intellectual honesty,” said Sam Harris, a doctoral student in neuroscience and the author of “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason” and “Letter to a Christian Nation.”
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“Every religion is making claims about the way the world is,” he said. “These are claims about the divine origin of certain books, about the virgin birth of certain people, about the survival of the human personality after death. These claims purport to be about reality.”
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By shying away from questioning people’s deeply felt beliefs, even the skeptics, Mr. Harris said, are providing safe harbor for ideas that are at best mistaken and at worst dangerous. “I don’t know how many more engineers and architects need to fly planes into our buildings before we realize that this is not merely a matter of lack of education or economic despair,” he said.
Dr. Weinberg, who famously wrote toward the end of his 1977 book on cosmology, “The First Three Minutes,” that “the more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless,” went a step further: “Anything that we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done and may in the end be our greatest contribution to civilization.”
With a rough consensus that the grand stories of evolution by natural selection and the blossoming of the universe from the Big Bang are losing out in the intellectual marketplace, most of the discussion came down to strategy. How can science fight back without appearing to be just one more ideology?
“There are six billion people in the world,” said Francisco J. Ayala, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Irvine, and a former Roman Catholic priest. “If we think that we are going to persuade them to live a rational life based on scientific knowledge, we are not only dreaming — it is like believing in the fairy godmother.”
“People need to find meaning and purpose in life,” he said. “I don’t think we want to take that away from them.”
Lawrence M. Krauss, a physicist at Case Western Reserve University known for his staunch opposition to teaching creationism, found himself in the unfamiliar role of playing the moderate. “I think we need to respect people’s philosophical notions unless those notions are wrong,” he said.
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“The Earth isn’t 6,000 years old,” he said. “The Kennewick man was not a Umatilla Indian.” But whether there really is some kind of supernatural being — Dr. Krauss said he was a nonbeliever — is a question unanswerable by theology, philosophy or even science. “Science does not make it impossible to believe in God,” Dr. Krauss insisted. “We should recognize that fact and live with it and stop being so pompous about it.”
That was just the kind of accommodating attitude that drove Dr. Dawkins up the wall. “I am utterly fed up with the respect that we — all of us, including the secular among us — are brainwashed into bestowing on religion,” he said. “Children are systematically taught that there is a higher kind of knowledge which comes from faith, which comes from revelation, which comes from scripture, which comes from tradition, and that it is the equal if not the superior of knowledge that comes from real evidence.”
By the third day, the arguments had become so heated that Dr. Konner was reminded of “a den of vipers.”
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“With a few notable exceptions,” he said, “the viewpoints have run the gamut from A to B. Should we bash religion with a crowbar or only with a baseball bat?”
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His response to Mr. Harris and Dr. Dawkins was scathing. “I think that you and Richard are remarkably apt mirror images of the extremists on the other side,” he said, “and that you generate more fear and hatred of science.”
Dr. Tyson put it more gently. “Persuasion isn’t always ‘Here are the facts — you’re an idiot or you are not,’ ” he said. “I worry that your methods” — he turned toward Dr. Dawkins — “how articulately barbed you can be, end up simply being ineffective, when you have much more power of influence.”
Chastened for a millisecond, Dr. Dawkins replied, “I gratefully accept the rebuke.”
In the end it was Dr. Tyson’s celebration of discovery that stole the show. Scientists may scoff at people who fall back on explanations involving an intelligent designer, he said, but history shows that “the most brilliant people who ever walked this earth were doing the same thing.” When Isaac Newton’s “Principia Mathematica” failed to account for the stability of the solar system — why the planets tugging at one another’s orbits have not collapsed into the Sun — Newton proposed that propping up the mathematical mobile was “an intelligent and powerful being.”
It was left to Pierre Simon Laplace, a century later, to take the next step. Hautily telling Napoleon that he had no need for the God hypothesis, Laplace extended Newton’s mathematics and opened the way to a purely physical theory.
“What concerns me now is that even if you’re as brilliant as Newton, you reach a point where you start basking in the majesty of God and then your discovery stops — it just stops,” Dr. Tyson said. “You’re no good anymore for advancing that frontier, waiting for somebody else to come behind you who doesn’t have God on the brain and who says: ‘That’s a really cool problem. I want to solve it.’ ”
“Science is a philosophy of discovery; intelligent design is a philosophy of ignorance,” he said. “Something fundamental is going on in people’s minds when they confront things they don’t understand.”
He told of a time, more than a millennium ago, when Baghdad reigned as the intellectual center of the world, a history fossilized in the night sky. The names of the constellations are Greek and Roman, Dr. Tyson said, but two-thirds of the stars have Arabic names. The words “algebra” and “algorithm” are Arabic.
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But sometime around 1100, a dark age descended. Mathematics became seen as the work of the devil, as Dr. Tyson put it. “Revelation replaced investigation,” he said, and the intellectual foundation collapsed.
He did not have to say so, but the implication was that maybe a century, maybe a millennium from now, the names of new planets, stars and galaxies might be Chinese. Or there may be no one to name them at all.
Before he left to fly back home to Austin, Dr. Weinberg seemed to soften for a moment, describing religion a bit fondly as a crazy old aunt.
“She tells lies, and she stirs up all sorts of mischief and she’s getting on, and she may not have that much life left in her, but she was beautiful once,” he lamented. “When she’s gone, we may miss her.”
Dr. Dawkins wasn’t buying it. “I won't miss her at all,” he said. “Not a scrap. Not a smidgen.”Study: Marijuana users are more creative — but it might not be because of marijuana
A new study suggests that differences in personality traits account for the link between marijuana use and enhanced creativity.
“I became interested in this topic upon the realization that a number of my favorite musicians and artists were well known for their cannabis use, and that this cannabis use was commonly thought to have been a cause of the creative success of many artists,” explained study author Emily LaFrance, a graduate student at Washington State University.
“I began to wonder about this commonly held idea – are cannabis users really more creative than non-users? And if so, is this because cannabis use makes them more creative, or is something else causing differences in creativity between users and non-users?”
For their study, which was published in Consciousness and Cognition, the researchers had 412 cannabis users and 309 non-users complete a series of psychological tests.
They found that cannabis users tended to be more extraverted and also tended to be more open to new experiences.
Cannabis users self-reported higher levels of artistic creativity than non-users, but they did not report a higher number of creative works or achievements.
Cannabis users also performed better than non-users on a test of convergent thinking — meaning the creative process of narrowing down potential solutions to find one correct answer.
But the statistical relationship between cannabis use and creativity disappeared when the researchers accounted for the effect of openness to experience. The results suggest that cannabis users’ higher levels of openness to experience are responsible for their enhanced creativity.
“The average person should understand that according to the results of this study, cannabis users may be more creative than non-users, but this is not because using cannabis has increased their creativity. Instead, cannabis users tend to have different personality traits (they are more open to experience) than non-users, and this openness to experience is associated with both cannabis use, and heightened creativity,” LaFrance told PsyPost.
“So, cannabis use does not increase creativity, but certain personality traits tend to increase the likelihood that one will use cannabis, and that they will also be more creative.”
The study only examined sober cannabis users. Previous research, however, has found some evidence that cannabis intoxication is linked to a temporary increase in divergent thinking, another form of creativity.
“It is important to keep in mind that we did not assess the impact of being acutely high on cannabis on creativity,” LaFrance said. “Previous studies have done this, and results have been mixed. Some studies have found certain types of creativity are enhanced, others have found no effect of acute cannabis intoxication on creativity. However, no study has examined the role of personality differences between users and non-users when exploring the effect of cannabis intoxication on creativity.”
The study, “Inspired by Mary Jane? Mechanisms underlying enhanced creativity in cannabis users“, was co-authored by Carrie Cuttler.Perhaps Amazon should have been a little more generous?
According to a new book, Amazon was keen to buy Netflix in 1999. Quite understandable given its potential. But it only offered $12 million for the then-startup. The derisory offer was rejected and the rest, as they say, is history; Netflix now has a market value of a cool $3.7 billion.
The ingeniously-titled Netflixed is a history of the company that details the 1999 meeting between Amazon's Jeff Bezos and Netflix founders Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph. And yes (haha), the book is available at Amazon.
So what happened next? Hastings tried to sell to Blockbuster for $50 million, but it rejected the offer. Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy in 2010 while Netflix has gone from strength to strength, though it has had recent problems of its own, not least when it attempted to sell off its DVD business and its share price declined.
Dish Network has just announced it is to abandon US plans to relaunch Blockbuster as a Netflix rival.
And just two weeks ago, Hastings called Amazon Prime Instant Video "a confusing mess",
Hitting targets
Netflix has undergone a successful international rollout over the last couple of years though, while its userbase is increasing, profits were down in the second quarter by a whopping 91 per cent and the company warned it may not hit its goal of seven million new subscribers this year.
Amazon tried its own subscription services in various territories until it eventually decided it would buy LoveFilm outright in 2011 (it previously had a stake in the company) for around £200 million ($322 million USD).
Via CnetRIO DE JANEIRO — Brazil was still mourning the victims of one of its most agonizing sports tragedies, the crash of a plane carrying the Chapecoense soccer team. But the country’s scandal-plagued Congress had its own priorities: gutting what was supposed to be a pioneering anticorruption bill.
Shortly after President Michel Temer declared three days of official mourning for the victims of the crash, Brazilian legislators held a marathon session that went into early Wednesday. The result: legislation that could significantly erode the authority of prosecutors and judges who are investigating politicians in corruption cases.
“It was disrespectful to have voted on this on a day of mourning,” said Andrew Moreira do Nascimento, 28, the co-owner of a restaurant in São Paulo. “The focus was completely off them because of Chapecoense, and they took advantage. We’re represented by people whose own interests are their main concern.”
Many members of Brazil’s lower house are facing graft cases of their own. By watering down the anticorruption bill, they not only stirred the anger of their constituents but also set up a clash with the judiciary, heightening tensions among branches of the federal government.‘I am fed up with the Bulgarians,’ Putin tells Erdoğan
Deniz Zeyrek ANKARA
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Russian President Vladimir Putin speak during the latter's visit to Ankara, Dec. 1. AA Photo
Bulgarian authorities creating difficulties is the main reason why Russia scrapped the South Stream pipeline project, Russian President Vladimir Putin told President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan during their meeting on Dec. 1, according to Turkish diplomatic sources.“I am fed up with Bulgarians. Having the West and the European Union at their back, they are challenging and opposing us. They are delaying the project,” Putin reportedly told Erdoğan during the Turkey-Russia High-Level Cooperation Council meeting.The Russian president announced the end of the much-anticipated South Stream pipeline project at a joint press conference with Erdoğan on Dec. 1. The project was planned to carry 63 billion cubic meters of natural gas to European markets via a pipeline under the Black Sea and Bulgaria.Putin’s unexpected statement created shockwaves not only in Moscow, but also in Sofia, which was expecting to earn some 400 million euros as a transit country.Putin’s declaration came as a surprise, as even his closest right-hand men heard about the cancelation of the project through his talks with the Erdoğan-led Turkish team. The scrapping of the South Stream project pushed Putin and Erdoğan to explore new routes for the pipeline, and both leaders have agreed to begin technical work for the construction of a new pipeline from Russia to Turkey. Around 50 billion
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PM Modi.Surendran wanted the nod to attend the 22nd general assembly session of UNWTO (United Nations' World Toursim Organsiation) to be held from September 11-16. Surendran’s office said the MEA gave no reason for denying the permission.Surendran was invited by the UNWTO as a full-time member and no other ministers from any other state were in the list. He said the denial by the central government is an insult to the Kerala government and alleged that it might be due to political reasons.The minister said that he applied in advance but the MEA kept on delaying the process.The theme for this year's meet is Tourism and Sustainable Goals — Journey to 2030. Surendran said it was a great opportunity for the state to participate in such a meet. Kerala had received awards from UNWTO for their initiatives in "responsible tourism".ADVERTISEMENT
I study Gene Kelly, the classic Hollywood song-and-dance man, for a living. I publish articles on his life and career. I require my introductory film students to watch Singin' in the Rain. Once, I even taught a class focused solely on Gene Kelly's choreographic contributions to the film musical.
By extension, I also study the (very active) fandom associated with Gene Kelly. Although he has been dead nearly 20 years, devoted fans still share fan fiction, original artwork, personal blogs and Tumblrs, cosplay, video tributes, and — among the most devoted — tattoos. With ink, they literally mark themselves as Gene Kelly fans.
Over the years, I have come across dozens of Gene Kelly tattoos. Some are simple: his autograph, a profile of his dancing, a lamppost surrounded by music notes and raindrops in honor of his most famous role. Lion City Tattoos highlights the latter in a short documentary; the ad executive getting the lamppost tattoo admits to watching Singin' in the Rain "every single day when she was a kid."
But most tattoos related to Gene Kelly are elaborate, intricate portraits that so resemble the original image it’s hard to believe they’re etched on human skin. See, for example, these created by tattoo artists Sam Stokes, Marcus Ottner, and Andrew Sussman.
For decades, scholars avoided studying pleasure — and thus fandom — as it relates to media like cinema and television. For the most part, they deemed it unworthy of attention. Some scholars like Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno condemned altogether the pleasures afforded by mass-produced film, TV, music, and magazines. They saw each as a repetitive product churned out like the automobiles in Henry Ford’s factories. Such objects, Horkheimer and Adorno argued, were dangerous (as opposed to thought-provoking "high" art) because they supposedly lulled audiences into passive states of mind.
But this attitude changed in the 1980s, when scholars began seriously studying popular audiences and understanding the various pleasures they derived from watching, using, and interpreting movies, TV shows, and books. To this end, scholars learned that audiences who engage with popular culture are, in fact, not passive spectators. Rather, they actively make meaning through media.
Fans, or audiences with strong relationships and loyalty to particular cultural texts, often use media even more actively. They draw Judy Garland and Gene Kelly in amorous positions. They write fan fiction that places the leads from Singin' in the Rain in a ménage à trois. They create videos like "Let's Dance" and "Dancin' with Myself" by splicing together the star's film and/or TV appearances. And they get tattoos.
While fans apply tattoos for various reasons, the tattoos virtually always represent something significant in their lives. Take Donna, who got a tattoo of Gene Kelly because, as a teenager, she loved his "effortless grace and wit." Now 40, she tells me she will "never tire of seeing his face on [her] arm." After all, she explains, "tattoos are expressions of things you love and how you'd like others to see you."
Rachael, who has over 16 tattoos, commissioned her tattoo of Gene Kelly for different reasons:
I grew up dancing and competing. My specialty was tap. I wanted a tattoo to represent dance and how happy it makes me. I chose someone to represent each style of dance I studied. Gene is such an icon and, let's face it, super handsome, so he was a no-brainer as my tapper.
For Rachael, having a tattoo is like "having a string tied around your finger, but permanently." Every time she catches a glimpse of one of her tattoos, it reminds her of "things that make [her] smile."
Mark, a professional dancer in England, got a Gene Kelly tattoo for similar reasons. Kelly was "always a huge inspiration, and Singin' in the Rain was the first song [he] danced to as a professional, so it will always hold a soft spot." For Mark, the tattoo "symbolizes everything [he] does in the profession": why he does it, why he loves doing it, and what it means to others when he performs.
Hannah is an artist who uses found footage of Gene Kelly in her work — a mix of sculpture, video, sound art, and poetry. She commissioned her tattoo of Gene Kelly as "an attempt to imbue some of his spirit into [her], to channel him more effectively in the work." She had the tattoo applied to her right calf because, as she explains, "My right side is dominant and I like to think of his power influencing my movements."
Of course, Gene Kelly isn’t the only pop-cultural figure to inspire tattoo levels of devotion. Fans of franchises as diverse as The X-Files, Queer As Folk, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Star Wars have gone to similar lengths.
Bethan Jones writes in depth about her X-Files tattoo, a quote from one of Mulder's opening monologues. The tattoo, she argues, is "an investment that arose out of pleasure." A devout young fan of the series, Jones collected X-Files posters, joined an X-Files fan club, and wrote X-Files fan fiction. Later, she began to integrate her fandom into undergraduate, master's, and PhD work. Jones writes, "The text from which the quote was taken had meaning."
Jennifer has a tattoo inspired by the series Queer As Folk (2000-05), a superhero with the words "Always have, always will" below. She got this one because she and her best friend watched Queer As Folk, and they have always shared the fandom:
Two of the characters on the show are best friends and "Always have, always will" is the line they say to each other. So she and I got matching tattoos to symbolize our fandom and friendship. Mine is on my ankle, hers is in the middle of her back.
More soberly, another fan explains why he applied to his arm this quote from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003), "The hardest thing in this world is to live in it":
I have struggled with depression my whole life. Buffy and Joss [Whedon] have had a big impact in my life. My tattoo is a reminder that no matter how hard things get, the hardest part of life is simply surviving. If I can survive, then anything else life throws at me is insignificant.
Last, a Star Wars enthusiast tattooed The Rebel Alliance symbol on his body not only because he loves the series, but perhaps more significantly, the "rebel" part applies directly to his life: "As an atheist and queer liberationist, I'm rebelling against my conservative Catholic past."
As diverse as these tattoos are, they’re all rooted in the same thing: the powerful, deeply personal impact that mass culture can have on our private lives. Tattoos based on fandoms are rarely a simple tribute to the movies or TV shows we love; they’re muses, reminders of a friend, acts of rebellion, testaments to survival. Tattoos may begin with a fandom — but they end with the self.I've been at or watched every Apple keynote and product launch event since 1998. I was there when they killed the CD drive in the Macbook Air and the 30-pin connector in the iPhone 5. I've witnessed the demise of every Macbook charger.
And I've never heard anything as ridiculous emanate from that stage as I did Wednesday, when marketing chief Phil Schiller explained why the iPhone 7 would not have a standard 3.5mm aux cable input, better known as the headphone jack.
SEE ALSO: Apple unveils iPhone 7 and 7 Plus without headphone jack
"It comes down to one word," Schiller said. "Courage. The courage to move on and do something better for all of us."
Schiller was thoroughly mocked for those words on Twitter, and rightly so. Courage is marching across the Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma in 1965. Courage is facing down a tank in Tiananmen Square or a machine gun nest on the beaches of Normandy. Courage, by definition, involves doing something that makes you afraid.
And what has Apple done? It has eradicated the most successful, most widespread and best-sounding audio standard in the world in favor of its own proprietary system.
A number of words come to mind to describe this. "Hubris" is one; "arrogance" is another. Given the amount of $9 aux-to-Lightning cable dongles Apple is likely to sell, you could use "greed." Personally, I'd opt for "stupidity."
So I can drop my iPhone 7 in the toilet, but I can't charge it and use headphones at the same time? #AppleEvent — Chris Taylor (@FutureBoy) September 7, 2016
This is in no way the equivalent of losing the CD drive or the 30-pin connector. There is no technological excuse for this. Music does not sound better over a Lightning cable. Nor does it sound better over Bluetooth, or the proprietary wireless technology Apple is using in its AirPods. There's simply more audio information traveling over a wire than can travel over the air.
Say it with me now: wired almost always sounds better than wireless.
For years, I tried to convince myself otherwise. I've bought so many sets of Bluetooth headphones that my wife still laughs about it. My favorites were the 66Audio BTS Sport cans, which I went running with. I ignored the occasional skip in the audio and focused on finally being free of all wires! I even managed to convince myself I didn't look like Lobot from Empire Strikes Back.
Then I bought the exquisite Bose QuietComfort 20 in-ear noise-canceling headphones, and I've never looked back. Do yourself a favor and check them out, even if you don't normally like in-ear phones (I generally hate the genre).
Turns out it's not so much of a hardship to run with a wire attached to your iPhone when the sound is this crystal clear.
Even if the AirPods didn't look like a dumb set of white plastic earrings, how confident are you that you won't lose them?
Courage is buying the $159 Apple Air Pods and then going home to tell your spouse what you bought and for how much. #AppleEvent — Richard Hay (@WinObs) September 7, 2016
The second most nonsensical thing Schiller said Wednesday? "It doesn't make sense to keep the jack, because space [inside the iPhone] is at a premium... we want stereo speakers, we want Taptic engines."
Oh really? I challenge you to find me a regular iPhone user who even knows what a Taptic engine is. If this is really about what "we" want, why not run a poll: Do you want your iPhone's home button to vibrate sometimes, or do you want to be able to plug in pretty much any set of headphones ever made in the entire world?
"Space is at a premium." So Apple did to the headphone jack what San Francisco is doing to the middle class? #AppleEvent — Chris Taylor (@FutureBoy) September 7, 2016
Not to mention all the other devices that plug into the phone's headphone jack. So long to Square's credit card dongle. See you later, temperature sensors, light meters, thermal imaging cameras and personal breathalyzers. Refurbish yourself with a proprietary Lightning connector and pay Apple for the privilege, or GTFO!
Talk about one step forward, two steps back. Here we are in 2016, and if you want the latest and greatest iPhone, you can't own the best-sounding headphones — unless you also use an expensive, unwieldy and easy-to-lose dongle.
Want to charge your phone? Sorry, you can't listen to it privately at the same time. Unless you're using inferior wireless phones, that is.
“[Airpods] instantly turn on and connect to your iPhone, Apple Watch, iPad or Mac[1].”
[1] Requires an iCloud account
WAIT REALLY? — Dan Hon is ⌨️ ing (@hondanhon) September 7, 2016
The old Apple mantra, "it just works," is officially dead this week. Having any set of cans whatsoever "just work" with any iPhone used to be a given — no matter if you got them 10 years ago, 20 years ago or in the box with an Android phone.
Now Apple has retreated into its walled garden, and it has built the wall higher. It is a wall beyond the dreams of Trump. And guess who's paying for that wall? You.
That's not courage, but it may provoke a large amount of pure rage.Five people were wounded in a shooting and stabbing terror attack on Thursday afternoon when a Palestinian man opened fire on HaBaron Hirsch Street in Petah Tikva near the city's crowded market.
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The shooter, a 19-year-old from the Nablus area, fled the scene but was shortly thereafter captured by civilians, who neutralized him using a sewing machine. He was then arrested by police and taken to the hospital for treatment.
The terrorist started his attack on HaBaron Hirsch Street, moving westward, all the while firing at people standing at a bus station and milling about the market.
Civilians chasing after terrorist
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He then turned right on Montefiore, continuously shooting. People chased him down, attempting to neutralize him. When the terrorist reached a sewing machine shop, he started attacking people with a screwdriver after his firearm, a makeshift rifle, jammed.
Some of the people finally managed to neutralize the terrorist by throwing a sewing machine at him. Eye witnesses said that while he was lying on the ground, neutralized, he kept screaming, "Help, help."
The attacker arrested
The wounded were taken to the Beilinson Hospital at the Rabin Medical Center in the city.
A 40-year-old man suffered stab wounds to his upper body and was in moderate condition. Another, a man around 30, hit his head during the incident and is also in moderate condition.
A man and a woman around 50 and another woman around 30 suffered from gunshot wounds to the lower extremities.
Additionally, three were suffering from shock and taken to the hospital as well.
The sewing machine that was used to neutralize the terrorist (Photo: Dana Kopel)
"We heard a lot of gunfire, people were running at every direction. Some chased after the terrorist," an eye witness said.
"I saw a commotion and people running after the terrorist," Magen David Adom paramedic Azaria Cohen said. "Along with other MDA paramedics, we chased after the terrorist on motorcycles."
The paramedics noticed a man around 40 years old who was suffering from injuries to his neck, who told them he was stabbed while trying to capture the terrorist, and treated him on the scene before taking him to the hospital.
"I heard gunfire and people shouting 'Terrorist, terrorist!' The terrorist ran and I chased him for two or three blocks with four other people," Avi Asaf, who was stabbed by the terrorist, recounted from his hospital bed.
The terrorist entered a sewing machine store and Asaf followed. "He took two screwdrivers and tried to stab me. I took a chair to stop him. Somehow he managed to stab me in the ear and neck."
צילום: ירון דרוקמןI grew up in a particularly conservative part of the already conservative state of Indiana. I voted for Bob Dole in 1996 and George Bush in 2000, generally because—though I'm not a conservative (I'm a libertarian)—I'd always thought the GOP was the party of limited government. By 2002, I was less sure of that. And by 2004, I was so fed up with the party that I did what I thought I'd never do—vote for an unabashed leftist for president.
Since then, "fed up" has soured to "given up." The Republican Party has exiled its Goldwater-Reagan wing and given up all pretense of any allegiance to limited government. In the last eight years, the GOP has given us a monstrous new federal bureaucracy in the Department of Homeland Security. In the prescription drug benefit, it's given us the largest new federal entitlement since the Johnson administration. Federal spending—even on items not related to war or national security—has soared. And we now get to watch as the party that's supposed to be "free market" nationalizes huge chunks of the economy's financial sector.
This isn't to say that Barack Obama would be any better. Government would undoubtedly grow under his watch. And from my libertarian perspective, he has been increasingly disappointing even on the issues where he's supposed to be good. We may not go to war with Iran in an Obama administration, but we'd likely become entrenched in a prolonged nation-building adventure in the Sudan. Obama's vote on the FISA bill and telecom immunity also suggests that, for all his criticisms of President Bush's use of executive power and assaults on civil liberties, Obama wouldn't be much better. On the drug war, Obama has promised to end the federal raids on medical marijuana clinics in states that have legalized the drug for treatment, but he wants to resurrect failed federal criminal justice block grant programs that have had some disastrous effects on civil liberties.
While I'm not thrilled at the prospect of an Obama administration (especially with a friendly Congress), the Republicans still need to get their clocks cleaned in two weeks, for a couple of reasons.
First, they had their shot at holding power, and they failed. They've failed in staying true to their principles of limited government and free markets. They've failed in preventing elected leaders of their party from becoming corrupted by the trappings of power, and they've failed to hold those leaders accountable after the fact. Congressional Republicans failed to rein in the Bush administration's naked bid to vastly expand the power of the presidency (a failure they're going to come to regret should Obama take office in January). They failed to apply due scrutiny and skepticism to the administration's claims before undertaking Congress' most solemn task—sending the nation to war. I could go on.
As for the Bush administration, the only consistent principle we've seen from the White House over the last eight years is that of elevating the American president (and, I guess, the vice president) to that of an elected dictator. That isn't hyperbole. This administration believes that on any issue that can remotely be tied to foreign policy or national security (and on quite a few other issues as well), the president has boundless, limitless, unchecked power to do anything he wants. They believe that on these matters, neither Congress nor the courts can restrain him.
That's the second reason the GOP needs to lose. American voters need to send a clear, convincing repudiation of these dangerous ideas.
If they do lose, the GOP would be wise to regroup and rebuild from scratch, scrap the current leadership, and, most importantly, purge the party of the "national greatness," neoconservative influence. Big-government conservatism has bloated the federal government, bogged us down in what will ultimately be a trillion-dollar war, and set us down the road to European-style socialism. It's hard to think of how Obama could be worse. He'll just be bad in different ways.
The truth is, unless you vote for a third-party candidate (which really isn't a bad idea), you don't have much of a choice this November. You can either endorse the idea of a massive, invasive, ever-encroaching federal government that's used to promote center-left ideology, or you can endorse the idea of a massive, invasive, ever-encroaching federal government that's used to promote center-right ideology.
Sadly, if the GOP does lose, it's likely to be interpreted not as a repudiation of the GOP's excesses, but as an endorsement of the Democrats'. When the only two parties who have a chance at winning both have a track record of expanding the size and scope of government, every election is likely to be interpreted as a win for big government—only the brand changes.
Voting yourself more freedom simply isn't an option, at least if you want your vote to be taken seriously (and I'm not denigrating any third parties here; I'm just reflecting reality).
Which brings me back to why the Republicans need to get throttled: A humiliated, decimated GOP that rejuvenates and rebuilds around the principles of limited government, free markets, and rugged individualism is really the only chance for voters to possibly get a real choice in federal elections down the road.
Of course, there's no guarantee that's how the party will emerge from defeat. But the Republican Party in its current form has forfeited its right to govern.
Radley Balko is a senior editor of reason. A version of this article originally appeared at FoxNews.com.The Book is Getting Bigger!
We have heard from a TON of people! Backers, fans, Gen Con attendees, and forum-goers have all been letting us know they want this book. They have also been letting us know what they want to see in it, including some things we didn’t think of before. Long story short, all your energy has gotten us nerding out about what we can do with this project. We’ve been reworking sections and expanding them with even more content.
For example, one Redditor asked if we would be covering the specifics of how long it takes to build a tavern. While we had expenses, materials, and the like covered, actually outlining the number of days/weeks/months/years needed to acquire the resources and fabricate the building will now also be included!
Long story short. We’ve been writing more, and all this stuff isn’t gonna fit into 48 pages!?
We thought about issuing a new stretch goal, but decided that if we are going to do this, we’re doing it right! So we are making a ‘slight’ change to the project... We don’t think any of you will mind though.
The Red Dragon Inn Guide to Inns and Taverns will be a full color 96-page sourcebook!
What Does that Mean?
That means folks who have already gotten on board are going to get a book that’s twice the size of the one they were already receiving. We are also altering our stretch goals:
$12,000 - Condition Cards: The Condition cards will help you track just how intoxicated your characters are getting. Everyone receiving a hardcover copy of the Guide will also receive 6 sets of condition cards, enough for a whole party of adventurers and a little bit extra! If you have a softcover or PDF reward coming your way we will make a Option for you to add them to your backer level.
$15,000 - Tavern Tiles: We will make print-and-play tavern tiles, allowing players to easily build their own tavern floorplans! These tiles will be made available for free on our website as a downloadable PDF.
$20,000 - “The Cursed Inn” Adventure! If we can reach the $20,000 level, we will send everyone who donates any amount amount at any level (even a dollar!) all also receive “The Cursed Inn”, A first level pathfinder adventure.
Wait? What? Did you just say an adventure? Yes, we did! Okay, we’ll come clean... The real goal of this campaign is not just raising the funds to put together an amazing sourcebook. We want to see if people are interested in SlugFest Games going into RPG-writing! We actually have an entire Campaign planned. If we can reach the $20,000 level, we will commit to releasing additional 96-page adventures that will tell the story of the founding of the first Red Dragon Inn!
“The Cursed Inn” will be the first adventure in the story. You see, there is this crazy dwarf named Warthorn Redbeard and he just bought this great inn... but it’s kind of cursed and infested with beasties... and that’s where you come in. He needs some heros to clean the place up... of course this will just be the beginning. Trust us, we have some awesome stuff planned!
We really want to tell this story, but we need to see you all supporting us! If we don’t hit that $20,000 mark, we will not be able to devote time into developing the adventure series right now. If you want to see SlugFest Games deliver another fantastic story, spread the word!
Happy Gaming!
Sam
CliffPup a demon dog? Not so, says foster caregiver
Baby George Baby George Photo: Elaine Buchhorn, Courtesy Photo: Elaine Buchhorn, Courtesy Image 1 of / 5 Caption Close Pup a demon dog? Not so, says foster caregiver 1 / 5 Back to Gallery
SAN ANTONIO — A Comal County woman is considering legal action against the New Braunfels Humane Society, claiming it unlawfully put down a puppy described on the shelter's Facebook page as suffering from “unknown demons.”
The post has since been removed.
Elaine Buchhorn rescued the dog she named “Baby George” and sheltered him for a month before surrendering him the to the Humane Society with an offer to retrieve him if he wasn't adopted. She said she was outraged to read: “the pup is now free, free from whatever unknown demons were causing the aggression,” on the social media site last week.
Buchhorn said Tuesday night that she might file a lawsuit against the shelter's board of directors, claiming they violated a section of the Texas Penal Code, which requires them to provide necessary food, water, care or shelter for an animal in the person's custody, among other alleged violations.
Her son found the 11-week-old Dachshund-Chihuahua mix near his apartment and took it to his mother, who has rescued animals before.
Buchhorn, who owns two dogs, said she took the puppy to the vet to make sure it was safe to be around her dogs and her 2-year-old granddaughter. “He was very socialized,” she said.
The shelter's executive director Billie Zercher said the puppy was aggressive. “It tried to bite two of our employees on two different occasions,” Zercher said.
Buchhorn took Baby George to the New Braunfels Humane Society on Oct. 11, because she is only allowed two dogs at her residence, and gave the staff a directive.
“I said, 'Before you try to euthanize this dog, I will appreciate a call because I'll take the puppy back and try to find it a home on my own,'” Buchhorn said and described calling the shelter every day to check on the dog.
“They never admitted the puppy was aggressive to me over the phone,” she said. On Oct. 14, they told her Baby George had been put down.
“They do sign a release form releasing the animal over to us and all their legal rights to the animal,” Zercher said, adding that the Humane Society will hold an animal for 24 hours before choosing to either put it up for adoption or to euthanize it. The shelter listed 45 dogs and four cats available for adoption Tuesday.
“Our shelter policy is that we cannot put up an animal for adoption that has shown aggression,” Zercher said.
Patrick Greene of San Antonio filed a complaint Tuesday with the New Braunfels police and requested an investigation. He said he was enraged to learn from media reports that the dog was euthanized because of “demons.”
“A puppy doesn't turn at 11 weeks old,” said Greene, a lifelong dog owner. “He hasn't turned into anything because he is still becoming a dog. He is still playing. If he does get a little aggressive, you use a low, firm voice and say 'no.' You don't kill him.'”
Buchhorn called the ordeal “gut-wrenching,” and said she hasn't received an apology from the shelter.
“It still haunts me,” she said.“I'm living with the regret of taking him there, now.”
[email protected], [email protected] Dempsey was booked and then immediately sent off
Clint Dempsey has been banned from the US Open Cup for two years after ripping up a referee's notebook during a game.
The Seattle Sounders forward, 33, flicked the notebook out of Daniel Radford's hand, picked it up off the pitch and then tore it into pieces after a team-mate had been sent off.
The ex-Fulham and Spurs man was duly sent off, as Seattle ended with seven men in a 3-1 loss to Portland Timbers.
The US captain is banned for six games or two years - whichever is longer.
Dempsey posted on Twitter after learning of his punishment
Dempsey, who had already been banned for three Major League Soccer games for the incident, has chosen not to contest the new punishment.
During the game, Brad Evans was sent off and was followed by Michael Azira - which resulted in Dempsey's extra-time outburst. Obafemi Martins also went off injured with all three substitutes used.
Dempsey, capped 112 times by the US, had to be restrained by team-mates and sarcastically applauded in the face of an assistant referee as he made his way off the pitch.Jill Stein's crusade to expose voter fraud blows the lid off ballot box fraud in Detroit where Hillary Clinton won big pic.twitter.com/1Xw92L8krz — FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) December 14, 2016
The recount crusade of Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein may have turned up massive voter irregularities, but they're not the kind Democrats were hoping to find.
In heavily-Democratic Detroit, more votes than voters were found across the city and now state Republicans are calling for an investigation.
According to the Detroit News, voting machines in more than one-third of Detroit precincts counted more votes than the actual number of voters who showed up.
The statewide recount, which was stopped by a judge on Friday, could not be performed in those precincts and others.
The problems were the worst in Detroit, where discrepancies meant officials couldn’t recount votes in 392 precincts, or nearly 60 percent. And two-thirds of those precincts had too many votes. “There’s always going to be small problems to some degree, but we didn’t expect the degree of problem we saw in Detroit. This isn’t normal,” said Krista Haroutunian, chairwoman of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers.
Republican lawmakers in the state called for a probe last week after reports that a Wayne County precinct reported 306 votes, but had only 50 ballots.
Stein's recount efforts in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were spurred by claims that Russian hackers could have compromised the vote in some way.
The recount in Wisconsin ended up adding 131 votes to President-elect Donald Trump's total.
Read the full story here.
Muslim Teen Admits She Lied About Being Attacked by Trump Supporters
19 More Electors Join Letter Calling for Intel Brief on Russian Involvement
NYC Offers Post-Election Therapy to Workers Stressed Out Over Trump\
Cavuto Battles Gov. Richardson: 'Are You Saying Electors Should Flip Votes?'The race is over, the games done. You have a moment to collect your thoughts before you have a chance to make one instantaneous impression. Do you drop a word of wisdom, try to get in a quick correction, say nothing, or give a simple pat on the back and a “good job.”
Fast-forward fifteen minutes, after the adrenaline has worn off, and what’s the plan of attack? Do we go into a full discourse, breaking down the mistakes made, or do we simply let the athlete be, allowing them to process the information?
When we look at the post race/game debrief, as coaches, we are trying to decide what’s the message we are trying to convey. It seems like a straightforward process. Some ‘good jobs’, a few critiques, and move on to the next. Yet, what we say, and more importantly, how the athlete processes that information, has profound effects.
The Point of the Debrief
When we look at a debrief, we are attempting to accomplish a few goals:
Learn from the experience for future purposes Ensure the athlete has the correct framing of what just took place Set the athlete up for their next race/game
We often consider #1, the learning from the race as the most important factor. It’s why most of us try to jam pack as much information as possible into the debrief. Whether that’s a football coach immediately breaking down what went right/wrong on that last drive, or a coach telling an athlete you “should have kicked sooner, held the athlete off on the curve, got out faster, and so on.” As coaches, conveying information is on the forefront of our mind. Deep down, we are teachers, so when we see a problem or an incorrect “answer” our inclination is to correct it.
Loaded with information, having observed the race from afar, we approach the athlete with guns blazing, firing out information to our athletes or team. It feels good for us to convey our knowledge. We’re teachers after all. What we often fail to consider is whether that information reaches its target, our athletes. Yes, they might hear it, but does it result in a positive change?
The answer is often that it doesn’t. And the reason is the athlete the guns blazing approach can result in the athlete entering what I like to call, defensive mode. We’ve all experienced defensive mode, both in ourselves and in observing others. It’s what happens when someone starts critiquing us. Whether it’s our significant other, a colleague, or a friend, we’ve all been in that place where our shoulders tense up, we cross our arms, and regardless of the validity of what the person sitting across from us is saying, we don’t let it in. We create stories and justifications for why this person must be wrong. We ask why they are attacking us. We’re in full defensive mode and nothing is getting through.
After bad races, athletes are often automatically in this mood. They are upset, angry, and emotional. But even after good races, some athletes can be in defensive mode. Their internal dialogue might be “I just ran a massive PR, why are they trying to drag me down! Can’t I just be happy!”
As a coach, before any information is conveyed, we need to make sure that our athlete is receptive to receive that information. Or, in other words, that they are out of defensive mode. If we find that they are, we need to focus on allowing them to have space to process and calm down, or find a way to disarm them and bring their emotional reactivity back down to neutral.
To Critique or Not
In team sports, film review and critique is a right of passage. It’s the time when athletes and coaches get to reflect on what went right or wrong. In a study by Crewther and Cook, they took a Rugby Union team, and manipulated how the coaches gave feedback in their post-match review. Did the coaches offer positive, encouraging feedback, where they watched the successful plays, or did the players have to sit through negative feedback, where they were shown all of their in-game mistakes, with coaches offering commentary.
Did watching their success or failures improve the player’s subsequent performance? The researchers tracked the athlete’s performance in the next game, but also looked at their testosterone and cortisol levels. This way they could see if their underlying biology played a role. The players who received positive feedback, watching their success, not only played better the next game, but they also had a bump in pre-game Testosterone levels. Their psychology and biology were intertwined, and dependent on how they “debriefed.”
The process, and how, we debrief influences our future performance. It would be too simple to say that all that matters is a positive or negative commentary. Instead, the reason success or failure influences us so much, is related to how we internalize it.
(from Crewther and Cook, 2012- PCF= Positive Feedback, NCF- negative Feedback. Game rating- the lower the rank, the better the game.)
The Trouble With Timing
When trying to cure a phobia- such as a fear of heights, researchers and psychologists have found that one of the best ways is to use what’s called stress inoculation. The idea is simple, expose yourself to a tiny bit of your phobia, then immediately learn how to deal and process it. If you are afraid of heights, for example, perhaps we’d take you up on the balcony of the 10th floor of a hotel. Quickly afterward, a psychologist might help you to process and frame what just occurred.
From a physiological and psychological point of view, it makes sense. We can instantly connect our feelings of fear, the physiology of increased stress hormones, and the total experience to our debrief. We can work on changing our framing, right then and there. By reframing the experience as a positive, or as something that we can cope with, we’re wiring our brain to adopt that psychological framework the next time we experience the same fear.
As the neuroscience phrase goes, what fires together wires together. What were doing is trying to subtly shift our brain’s default firing of fear with that particular activity. But if the gap between the experience and the framing intervention is too great, the tactic doesn’t work. The person (and their brain) can’t connect the experience with the new outcome as well.
What this tells us that there are sensitive periods for correcting ingrained reactions. While this doesn’t mean that we need to instantly correct everything we see, it does mean that certain feelings and experiences should be addressed quickly.
That’s part of the art of coaching, knowing what needs to be addressed quickly to change, versus what can be allowed to sit for a while, so that they can process it.
When researchers Chris Meyers and Francisco Gino gave people a problem that was almost impossible (79% of participants failed) to solve, they noticed people tend to internalize why they failed in two different ways, by blaming (1) themselves or (2) external factors. When given a very similar, and difficult to solve, problem a week later, what the participants
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tasteful Giles fanfic. (JK! I haven’t read naughty Giles fanfic in years.)
Automatic Toaster: Deep neutral brown, nearly matte with just the slightest satiny finish. Deep neutral brown, nearly matte with just the slightest satiny finish.
Does what it says on the tin. A really nice, nearly-matte darkish brown.
Debonaire: Warm, shimmery lilac graced with a glowing coppery highlight.
YES MAMA. This is gorgeous. A warm light purple with strong reddish-coppery shimmer. Love. If you like purples, you need this.
Peppermint Vodka: Lush, rich, shimmering burgundy enhanced with copper sparkle.
Shimmery burgundy with coppery gold sparks. This one’s got a metallic sort of finish. Very pretty.
Kraken: Deep teal with a slightly smoky blue cast filled with shimmer and small sparkle which is bronze-gold from a distance, then appears lime green to blue the closer it gets to light or at certain angles.
My free sample! This is a weird one. The base seems matte, with copper and gold sparkles. From the description I expected it to have a more shimmery finish, like the other Arcane Magics I have. The matte + sparkle thing is a bit strange to me. Pretty color, though.
Nordic Angel blush: Vibrant pinky-peach blush with a hint of shimmer.
A pretty pinky-peach with a bit of gold and red shimmer. A bit more shimmer than I prefer myself in a heavy swatch, but when blended out it’s more of a slightly sheen-y satin finish. Really pretty.
Everything here is available from Fyrinnae. And don’t let the TAT scare you – it’s mostly a CYA thing. In reality they’re much faster than most other indies. I don’t think I’ve ever waited more than a week or so for an order. This time around, I placed my order on May 27th, it shipped on June 2nd, and I received it on June 4th.Investigation into direct violation of Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms should follow
Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Wednesday, Jun 30th, 2010
The Ontario government has declared that it never passed any secret emergency law allowing police to demand ID from protesters on threat of arrest in the vicinity of the G20 meeting in Toronto last weekend.
Last week multiple reports suggested that police had been given unprecedented powers to to arrest anyone near the security zone who refused to identify themselves or agree to a police search.
The Toronto Star reported:
“The regulation was made under Ontario’s Public Works Protection Act and was not debated in the Legislature. According to a provincial spokesperson, the cabinet action came in response to an ‘extraordinary request’ by Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair, who wanted additional policing powers shortly after learning the G20 was coming to Toronto.”
The Globe and Mail reported that there were no limits to police powers during the summit, and no clear legal precedent specifying what they could and could not do.
Throughout the weekend reports flooded in of protesters and even citizens of Toronto who were merely passers by being stopped outside the security perimeter and questioned by police under the amended law.
However, the truth has now emerged that no such amendment to the law was ever made.
“The Ontario government did not pass a secret law that gave police additional power to arrest people during the G20 summit in Toronto,” said Laura Blondeau, a spokeswoman for Community Safety Minister Rick Bartolucci.
Blondeau said that the rules only applied to a limited area within the security perimeter, not up to five meters outside it or beyond, as earlier reports quoting Police Chief Bill Blair had suggested.
Canadian Press reports: “Asked Tuesday if there actually was a five-metre rule given the ministry’s clarification, Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair smiled and said, ‘No, but I was trying to keep the criminals out.’”
As the Canadian Press article points out, police did cite the Public Works Protection Act when detaining and searching people outside the security fences. Furthermore, “Neither the province nor police set the record straight. In fact, both made comments about the necessity of such powers” in media interviews all weekend.
Yesterday, the Chief said he was originally under the impression that the five-metre rule applied to an area outside the perimeter but once he was told otherwise, a directive was issued to officers “on the appropriate application of that regulation.”
Asked if failing to clarify the five-metre rule misled the public, he said: “No, I never spoke publicly again about that regulation.”
As The National Post points out:
So he informed the entire city of something that wasn’t true, and, despite the ensuing uproar he kept his mouth shut. And that’s not misleading? Wrong, chief.
Though Blondeau, the government spokesperson has said that no arrests were made under the phantom law, there is clear evidence showing that this is not true.
A d v e r t i s e m e n t
As we highlight in our feature article today, British activist Charlie Veitch was arrested last Thursday, outside the security perimeter, for failing to provide identification which, he was told, was a crime under The Public Works Act.
Veitch appeared on the Alex Jones show after he was eventually released from hours of captivity at the giant movie studio turned temporary prison during the G20 summit.
Veitch even received a form documenting his arrest that said he had been detained under the phantom amendment to the law.
Surely realizing that the truth would emerge, authorities re-arrested Veitch yesterday on the charge of “impersonating a police officer” – a weak accusation that stems from deadpan comments Veitch made in his exchange with his original arresting officer when he joked that he was a British police provocateur, in Toronto to instigate trouble so that a harsh crackdown by Canadian security would be justified.
As we also highlighted in a previous article, plain clothes security were witnessed literally screeching up in black vans and abducting protesters outside the security perimeter, while “kettling” those who remained and eventually firing rubber bullets and tear gas at them.
Below is another video of this incident which shows the makeshift movie studio prison in the background. The building is five kilometres away from the security perimeter:
The long and short of this is that the Chief of police in Toronto knowingly misled his officers about a secret law granting them unfettered powers of arrest, which those officers then put into force aggressively, setting a new record for the largest mass arrest in Canadian history.
Further reports of the extreme threats and abuses those arrested, including journalists, were subjected to by police have also exacerbated the situation.
Despite multiple opportunities to set the record straight, Chief Blair opted to publicly state that such powers were necessary and allowed officers all over the city to detain and arrest people under laws that never existed
Given that this activity is in violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and tramples over the right to peacefully protest, there needs to be an immediate investigation into the matter, and Chief Blair should face the consequences that go with such a violation.
This article was posted: Wednesday, June 30, 2010 at 10:29 am
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Comment on this articleRichard F. Humenn, PE was the Senior Project Design Engineer for electrical systems for the entire World Trade Center, and he had 60 people working under him. In other words, he was the guy in charge of all electrical at the WTC. A retired licensed professional engineer, he was certified by the States of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Washington, D.C.
Humenn stated to Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth:
On September 11, I watched the live TV broadcast of the progressive collapse of the World Trade Towers with disbelief, as the mass and strength of the structure should have survived the localized damage caused by the planes and burning jet fuel. I viewed the presentation of Richard Gage and other related material, which compels me to believe that the fuel and planes alone did not bring the Towers down. I, therefore, support the proposal to form an international group of professionals to investigate all plausible causes for the virtual freefall and the almost total destruction of the WTC structures.
Humenn also recently gave a two-hour recorded interview to an attorney and former law school professor (a transcript of the interview will soon be posted to AE911Truth.org). In that interview, Humenn expressed his opinion that the Twin Towers were intentionally demolished. (He stated that he could not believe the U.S. government could have done such a thing; however, he was not asked about rogue elements within the government).
Few engineers have as much first-hand knowledge of the Twin Towers as Humenn, so his opinion carries some weight. As he explains, "Though an electrical engineer by trade, I was also very familiar with the structures and their conceptual design parameters."Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans of a 44-year-old man's brain show a huge fluid-filled chamber called a ventricle taking up most of the room in his skull, leaving little more than a thin sheet of actual brain tissue, in this handout image released by French researchers July 19, 2007. The man with the unusually tiny brain has managed to live an entirely normal life as a married civil servant with two children despite his condition, according to the researchers. REUTERS/Lionel Feuillet, Jean Pelletier and Henry Dufour-Universite de la Mediterranee/Handout
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A man with an unusually tiny brain managed to live an entirely normal life despite his condition, caused by a fluid buildup in his skull, French researchers reported on Thursday.
Scans of the 44-year-old man’s brain showed that a huge fluid-filled chamber called a ventricle took up most of the room in his skull, leaving little more than a thin sheet of actual brain tissue.
“He was a married father of two children, and worked as a civil servant,” Dr. Lionel Feuillet and colleagues at the Universite de la Mediterranee in Marseille wrote in a letter to the Lancet medical journal.
The man went to a hospital after he had mild weakness in his left leg. When Feuillet’s staff took his medical history, they learned he had had a shunt inserted into his head to drain away hydrocephalus — water on the brain — as an infant.
The shunt was removed when he was 14.
So the researchers did a computed tomography (CT) scan and another type of scan called magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). They were astonished to see “massive enlargement” of the lateral ventricles — usually tiny chambers that hold the cerebrospinal fluid that cushions the brain.
Intelligence tests showed the man had an IQ of 75, below the average score of 100 but not considered mentally retarded or disabled, either.
“What I find amazing to this day is how the brain can deal with something which you think should not be compatible with life,” commented Dr. Max Muenke, a paediatric brain defect specialist at the National Human Genome Research Institute.
“If something happens very slowly over quite some time, maybe over decades, the different parts of the brain take up functions that would normally be done by the part that is pushed to the side,” added Muenke, who was not involved in the case.SEATTLE — (Analysis) In his 2007 book, “Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East,” which celebrates the proto-Zionism of the early American colonists and the bonds between 18th century Puritanism and the ancient “Children of Israel,” Michael Oren leaves out some important information.
What did the historian and former Israeli ambassador to the United States leave out? Notably, the American impulse to ethnic cleansing and its parallels with the history of the state of Israel.
British historian Nicholas Guyatt recently published a chapter of his new book, “Bind Us Apart: How Enlightened Americans Invented Racial Segregation,” in Salon. Even devout students of American history may be surprised to learn there about lesser-known aspects of 18th and 19th American history regarding slavery and the treatment of Native Americans.
Guyatt, who teaches American History at Cambridge. begins with Thomas Jefferson, the author of the immortal phrase on which the republic was founded: “all men are created equal.” Though Jefferson may not have included enslaved people and free black Americans in this formulation, it eventually became clear that there was no reasonable way to exclude them. From the early 1770s and even as governor of Virginia, he attacked the institution of slavery. Of course, he also owned slaves and did not emancipate them on his death as he could have.
Guyatt crystallizes Jefferson’s ambivalence in his correspondence with another young Virginian, Edward Coles, who served as the private secretary of President James Madison. When Coles encouraged Jefferson to help devise a plan to end slavery in the United States, Jefferson admitted the institution is unjust. But he hesitated in the face of the obvious conclusion that it must be uprooted. Guyatt writes:
“Jefferson conceded that ‘the love of justice and the love of country plead equally the cause of these people.’ But what would happen to them (and their white neighbors) if slaves were suddenly set free? For decades, Jefferson’s anxieties about integration had weakened his antislavery convictions. Coles had his own solution: he would take his freed slaves to the western states and forge a new life with them there. Jefferson was alarmed by this plan to ‘abandon’ them in the midst of white people. He urged a different solution: slaves should be freed gradually and on condition that they leave the United States.”
Jefferson was one of the earliest proponents of this conviction that freed slaves could not and should not be integrated into American society. Throughout the 19th century, white American liberals suggested that it was most benevolent for black people to be repatriated to Africa. Though Jefferson lived alongside, loved, and sired the children of Sally Hemmings, the notion of racial “amalgamation” was anathema to the most progressive whites of the era:
“Abolition, the most obvious way to resolve that contradiction, would convert slaves into citizens at a stroke. But the vast majority of white Americans were nervous about what freed people might do next. Slavery had denied African Americans an education and an opportunity to better themselves, and it had given them ample reason to resent the people who had benefited from their bondage.
These anxieties crowded the minds of slaveholders and reformers alike and encouraged a third way of thinking: if slavery was immoral and multiracial citizenship was beset with difficulties, perhaps black people could be freed and resettled away from whites. This plan was usually known as ‘colonization,’ and Jefferson was one of the first people in North America to endorse it.”
National leaders as varied as Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and even President Madison served as presidents of the American Colonization Society, the leading white organization seeking both an end to slavery and return slaves to Africa, which founded the nation of Liberia in 1821.
Even Abraham Lincoln favored this plan, Guyatt writes:
“When he addressed a group of free blacks in Washington in the summer of 1862, with the war’s outcome uncertain, Lincoln insisted that they had a duty to leave the country and build a separate nation for African Americans. ‘You may believe you can live in Washington or elsewhere in the United States,’ he told them. ‘This is (I speak in no unkind sense) an extremely selfish view of the case.’”
It is sad to think that had he lived, Lincoln would have worked as tirelessly for colonization as he had fought for emancipation during the Civil War.
Democracy or Jewish state: The Israeli conundrum
The founders of the modern state of Israel faced a similar conundrum. They claimed their new nation was both a homeland for the Jewish people and one based on democratic principles. But this state could never be a homeland for two peoples, nor could it ever grant full, equal rights to its non-Jewish citizens, if it wished to remain a Jewish state.
David Ben-Gurion, among others, faced a fateful decision: Should the Zionist movement embrace the democratic aspect of its principles and offer full freedom to all citizens regardless of religion? After all, this is the promise inscribed in Israel’s Declaration of Independence, which declares that the state of Israel will “promote the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants” and “uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens, without distinction of race, creed or sex.”
Or should it embrace its role as the national movement of the Jewish people?
There could be no question of his choice. From the very beginning, Ben-Gurion recognized the Arab minority as a mortal danger to the Zionist enterprise. In his letters and diaries he regularly contemplates either depopulating Palestine of its Arab community or expelling them. He wisely recognizes that they will reject their subservience to the new Jewish majority, and he anticipates they may resist and even fight against it. He asserts clearly that if the Arabs refuse to accept the inevitable, then they must go:
“ … [W]e can no longer tolerate that vast territories capable of absorbing tens of thousands of Jews should remain vacant, and that Jews cannot return to their homeland because the Arabs prefer that the place [the Negev] remains neither ours nor theirs. We must expel Arabs and take their place. Up to now, all our aspirations have been based on an assumption – one that has been vindicated throughout our activities in the country – that there is enough room in the land for the Arabs and ourselves. But if we are compelled to fight – not in order to dispossess the Arabs of the Negev or Transjordan, but in order to guarantee our right to settle there – our [military] power will enable us to do so.”
In his book, “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine,” Ilan Pappe also quotes a statement by the future Israeli prime minister written to his son, Amos, in 1937: “The Arabs will have to go, but one needs an opportune moment for making it happen, such as a war.” By 1954, with the Brown vs. Board of Education landmark Supreme Court ruling, the U.S. finally made a commitment to fully integrating the former slaves and their offspring into American society. That decision finally broke the hold of the “separate but equal” doctrine by which Jim Crow ensured the supremacy of Southern whites in race relations. Brown was the first blow in the civil rights movement, which finally offered descendants of slaves their full freedom in American society.
Unlike white American liberals on the issue of freed slaves, Ben-Gurion didn’t much care what happened to the Palestinian refugees. That was one reason the 750,000 Palestinians expelled in the Nakba were scattered to the wind in refugee camps among the frontline Arab states (Egypt-Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria). In a way this suited Israel, because the more scattered the refugees, the harder it would be for them to organize and regain their lost patrimony. Indeed, Israel has always observed the colonial dictum that a divided, weakened enemy is best for maintaining control.
Both white American liberals and the Zionist leadership recognized an inherent danger to their enterprise in the Other (blacks and Arabs, respectively). Both proposed a similar solution: in Israel it was “population transfer” (known today as ethnic cleansing), and in the U.S. it was “colonization.”
Despite its enthusiastic adoption by Marcus Garvey in the early 20th century, the idea of colonization never succeeded. The vast majority of black Americans remained here. By 1954, with the Brown vs. Board of Education landmark Supreme Court ruling, the U.S. finally made a commitment to fully-integrating the former slaves and their offspring into American society. That decision finally broke the hold of the “separate but equal” doctrine by which Jim Crow ensured the supremacy of southern whites in race relations. Brown was the first blow in the Civil Rights movement, which finally offered descendants of slaves their full freedom in American society..
Israel chose a different route. It expelled over half of its Arab inhabitants, ensuring what Ben-Gurion considered vital: a permanent Jewish majority. But because he permitted almost a million Arabs to remain, he could eliminate neither the stain of expulsion nor the stain of a permanently subservient minority Arab population.
This de facto policy of expulsion continues today in Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, especially those in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Israel’s punitive siege on Gaza is designed to drive as many Palestinians to emigrate as possible.
There are also policies in place which deprive Palestinians of permanent residency or citizenship if they live outside of Israel for a period longer than a few years. Palestinian citizens of Israel face a range of discriminatory laws and policies which deny their communities the right to expand, including refusing building permits to absorb the growing population. They are denied the right to live in Jewish communities. Palestinian villages and municipalities are severely underfunded compared to their wealthier Jewish counterparts. This means that education, healthcare and jobs are effectively denied to the Palestinian minority.
All of this is a not-so-subtle reminder to Palestinians that they are a tolerated, but unwanted minority. The message is that if they don’t like it here, they can go elsewhere. And many do. The Palestinian national poet, Mahmoud Darwish, went into self-imposed exile in the 1960s and was only permitted to return a few months before his death in 2008. One of Israel’s most gifted Palestinian screenwriters and journalists, Sayed Kashua, emigrated to the U.S. during the 2014 war in Gaza.
Contemporary polls of Israeli Jewish opinion find as much as 48 percent favoring “transfer.” Politicians as popular as Avigdor Lieberman and Naftali Bennett, who are sure to vie for the role of prime minister some day, propose variations on “population transfer” that would complete Ben-Gurion’s job by further reducing the Palestinian demographic threat.
Ethnic cleansing of Native Americans and Israeli Palestinians
In his latest work, Nicholas Guyatt raises yet another disturbing aspect of 19th century American racism: the removal of the Native American population through forced marches, like Andrew Jackson’s Trail of Tears, and the gradual transfer of indigenous peoples to massive reservations, where they were essentially dumped so as to be “out of sight, out of mind” for the rest of the country.
Just as the U.S. had to decide what to do with the black people who would be freed from slavery, it also had to decide what to do with the hundreds of thousands of Native Americans who were perceived as blocking the path of westward expansion.
Though Americans at first believed that Native Americans might be gradually absorbed into the greater society, the Indian Wars which raged throughout the 19th century convinced whites that they could not live in peace with this minority population.
Blacks could be sent back to Africa, but there was nowhere to repatriate Native Americans to — this land was, after all, their native land. Thus, leaders like Jackson resolved to remove the Native Americans, who were perceived as an obstruction to American progress, to a suitably westward barren place.
The Cambridge historian notes the parallels between the colonization project and the forced removal of Native Americans:
“Both were premised on the idea that contact between non-whites and whites tended to ‘degrade’ the former, preventing them from achieving their natural potential and making equal citizenship all but impossible. Both promised a happier future for non-whites beyond the borders of the United States in self-governing and prosperous offshoots of the American republic. Crucially, both were couched in terms of benevolence. Missionaries and religious reformers took the lead, anchoring their good intentions with a simple promise: colonization should be voluntary. When African Americans and Native Americans expressed wariness or outright opposition, the white architects of colonization insisted that blacks and Indians would eventually realize the benefits of resettlement and willingly leave the United States.
… [T]hings didn’t turn out this way. Andrew Jackson was so determined to remove Native peoples from the southeastern states that he abandoned the pretense of consent, exchanging colonization for expulsion.”
But it wasn’t just the adherents of Manifest Destiny like Jackson who embraced these principles. Liberal elites grabbed onto it, too:
“White reformers, politicians, and churchmen believed that non-whites could only realize their innate potential as human beings—and perhaps even their equality with whites—by separating themselves from the American republic. … Colonization proposals were crafted by intellectuals, reformers, and politicians—men (and occasionally women) who saw themselves as ‘liberal’ in their sentiments. … With few exceptions, the architects of racial separation in the early republic emphatically denied that blacks or Indians were permanently inferior to whites. Instead, they spoke of their duty to help non-white people complete their journey toward ‘civilized’ status.”
Israel’s treatment of its Palestinian minority also recalls the United States’ subjugation of its indigenous peoples. The early Zionist movement understood that for it to succeed, it must incorporate hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of new Jewish immigrants.
In his writings, Ben-Gurion made clear that he understood that this would likely displace Arab inhabitants. For him, it seemed like a minor injustice compared to the far greater good of creating a homeland that would ensure to sovereignty of the Jewish people.
The American attitude toward Native Americans was that they were “in the way;” that they interfered with God’s plan to settle and civilize the New Land. Therefore, they had to be swept aside. Zionists similarly justified the ethnic cleansing of the Nakba.
Where the US and Israel diverge: Finding a clear path forward
Despite these similarities, there are key differences between the American and Zionist models. Most Americans have come to realize that slavery and racism are Original Sins for which this country must atone. To realize the vision of our nation as a democratic republic, they understand that these injustices must be addressed. In the past 60 years, the civil rights movement and the laws which it advocated have changed the nature of our society. They have not healed all the wounds nor repaired the injustice of a century of slavery and the ensuing decades of Jim Crow “separate but equal.” But the path is clear and the goal is in sight.
Israel, on the other hand, has never fully grappled with, or understood, its Original Sin: The Nakba. Steeped in denialism, Israel has never resolved the contradiction between an ethnic state and a democracy.
The only path forward that leads to a constructive resolution of these conflicts involves breaking with the tradition of Israel as a state which privileges Jews over non-Jews. It involves offering full, equal rights to non-Jewish citizens. It involves recognition that Israel is a homeland of two peoples, not one.
As Israel has no founding document like the Constitution or Bill of Rights, and as it had no Founding Fathers with the foresight and wisdom to lay out a path for the nation to realize its full potential as a democratic republic, Israel has stumbled. It now faces a crisis. So far, it has chosen a path leading to a political theocracy, a Jewish version of the Islamic Republic of Iran. This approach reminds me of the closing line of The Great Gatsby: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
One hopes that some day Israel will, either voluntarily or under pressure from the global community, move forward into a future that is unencumbered by the deep sins of its past. That will only happen by acknowledging these sins and making reparations, as well as addressing the pain and suffering they have caused the indigenous Palestinian people.This just in: A Mexico City radio host says Mexican motorists should "crush" cyclists when they can.
According to an Associated Press report, Angel Verdugo of the Reporte 98.5 station, told his audience Tuesday that cyclists had almost run into his car, ignored traffic rules and bothered pedestrians.
Verdugo told his radio audience to "run your vehicles at them immediately, don't give them time to think, and crush them."
Mexico City's environment secretary, Martha Delgado, is reported as responding that Verdugo's broadcast is "an attack on the cycling community and the citizens of Mexico City."
Radio hype aimed at boosting ratings, or more evidence of a widening disconnect between cyclists and motorists? Certainly, Mexcio City is one of the traffic hell-holes of the western hemisphere. Pity the poor motorist there, trapped in gridlock in an asthma-inducing, carbon-emitting pollution machine, and watching as a clean-footprint two-wheeler navigates through the smog and the clog. No doubt they have some anger. Too bad it isn't directed at the city planners who allowed circumstances to get that bad, or themselves for wasting their money on a bank-account-emptying automobile.
Someone should buy Angel Verdugo a bicycle, and let him taste real freedom..- For Erika Bachiochi, the Catholic Church has been able to offer a genuine pro-woman theology which not only safeguards and protects her stance as a feminist, but also enhances her ability to be strong in all aspects of her life.
Dr. Mary Anne Case would like to differ. She believes that while Catholic feminism exists, the institutional Catholic Church – namely the Vatican and Magisterium – is overtly anti-woman.
These two legal scholars from varied backgrounds met on the common stage of feminism at the Aquinas Institute for Catholic Thought’s 10th annual Great Debate in Boulder, Colo. on Feb. 23. The two women presented dissenting arguments for both sides of the spectrum on Catholic feminism and tackled the question: is the Church anti-woman?
Dr. Case, a law professor at the University of Chicago, answered in the affirmative, while Erika Bachiochi, a visiting fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, answered in the negative.
“In my lifetime, the Church that had made me a feminist betrayed me,” Dr. Case said in her opening statements.
“I think the Church has let us down, and I think the Church has let us down relatively recently. The early church was very much not anti-woman. The gospels are not anti-woman,” she continued, saying the Catholic Church of the past was not anti-feminist.
However, Dr. Case argued that when the Church definitively said “no” to priestly ordination for women in the 1970s, they closed the door to half of the population of the Church.
“The problem with the Catholic Church is that all authority flows from ordination. The Magisterium – as it need not be – is composed of men and cardinals,” Dr. Case said, suggesting that women should at least be allowed in the decision-making that flows from the hierarchy of the Magisterium.
The law professor spoke at the debate wearing a button from the 1970s on her shirt that said “If you aren't going to ordain women, stop baptizing them.”
This, she said, is a representation of the economy of salvation: if women cannot be priests because they do not image Christ, how can women become saved in the eyes of the Church, since salvation can only arrive through the extent that Christ images us?
Dr. Case also pointed to some of the Catholic Church's greatest thinkers, such as St. Thomas Aquinas, who believed that “women are necessarily in a state of subjection,” and that females are “misbegotten males.” She also highlighted that the Sistine Chapel’s Creation of Man, is indeed that of a man – and does not include Eve.
Within the last 50 years, Dr. Case believes that the Church shifted away from the idea that men and women are equal when it introduced the idea of complementarity, particularly seen in Pope St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, saying that placing characteristics or roles on each gender negates their equality.
“There should be no fixed notions concerning the role of males and females,” Dr. Case suggested, and pointed to St. Augustine’s notion that the soul does not have a sex.
In response, Bachiochi said that “papal teaching has rejected the essentialist view that woman and men possess mutually exclusive fixed character traits.” Sexuality does not take away from the equality of men and women, she said, but simply makes them “distinctive.”
While Bachiochi was once a pro-choice, socialist feminist, she has since shifted her beliefs towards the teachings and beliefs of Catholicism. She agreed with Dr. Case on a number of different levels, saying that “there should be more women's voices in the Church.”
However, the most notable differences between the two scholars was on the point of clerics and sexual teachings. While Dr. Case argued that women can and should be ordained Catholic priests, Bachiochi said the notion reeked of clericalism.
“I have no less authority than a priest as a baptized Christian,” Bachiochi said.
“A priest has authority to represent Christ in a sacramental way, and I have the authority to represent Christ in every other area of my life,” she said, adding that the focus on female priests can also take away from the good work that professional and religious women are already doing within the Church.
However, Dr. Case pointed out that men in the Catholic Church “have all of the opportunities, and then some. How can the church not be anti-women…if women are not part of the decision making?”
To this, Bachiochi agreed that more female voices are needed within the Church, but did point to the Pontifical Council of the Laity, which seeks female voices, and other prominent church leaders such as Mary Glendon, who serves on various Vatican boards, and Sr. Prudence Allen, R.S.M., who is a philosopher appointed to the Vatican’s International Theological Commission.
Bachiochi went on to find fundamental differences with the modern idea of feminism, which claims that abortion and contraception rights are the capstone to the whole movement. She has found in her own experience that these same notions can also be the downfall to women.
Instead, Bachiochi suggested that Catholic feminism indeed exists, and is protected by the Church, precisely because of its teachings about sexual and reproductive rights, particularly Natural Family Planning.
“I believe that Catholic Christianity, and in particular the controversial sexual teachings of the Catholic Church, are deeply pro-woman. It was precisely these teachings on monogamy, divorce, birth control, abortion and infanticide that attracted women in the first century into the Christian fold,” Bachiochi stated.
“As a feminist, NFP does something that contraception neglects… it gets men to think about the reality,” she noted, saying that through NFP, less pressure is put on the woman to take the pill or get an IUD, and more emphasis is placed on men and their responsibility in the sexual act.
She also mentioned that the Catholic Church in particular has always been pro-woman, as seen through its recognition of female saints, political leaders, and scholars, and its production of educational systems and healthcare centered around the good of women.
Bachiochi additionally noted that “Mary, the Mother of God, is heralded by the Catholic Church as the single greatest human that has ever lived.”
“The greatest among us are not the clerics, but the saints.”UN experts have come under fire in Ivory Coast as they investigate claims that president Laurent Gbagbo broke an arms embargo by importing attack helicopters from Belarus, a spokesman said today.
The latest attack on the UN came amid warnings of a humanitarian disaster as the west African nation seems to be on a downward spiral towards civil war.
The charge that Gbagbo is receiving military aid from Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko came from the UN's secretary-general, Ban Ki-Moon. Gbagbo's government dismissed it as a "lie" while Belarus said it was "groundless".
Ban later qualified the allegation in comments to reporters in Washington, saying the UN-appointed group of experts in Ivory Coast had "credible information that the government of Belarus may be providing attack helicopters to forces loyal to Gbagbo".
He added: "If it is confirmed, this will be a direct violation of [the] arms embargo by the security council. We are trying to confirm this."
It was when the experts tried to search an airport in the capital, Yamoussoukro, where they believed the helicopters to be, that they were shot at by Ivorian forces, according to UN mission spokesman Hamadoun Toure.
"That's what they said," he told Reuters, adding that the investigation into the helicopters was continuing. "We are trying to have several details but so far nothing."
In New York, the UN Ivory Coast sanctions committee discussed the charge that Belarus had violated the embargo. "It looks as if the sanctions committee has not yet been able to confirm the reported arms shipment," a spokesman for the German mission said. "They requested UNoci (the UN mission in Ivory Coast) and the panel of experts to continue monitoring the situation."
Ivory Coast has been under an arms embargo since the last outbreak of serious violence in 2004, when pro-Gbagbo forces bombed French peacekeepers in the rebel-held north, but analysts say it has repeatedly been violated.
Gun battles between forces loyal to Gbagbo and his rival Alassane Ouattara, almost universally recognised as the winner of last November's election, have intensified fears of a return to full-blown civil war. Cocoa prices rose to a 32-year peak on Monday as anxiety grew.
Relations between Gbagbo and the UN mission are deteriorating, with state TV regularly broadcasting allegations about their collaboration with the rebels.
Gbago's often violent young supporters responded to a call from their leader, Charles Ble Goude, at the weekend to block UN traffic. Two UN staff members were kidnapped by a mob on Monday, then released. Toure said a third had been robbed of his wallet.
Abidjan, the commercial capital, increasingly resembles a city on the brink of war as AK-47 assault rifles and heavy weapons boom daily through the district of Abobo, the economy grinds to a standstill and thousands of people abandon their homes.
But getting out is not easy. Armed men stopped some 60 families without food or water from leaving a church today, the UN said. There were long queues of government workers trying to cash pay cheques.
The UN's refugee agency also expressed alarm about the conditions facing people trying to escape days of violence in Abobo. "There are reports of many dead bodies, buses burned and shops looted, and of young militiamen attacking people inside their homes," the agency said.
Others fleeing the violence have been forced to pay people just to get out of the area, the agency said. Nearly 70,000 people have joined a mass exodus to neighbouring Liberia.
Gbagbo's government said today that it was banning residents from filling jerrycans with petrol as fears of a shortage grow. Motorists in Abidjan rushed to fill up their car's tanks, then went home to siphon the petrol into a jerrycans. Some petrol stations had already run out of supplies and closed.
Last week, when there were skirmishes in the west of the country between former rebels and pro-Gbagbo forces, was the first time the ceasefire between the two armed sides had been broken in six years. It led to a surge in the number of civilians fleeing to Liberia, putting further strain on aid agencies.
Human Rights Watch said it had documented the recruitment and deployment of Liberian mercenaries in recent weeks, and credible sources
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hopefully as intended).
How did hockey fans in Switzerland react to last year's surprising 4th place finish, and the win over Russia?
It was only a short (lived) surprise. But the most of the Swiss Hockey Fans did not realise how huge it was. Both the Swiss TV and the newspapers did not make a huge story out of it. This is part (of) the problem, that the junior movement doesn't get any space in the press. (The World Juniors) does not exist in the Swiss media.
Last year's team had Roman Josi and Luca Sbisa on it, though both were hurt for the playoff rounds. Is there anyone coming up to replace those players, or will it just put more pressure on (goaltender) Benjamin Conz?
I personally see one or two players who could make a surprise. First of all is Sven Bartschi who play in the WHL with the (Portland) Winterhawks. Some of the fans do know his name, but largly because he maybe can be the next Nino Niderreiter, who also plays with Sven on the same team. Both to have the same agent (Andre Rufener) who also has Luca Sbisa under contract.
To replace Roman and Luca I do not see anyone who can fill the spot on the D. But I personally believe, that the D will again be a good part in the team. They will play in a perfect defensive style. They will also wait for their chances to go to the net.
Benjamin Conz is, together with Nino Niederreiter and Sven Bartschi, probably the hottest player on the Swiss team. There will be a lot of pressure on Conz. But I do believe, that he is the guy who will be the cornerstone of the Swiss team.
Are players encouraged to come to North America to play junior? What is the competition level of the Swiss U20 leagues?
Both are tough questions to answer. I will try to answer them as well as I can.
Some players are afraid to take the step at an early stage of their career. Others, like Nino, Sven or Luca had no fear to go to NA and play there. All three of them were kind of door openers, same as Roman Wick and Yannick Weber were in 05/06 (Wick) or 07/08 (Weber). But in this year's class of juniors we do have the most players ever in the juniors leagues in Canada.
The junior league is not as good as it should be. Indeed they are playing 20 year old boys against 16 year old kids, not really what it should be like. So the level isn't that good. The (national) federation is making some steps do another format or age group too. But there is no (solution) in the near future. The clubs to not pay too much attention to that issue.
Who do you see as a breakout player at this tournament, a guy that fans don't know about and could surprise?
Camperchioli Luca (D, ZSC Lions), Hofmann Gregory (F, HC Ambri-Piotta), McGregor Ryan (F, GCK Lions)
This three could be a possible surprise. But it is hard to make a prediction. I have not seen (all the team) play.
What is your prediction for Switzerland at this tournament?
If everything goes OK for the Swiss team, they should be not in the relegation (round). But it depends on the first game against Germany. If they come away with a good and clean victory they can again be a runner-up and a surprise at this year's tournament. But there also could be a disappointment. It definitely comes down to the games against Germany and Slovakia.
Team Switzerland # Player Pos. S/C Ht. Wt. Born Hometown Club 23 Benjamin Antonietti LW R 5'10" 152 1991 - Lusanne (NLB) 15 Sven Bärtschi LW L 5'11" 183 1992 Langenthal Portland (WHL) 7 Luca Camperchioli D L 6'0" 209 1991 Basel ZSC Lions (NLA) 1 Benjamin Conz G R 5'10" 207 1991 Porrentruy SCL Tigers (NLA) 21 Renato Engler W L 5'8" 176 1991 Davos Davos U20 (Swi Jr A) 20 Remo Giovannini G L 6'2" 194 1991 Davos Davos U20 (Swi Jr A) 28 Samuel Guerra D L 6'0" 185 1993 Isone Davos (NLA) 11 Gaëtan Haas C R 5'11" 168 1992 Bonfol Biel (NLA) 27 Yannick Herren W L 5'12" 198 1991 Saas Grund Kloten (NLA) 13 Gregory Hofmann W L 6'0" 170 1992 Neuenberg Ambrì-Piotta (NLA) 18 Manuel Holenstein W L 5'6" 148 1991 Davos Davos (NLA) 5 Romain Loeffel D R 5'10" 181 1991 La Chaux-de-Fonds Gottéron (NLA) 25 Lino Martschini RW R 5'5" 117 1993 Zug Peterborough (OHL) 19 Ryan McGregor C L 5'11" 185 1991 Jona GCK Lions (Swi Jr A) 30 Lukas Meili G R 5'10" 161 1992 Russikon Küsnacht (NLB) 22 Nino Niederreiter LW L 6'0" 207 1992 Chur Portland (WHL) 16 Inti Pestoni W L 5'9" 174 1991 Sementina Ambrì-Piotta (NLA) 10 Tristan Scherwey RW L 5'9" 176 1991 Wunnewil Flamatt Bern (NLA) 8 Dominik Schlumpf D R 5'12" 174 1991 - Shawinigan (QMJHL) 9 Reto Schäppi C L 6'4" 205 1991 Horgen ZSC Lions (NLA) 6 Nicholas Steiner D L 5'12" 198 1991 Eggiwil Kloten (NLA) 2 Dave Sutter D R 6'4" 203 1992 Monthey Seattle (WHL) 17 Dario Trutmann D R 5'11" 185 1992 Küssnacht Plymouth (OHL) 32 Ramón Untersander D R 6'0" 194 1991 - Davos (NLA) 26 Joël Vermin RW L 5'11" 181 1992 Fraunkappelen Bern (NLA) 24 Samuel Walser C L 6'3" 205 1992 Olten Kloten U20 (Swi Jr A)
2011 Draft hopefuls (first time eligible only): LW Sven Bartschi, D Samuel Guerra, D Dario Trutmann, W Gregory Hoffman, RW Lino Martschini/
NHL Drafted: LW Nino Niederreiter (NYI, 5th overall, 2010)
Staff: Peter Luthi (General Manager), Richard Jost (Head Coach), Alex Reinhard and Sergio Soguel (Assistant Coaches)
Switzerland gets a similar draw to last year, in that there are two teams they probably won't beat in their group (USA and Finland), but two that they can beat. They are generally a cut above Germany and a cut below Slovakia, but the gap is narrowing between all three nations. It'll be an interesting battle for who gets the third spot there. Switzerland and Germany both have good goaltending (Slovakia is very suspect there), Slovakia has the better defence (followed by Switzerland, which is a decent amount ahead of Germany), and the forwards definitely go to Slovakia. Both Switzerland and Germany have a decent forward group, with the Swiss relying on star power in Niederrieter and Bartschi, and the Germans probably relying more on depth.
I hope I'm wrong about my prediction, since I hope to see the Hockey Fans crew again in Alberta next year, but I just feel Germany is a bit underrated right now, so I'm putting them in front.
Prediction: 5th in Group A, 9th overall.The pseudo-science backing water fluoridation is quickly crumbling
(NaturalNews) A health freedom advocate in Lawrence, Kansas, the sixth largest city in the state, is pushing to have artificial fluoride chemicals removed from his city's municipal water supply. Lawrence-area resident Richard Simms recently created a petition atthat he hopes will garner enough signatures to convince city officials to follow the lead of hundreds of other towns and cities across North America that have nixed the poison from their water supplies in recent months.You can view and sign Simms' petition here:Concerned about the extreme toxicity of fluoride when the chemical is ingested, Simms wants to raise awareness about the issue in order to convince the local water treatment division to stop forcibly medicating his entire community with fluoride chemicals. Unlike the naturally-occurring element fluorine, sodium fluoride, a highly-toxic byproduct of industrial manufacturing that is commonly added to water supplies, is known to cause considerable health damage, including tooth decay."Sodium fluoride comes from the aluminum industry, it's a byproduct of where aluminum is created. And it's unfortunately a very expensive toxin to be able to dispose of, and they even told them it was too dangerous to pour into the ocean for disposal," said Simms toduring a recent interview. "So, it would seem that they decided to dilute it down and just start putting it into drinking water. If it's listed as a poison, it does not need to be in drinking water."Simms refers, of course, to sodium fluoride's(MSDS) listing, which clearly indicates that sodium fluoride may be fatal if inhaled, swallowed, or absorbed through the skin ( http://www.sciencestuff.com/msds/C2579.html ). Lawrence's roughly 90,000 area residents, in other words, are exposed to toxic sodium fluoride in each one of these ways every time they wash their hands, take a shower, or drink a glass of tap water that has not been filtered through a reverse osmosis system.In a sorry attempt to counter Simms' efforts, Dan Partridge, Director of the Lawrence Health Department, toldthat fluoride is naturally-occurring, and that it "would occur in the public water supply whether we add it or not." Not only is this statement patently false, as artificial fluoride chemicals are far different from naturally-occurring fluorine, but it also supports the idea ofadding fluoride chemicals to water if they already occur naturally.Try as they might to maintain the illusion that fluoride chemicals are safe and effective at preventing tooth decay, pro-fluoride apologists simply do not have sound science on their side. Dozens of studies, many published just within the past year, have proven unquestioningly that ingestion of fluoride chemicals is dangerous, and provides no legitimate health benefits ( https://www.naturalnews.com/fluoride.html ).This is why city after city, and town after town, continue to end their water fluoridation programs. Not only will the cut save these communities thousands of dollars a year in needless expenses, but it will also save local residents from developing dental fluorosis, thyroid problems, cancer, bone disorders, and the many other conditions caused by fluoride ingestion ( http://www.fluoridealert.org/fluoride-dangers/health/index.aspx ).Be sure to sign Simms' petition at:Today’s young people, the so-called “Lost Generation,” are going to be just fine, says President Barack Obama – but only if the progressive reforms made in the past two years are defended from the Republicans and expanded upon.
The president laid out his thinking on September 27, during a national teleconference specifically aimed to give college journalists time to question the president.
“The key is for us to keep on improving the economy. That’s going to be my number one priority over the next few years,” Obama told the young journalists. “If we’re building infrastructure, not just roads and bridges, but also broadband lines, investing in clean energy: all those things are going to open up new opportunity for young people with skills and talent for the future.”
“Don’t let anyone tell you that somehow your dreams are going to be constrained going forward,” Obama said.
The president argued that his administration had already done a great deal to better students’ lot. The health care reform, Obama noted, mandated that insurers provide coverage for dependent youth up through the age of 26, which will “provide cushion” for young people just out of college.
Obama and the Democrats also reworked the rules on financial aid. Going forward, no one will have to pay more than ten percent of their monthly salary to their student debt and, for those who go into public service, any outstanding loans will be forgiven ten years after graduation.
The federal government, Obama reminded collegiate journalists, will now lend directly to students, “instead of handing over $60 billion in unwarranted subsidies to big banks.”
The money saved through the loan reform will be redirected to two-year colleges, which the president argued are essential in preparing young people for the workforce. Obama announced an upcoming White House summit on community colleges.
Still, high dropout rates remain a problem. “More than one third of all students, and more than half of our minority students, don’t earn a degree, even after six years, and that’s a waste of potential,” noted the president.
While it’s up to students and their families to complete college, Obama said, the federal government should work to help remove obstacles. He went on to announce the creation of a college access completion fund and the new “post 9/11 G.I. bill.”
Republicans successfully scuttled the DREAM Act – but only for now, says Obama. “This is important legislation that will stop punishing young people whose parents brought them here. They may not have been documented, but for all intents and purposes, they’ve grown up as American young people. … The country they’ve grown up in and love as their own.”
While Obama clearly relished noting the progress that has been made, he sounded a note of warning, saying that much would be lost if the Republicans were to seize control in November.
The president acknowledged that there is not nearly as much excitement during the midterm elections as there was during his 2008 presidential campaign. He attributed this to the fact that change for the better hasn’t come as fast as people who support him would have hoped and constant fighting in the nation’s capital.
“I’ve been having all these fights with the Republicans to make progress on a whole bunch of these issues,” the president said. “And during that time, naturally, some of the excitement and enthusiasm started to drain away, because people felt like, ‘Gosh, all we’re reading about is arguments in Washington.'”
Obama explained the fighting, saying that “to bring about big changes, for example, in our energy policy, we’ve taken on a lot of special interests: the oil companies, utilities. Some of them may not want to see the kind of changes that would lead to a strong green economy. The point is, though, you can’t sit it out.”
The upcoming elections, he said, are a “big choice,” adding that “you’ve got a situation right now where the Republicans put out their ‘Pledge to America’ that says we’re going to give $4 trillion worth of tax breaks, $700 billion of those going to millionaires and billionaires, each of whom get on average a $100,000 check.”
To pay for even part of that, the president said, the Republicans want “cut all of the improvements that we just talked about.” Young people should take note, he continued, because “even though this may not be as exciting as a presidential election, it’s going to make a huge difference in terms of whether we’re going to move our agenda forward over the next couple of years.”
When a reporter from the Badger Herald asked him why he was coming to her school in Madison, Obama said that he wanted to take his message on the importance of the upcoming elections to young people – and that he loves Madison because, during his college years, “I used to drive up there and have fun times, which I can’t discuss in detail with you.”Facebook Twitter Google+ LinkedIn
During the past several years I’ve repeatedly insisted that the huge increase in the monetary base of 2008 would not produce high inflation. I suppose I was naive in thinking that when it became clear that excessively low inflation was the real problem, the inflation hawks would admit they were wrong and re-evaluate their models. I don’t see much evidence of that happening.
One recent theme has been the supposedly unreliability of the core inflation rate, which is now below 1%. Critics (and cartoon bunnies) point to the fact that food and energy are an important part of the average American’s budget. When it’s noted that even headline inflation is barely over 1%, the attention turns to other prices. For instance, Congressman Ryan has recently argued that the Fed should focus on commodity prices. My initial reaction is to say “Yes! Let’s focus on commodity prices! Commodity prices are the best way to tell if money is too easy or too tight.” Think I’m being sarcastic? Then you are in for a surprise.
Before continuing, I’d like to remind readers that in late 2008 you could count on one hand the number of economists (in the entire world) claiming monetary policy was very tight. So let’s take a look at the change in commodity prices in late 2008:
That’s right, commodity price indices fell by more than 50%. That’s Great Depression-style deflation. And where was Congressman Ryan when the Fed was engineering one of the greatest deflations in world history? I don’t recall him or any of the other inflation hawks calling for easier money. But maybe I missed something. If so, I hope my readers will dig up all the stories of conservatives demanding easier money in the fall of 2008. In any case, it’s good to know that whereas back in late 2008 I was almost all alone in viewing money as being extremely tight, I now have the vast right wing conspiracy on my side. Money really was tight in late 2008. And if commodity prices are now the preferred metric of the right, then I’m half way to convincing the economics establishment that I was right all along. Now I just have to convince the left that money was way too tight in 2008. About those near-zero interest rates...
BTW, I don’t mean to bash Congressman Ryan, who is from my home state and is one of the best of a bad lot. If all 435 Congressmen and women were like him we’d probably end up with a much more economically sensible tax and spending regime. But I have to say that the conservative movement has recently been grasping for straws on monetary policy. All their predictions are coming in false, and they aren’t drawing the appropriate conclusions.
Update 12/19/10: This post wasn’t well written. I have always felt that commodity prices were one of many useful indicators of whether money is too tight or too easy. But I left the impression that I completely supported a monetary policy that single-mindedly focused on commodity prices. In fact, I’d prefer the Fed look at a wide range of indicators when estimating market NGDP growth expectations, including stock prices, bond prices, TIPS spreads, forex rates, commodity prices, real estate prices, etc. Many commenters correctly pointed out that commodity prices can be an unreliable indicator, and I entirely agree. I got overly enthused trying to show that if it was the right indicator, then money was ultra-tight in late 2008.
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This entry was posted on December 18th, 2010 and is filed under Inflation, Monetary Policy. 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."I feel like my old self on the ice," Price told NHL.com after two 90-minute ice sessions at a fundraiser for the Eli Wilson Goaltending Sponsorship Fund on Saturday.
Price hasn't played since spraining the MCL ligament in his right knee during a game against the New York Rangers on Nov. 25, but no lingering effects of the injury could be detected when he moved smoothly around the ice Saturday.
Price spent the day with 16 goalies, each of whom had bid for or won the right to train with the 2014-15 winner of the Hart and Vezina trophies. The goalies came from across North America, including California and Prince Edward Island.
Price led the group through a dynamic warmup, then strapped on his new red and white CCM equipment, which he will wear for Team Canada next month at the World Cup of Hockey 2016. He guided the goalies through a series of on-ice drills, pushing, stopping and sliding around his crease, popping in and out of his posts, fully extending without hesitation.
Price said as good as he looks and feels on the ice, the injury remains in the back of his mind.
"It is a little bit just because it's been so long," Price said. "It's been sitting in my back pocket forever so I am just looking forward to getting past it. I don't want to say I feel anxious, but I just want to get started. I feel like the buildup has been six months of waiting for that first game and I still haven't gotten there. I've been working toward a goal I haven't gotten to yet."
Price's first game will come earlier than normal this season; he's one of three goalies on Team Canada's roster. Price, who was 5-0-0 with two shutouts and a.972 save percentage when he helped Canada to a gold medal at the 2014 Sochi Olympics, will compete with 2016 Vezina Trophy winner Braden Holtby (Washington Capitals) and Corey Crawford (Chicago Blackhawks) for the starting job, but for now he is happy to have the tournament as an early finish line.
"It was kind of nice just because summer was really long not making the [Stanley Cup Playoffs] last year so we were sitting around for quite a while, so being able to get right back into it a little earlier is going to be a lot of fun," Price said. "It was obviously a long rehab -- six months long -- so I am looking forward to getting the first few games in, start getting into a rhythm again, and getting back into my routine of just playing games and just looking forward to getting past it."
Still, Price admits, at age 29, he needs to decrease his workload once the regular season begins. He played in 66 games in 2014-15 and has played in at least 65 games in three of the past four full NHL seasons, including a career-high 72 in 2010-11.
"As you get older -- I'm not old, but 29 is relative in goalie years -- you like to see your number of games taper down a little bit so you are fresher for playoffs," Price said. "By the time playoffs start you want to be as fresh as possible and I think even five fewer games would help. As you get older too, your amount of time spent in practice should taper off as well a little bit."
To make that happen, Montreal signed Al Montoya as an unrestricted free agent on July 1 to compete with Mike Condon for the backup job, and Canadiens goalie coach Stephane Waite has talked about limiting Price to around 60 games.
Price, along with the rest of Team Canada, will report to training camp in Ottawa on Sept. 4 and begin practice Sept. 5. Team Canada has three exhibition games before the two-week tournament opens Sept. 17 at Air Canada Centre in Toronto.
Price made few alterations to his training schedule because of the World Cup, but he did start skating a week earlier than usual to get ready.
"I started skating sooner, more intensely," he said. "One thing over the summer that was a little more difficult was getting back into the gym, just because I rehabbed so long during the season, so all I did was work out, sometimes twice a day, all season. So trying to get back into the swing of things in the gym was tough, but once you start building your routine up it wasn't too bad."
There was another life change that impacted Price's offseason schedule: the birth of his daughter, Liv Anniston Price, on May 6.
"It's been a little bit different," Price said. "As a first-time parent, you are obviously a little bit tired from not sleeping as well as you are used to and you feel like your training is a little bit less intense throughout the early part of the summer. Fortunately for us, though, Liv was born really early. So over the last couple of months I felt like I was able to catch up."
Despite the new responsibilities at home and a shorter offseason, Price made time for the all-day fundraiser Saturday. Price, from the remote town of Anahim Lake in northern British Columbia, has raised more than $170,000 in two years and knows what it means to the more than 200 kids who have received equipment, registration fees and training through the Eli Wilson Goaltending Sponsorship Fund.
"It's awesome. Made a lot of kids happy today," Price said, "And to help get equipment for kids that don't have it available to them means a lot to me because I have seen a lot of kids with a lot of potential but just didn't have the opportunity, and this can help them."
Looking lean after a summer that included regular yoga practice, Price said he is down to 218 pounds after carrying 226 pounds into this same event last summer.
"I typically fluctuate between 220-to-225, but I feel comfortable around 218," said Price, noting he ended his Calder Cup-winning rookie season in 2006-07 at around 260 pounds. "As my career progresses, as I get older, I'd like to start lightening up a little, maybe toward 215 or 212. It's a lot of up and down in a season, so packing around an extra five pounds makes a difference."
Given his importance to the Canadiens, some might argue Price carries a lot more weight on his shoulders during the season. For now, fans in Montreal will be happy to see Price moving his own weight so effortlessly, powerfully and smoothly around his crease again.Screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET
Our lecture today is entitled "Ethics and the Holiday Spirit."
The question at hand is this: if you order an iPad from Best Buy and the company sends you five, what do you do?
Do you phone Best Buy and say, "Hullo, you've sent me four too many"?
Do you phone Best Buy and say, "Gosh, just wanted to thank you for the holiday gifts" -- and not mention which gifts you're talking about?
Or do you say nothing, do nothing, and hope Best Buy doesn't notice?
Well, one oddly sincere person called Alexa contacted the Consumerist and wondered what she should do.
Alexa was concerned on behalf of her boyfriend's mom. She had ordered an iPad for her son and Best Buy had sent along five. Even the box was clearly marked as containing five iPads.
Why Alexa, rather than her boyfriend or his mother, was doing the work is not quite clear. Still, she had first e-mailed Best Buy, who were clearly too busy filling Santa's sacks to reply.
Alexa, like a dutiful citizen, even went on the Web to discover what the law might be. She found something on the FTC site that said if a company sends you something in error, you can consider it a gift.
The Consumerist, being of noble heart and mind, decided to see whether it could, on Alexa's behalf, get a response from Best Buy. It did.
And what a heart-warming, trust-building, spirit-lifting response it was:
Good afternoon, Alexa. Laura, from the Consumerist, contacted us here at Best Buy on your behalf. First and foremost, I wanted to let you know how much we appreciate your honesty. That is so rare in this day and age and I sincerely thank you! We here at Best Buy acknowledge that we obviously made a mistake, but in the spirit of the holidays, we encourage you to keep the additional iPads and give them to people in need -- friends, family, a local school or charity.
I am sure that many of you are teary-eyed at this very moment, ready to download "It's A Wonderful Life" and watch it yet again.
You might have only one concern: will someone in the Best Buy dispatching center receive a stiff talking-to from a burly supervisor?
Perhaps we'll never know. But, once it had published this story, the Consumerist received a message from another Best Buy customer who had experienced a similar bountiful event.
This customer said he had contacted the company only to be told that, according to its records, only one iPad had been sent.
I know many of you are still considering ordering an iPad as a holiday gift. These stories surely suggest you should order from Best Buy.
You might just get more than you bargained for.August 21, 2013 at 5:29 PM
UPDATE 8:53 p.m. | The fire in Redmond stems from a 70-foot-tall and several-hundred-foot wide pile of wood and other debris at All Wood Recycling on 192nd Avenue Northeast.
That’s one heck of a bonfire.
A combined team of 66 firefighters from Redmond, Bellevue, Woodinville, Eastside Fire, Kirkland and Seattle, as well as heavy machinery crews from the recycling plant, are all on hand to fight the blaze, according to a release from the Redmond fire department.
The fire is fully contained to the wood pile, but it could burn there for the next day or longer, “due to the sheer size of the debris pile,” a Redmond fire spokeswoman said.
No roads have been closed as of Wednesday night, and there have been no injuries. The debris are mainly from land-clearing projects and include stumps, trees and other similar items.
The cause hasn’t been officially determined, but firefighters expect that the wood caught fire on its own due to heat.
UPDATE: 6:22 p.m. | The fire, which has engulfed a woodpile at a recycling center, has flared up again and is expected to burn “for quite a while,” a Redmond fire spokeswoman said.
The cause is unknown at this point, but the blase has been contained to the woodpile, said Julie Beard, the spokeswoman.
UPDATE: 5:36 p.m. | KING5 is reporting that the fire is now smoldering.
ORIGINAL POST | Five Seattle firefighter crews and engines are responding to a fire at a recycling center at 188th Avenue Northeast and Northeast 84th Street in Redmond.
They’re assisting Redmond firefighting teams, as part of a mutual aid agreement, per a SFD tweet.
More details will be added to this post as they become available.- Over the last week, nearly 47,000 people registered online to vote, according to a Secretary of State news release.
This is the largest turnout since the registration system was launched in September of 2013. Tuesday has been declared “Voter Registration Day” in Minnesota.
Friday marked the busiest day of registration with nearly 27,000 people taking advantage of the online system.
The Secretary of State’s office attributes this turnout to three new efforts, including the beginning of no excuses absentee voting. This means that people may vote before Election Day by absentee ballot without providing a reason. People can vote by mail, or they can vote in person beginning 46 days before the election.
Additionally, Facebook launched a new tool reminding users to register to vote. This, combined with Monday’s debate, is also considered to have contributed to the turnout.
The previous single-day record was 7,602 online voter registrations on March 1, 2016.
Tuesday morning, on Voter Registration Day in Minnesota, Secretary of State Steve Simon will visit South High School in Minneapolis to speak with students about the importance of voting and civic engagement. He will speak to a government and economics class and meet with student election judges. In the afternoon, he will speak at Voterpalooza at the University of Minnesota.WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Chinese man charged with conspiracy to steal high-tech U.S. corn seeds pleaded guilty in federal court in Iowa on Wednesday for participating in the theft of the patented seeds with the intention of transporting them to China, court documents show.
Federal authorities began investigating Mo Hailong, 46, for conspiring to steal corn seeds from DuPont Pioneer and Monsanto after DuPont security staff noticed his suspicious activity.
Mo was employed as director of the international business of the Beijing Dabeinong Technology Group Co, Ltd,, a part of Da Bei Nong Group that runs businesses covering seeds, animal feed and livestock.
Company spokesman Chen Zhongheng said he had not been informed about the situation and declined further comment when contacted by Reuters.
Mo’s sister, Mo Yun, who was charged with trying to steal patented U.S. seeds in July 2014, is married to the founder and chairman of the Chinese conglomerate.
Mo will be sentenced at a later date. As part of his plea agreement, he will not be sentenced to more than five years in prison.'Lo' And Behold: A Communication Revolution
toggle caption Courtesy UCLA
The first in an occasional series
The Internet began with a whimper, not a bang. And not everyone agrees on when that whimper occurred.
But 40 years ago Thursday, something called the ARPANET came into existence, and since then, communication hasn't been the same.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Guy Raz/NPR Guy Raz/NPR
The Beginning
Charley Kline's moment in history unfolded inside a large, empty computer lab at the University of California, Los Angeles, at 10:30 p.m. on Oct. 29, 1969.
"I was 21 and a programmer who liked to program all hours of the day and night," Kline says.
Those hours were spent with the SDS Sigma 7 — a computer the size of a one-bedroom apartment.
On the night of Oct. 29, Kline sent an electronic message from the Sigma 7 to another computer at the Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park.
That transmission would literally transform the way we communicate today.
The Net @ 40 A series looking at the people who built it, the way it's changed us and what the future holds.
A Revolution
To tell the story of how it happened, you have to start with the context in which it happened.
A communication revolution was taking place — but it was happening over the telephone. Telephones were for communicating, while computers were built to process information — to do things like payroll and number-crunching.
The IBM 1401, a computer system about the size of a two-car garage, could process about as much information as your cell phone — your ratty old cell phone from the 1980s, that is.
On a recent afternoon at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif., a few old-timers got the IBM 1401 up and running. That computer is one of many in the museum's main exhibit hall — a space the size of four football fields.
But, says Bill Duvall, "It's fair to say that your BlackBerry has more computing power than all of the computers in this room combined."
Duvall was on the receiving end of Kline's first message.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Guy Raz/NPR Guy Raz/NPR
An Idea In Motion
Nearly four years before Duvall and Kline did the Internet equivalent of the moon landing, Bob Taylor was sitting in his office at the Pentagon, where he worked for the Advanced Research Projects Agency, or ARPA.
And he was frustrated.
Taylor had three computer terminals in his office. Each one connected to a different computer in a different part of the country.
"To get in touch with someone in Santa Monica through the computer, I'd sit in front of one terminal, but to do the same thing with someone in Massachusetts, I would have to get up and move over to another terminal," Taylor recalls. "You don't have to look at this very long to realize this is silly. This is stupid. So I decided, OK, I want to build a network that connects all of these."
So Taylor started to collect really smart people — people who could build that network, like Duvall, Len Kleinrock at UCLA and the young Kline.
Taylor also sent word to the biggest technology companies that they could bid on a contract to help build that network.
"IBM refused to bid, as did AT&T," Kline remembers. "They both said, 'Can't be done; it's useless.' They saw the future of computing as bigger and bigger mainframes."
So a smaller company, Bolt, Beranek and Newman, got the contract. It built a device called the IMP, the interface message processor. It was as big as two full-size gym lockers.
Kline explains how it worked: "I would type a character. It would go into my computer. My software would take it, wrap around it all the necessary software to send it to the IMP. The IMP would take it and say, 'Oh, this is supposed to go up to SRI.' "
Think about it like your home Internet router, only 100 times bigger.
A Message For The History Books
It took about a year for Bolt, Beranek and Newman to build several of these IMPs and get them into place at different locations in the country, including at UCLA and SRI.
"At some point, we were ready to test it," Kline says. "It wasn't like we had planned it."
So, late on that October night in 1969, Kline, sitting at the UCLA computer lab, placed a phone call to Duvall at Stanford.
"We didn't walk into a darkened room, turn on the lights, flip the switch and have it work," Duvall says. "This was something that we tried some number of times.... We were hooked up with a telephone headset, and we were talking to each other."
Kline started to type the historic message — an online communication roughly equivalent to what the Neanderthal is to modern humans.
"We should have prepared a wonderful message," says Kleinrock, who headed UCLA's computer lab then. "Certainly Samuel Morse did, when he prepared 'What hath God wrought,' a beautiful Biblical quotation. Or
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it’s a conservative president, fine. That’s just how we operate. But when it becomes off limits to say or do certain things without being brutalized or censored or whatever, it's unfortunate."
Carvey proclaimed “I take pride in having liberals and conservatives in the crowd.”White Earth tribal member Winona LaDuke says all of this can be traced back to what happened more than a century ago -- "the fact that we lost all our land, our people were forced into poverty." A 1867 federal treaty sought to concentrate the Lakota and Ojibwe bands in White Earth, but many wanted more autonomy. Over time much of that allocated land was lost to tax forfeit, sales, and other means. LaDuke says this has left the real Natives of Minnesota reeling from "the shame of having lost everything, and now living with the consequences of that, after all those years -- the reality that, because of the dispossession of our people, we end up in a situation where we are the poorest of the poor."
Driving up Route 59, frozen cornfields and prairie are met by an endless horizon. It seems like a quintessential Midwestern scene. But at a certain line invisible to the eye, a border is crossed, and the region people on the coasts like to refer to as "flyover" is transcended. The signal from 89.9 FM, Niijii radio comes in, and a beating drum fills the car. Then, there are cries from a powwow song. Audibly, it is clear that this is no longer just Minnesota, the Midwest, or even the United States of America. This is the White Earth Reservation, a sovereign territory that belongs to the 20,000 enrolled tribal members of the White Earth Nation, descendants of the Anishinaabe (original people) of Minnesota.
LaDuke, the creator of Niijii radio, is one of the best-known native activists in the U.S., in part due to her consecutive bids as a vice presidential candidate to Ralph Nader in 2000 and 2004. She runs two non-profits based on White Earth. Those organizations, and the radio station, are all housed in the old public elementary school in Callaway.
LaDuke says the radio station promotes an assertion of identity that creates joy in an otherwise challenging environment. "The difference between us and other folks is we know who we are. We know the issues we want to talk about. We know how beautiful our music is, how amazing our stories are, how rich and deep our history of 7,000 years right here is."
KKWE Niijii radio -- "friend" in the Anishinaabe language -- is one of the newest of 69 tribal community stations in the U.S. In regions that are often remote, and complicated, these stations serve a purpose that goes far beyond entertainment. Tribal radio operators are developing the resource as a way to speak to their people, often in their traditional languages. And, LaDuke, the stations provide a way for Indians to talk to and educate the world outside reservation boundaries.
"The biggest thing that I want to see happen is self-sustainability," says the program director. "That's what I truly want to endorse."
"Non-Indian people stop me in the store and say, 'We like your radio station,Winona.' They say, 'We like listening to your powwow music -- we never heard that before. We like that you have Anishinaabe Mowen, or your language, on there.' For me that's a good thing to have this pride, and for the non-Indian community that's our neighbors to get an opportunity in the safety of their own homes or cars to hear our people."'a trgali mu glavu'
Zagrebački gradonačelnik Milan Bandić potvrdio je u petak da će Zagreb ponovno dobiti brončanu bistu jugoslavenskog narodnog heroja Ive Lole Ribara, a bit će postavljena na mjestu s kojega je uklonjena na Črnomercu, uz Prilaz baruna Filipovića, ulice koja je do 1991. nosila ime Ive Lole Ribara.
Od autora biste, poznatog kipara Koste Radovanija bit će otkupljena prava za izradu identične biste, izjavio je Bandić novinarima na Šumarskom fakultetu, nakon svečanog uručivanja ugovora o dodjeli bespovratnih sredstava za učenike s teškoćama u razvoju.
Podsjetio je da su četnici na Glamočkom polju ubili Ivu Lolu Ribara, koji u Beogradu ima ulicu, "a mi u Zagrebu trgamo glavu narodnom heroju". "To nije dobro", rekao je Bandić.
Poručio je da svi spomenici iz bliže i dalje prošlosti govore o hrvatskoj povijesti i da je njihovo očuvanje stvar civilizacijske odgovornosti.
"Svaki narod koji nije izvukao pouke iz bliže i dalje povijesti, morat će je ponovno proživljavati, a ja ne bih ponovno proživljavao ono što smo prolazili '45. i '91.", dodao je.
Nakon što je noćas u Gradskoj skupštini izglasan prijedlog o promjeni imena Trga maršala Tita, Bandić nije odgovorio "kada će doći do fizičke promjene imena toga trga", ustvrdivši da se gradonačelnik time ne bavi, te da će sve biti provedeno u skladu s procedurom i zakonom.
Vezano za troškove, smatra da će troškovi biti minimalni u odnosu na to da se "raskine s totalitarnim obilježjima bilo koje vrste".
Ujedno je ponovio poziv Vladi da ukloni sve znakove totalitarnih sustava, pa i onaj "Za dom spremni" iz Jasenovca. "U Zagrebu toga nema, niti će biti dok sam ja gradonačelnik", poručio je Bandić.Close
Signal, the encrypted messaging app from Open Whisper Systems, finally reached the open beta testing phase for desktop computers.
Four months ago, the developers started testing the software in closed beta stage. During this period, users only had access to it via an invitation program, but now that the beta is open so anyone can have a taste of Signal.
Users can get Signal from the Chrome Web Store and must log in via their Android device with the mobile variant of the app. By using the option to link the mobile and desktop environments, users can sync and continue their conversations across multiple devices.
After registering using their phone number, users can start messaging their contacts in complete discretion. The developers guarantee that each and every conversation gets end-to-end encryption and there are zero ads to be worried about.
The app does pretty much what one would expect. It allows users to send images, videos, audio files and text, but it needs a bit of tinkering to bring it on par with its rivals. For example, users are unable to manually create a group - so they have to rely on the Android app for that. What is more, the app only works on Android at the moment, leaving iOS users behind.
Should anyone want to study the app's open-source code, take a look at it on GitHub.
Signal has been commended by security experts for a good while now. The application got appraisals from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, who lauded the software's capability to establish confidential communications thanks to its native end-to-end encryption support.
You don't have to take Snowden's word for it, though. The Google Play store reports that Signal saw between 1 and 5 million installs, and the score of 4.5/5 is a solid indicator of the app's functionality.
There is a myriad of highly encrypted messaging apps on the market, and Tech Times compared and contrasted three of them so users know what to expect. Signal, Apple's iMessage and ChatSecure were pitted against each other, and each of them trump the others in a certain respect.
As Web security is becoming increasingly more important for the tech industry and consumers alike, using a messaging app with end-to-end encryption support becomes paramount.
ⓒ 2018 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.No one knew exactly when the girl would die, but everyone knew it would be soon. A 12-year-old with end stage cancer, the child's parents had recently moved her from the hospital to her home in the suburbs of Los Angeles. Some days later the girl's breath quickened, and her father phoned the family's hospice nurse. Please come, he said. He was worried about her breathing.
The nurse knew the visit would require more than four hours of her time: a two-hour drive in each direction, plus her time with the girl. Why don't we connect over FaceTime, she asked. The father agreed, and they connected.
The nurse asked the father to move his daughter gently to her side. Then to her back. To lift the child's shirt. To show her the expansion and contraction of the girl's rib cage. The nurse would ask: What do you see, what concerns you, and the father would explain. Then the nurse would do the same. In this fashion the pair examined the girl—the nurse on her computer, the father his iPad. Together they decided that the nurse's presence was not necessary, that the child had more time.
Later, the father reported feeling comforted by the nurse. He appreciated her availability, the fact that she could see what he saw, and their ability to discuss it in real time. "It's so unique, the visual image, and knowing that everyone is seeing and talking about the same phenomenon," says pediatrician David Steinhorn, director of palliative care at Children's National Medical Center—and the head of the telemedicine pilot the girl's family had been part of.
An expert in the burgeoning field of telemedicine, Steinhorn believes in the power of digital tools to connect clinicians with their patients. But more important than the technology, he says, is what clinicians in the field have taken to calling "webside" manner. It's a modern twist on bedside manner—a physician's ability to relate with a patient and convey their desire to help. "My experience is that, once you get past some initial hurdles, you can maintain an intimate, immediate connection with patients that in some cases may be more therapeutically useful than even in-person interactions," Steinhorn says.
But getting there isn’t always easy. As anyone who's spent time on a video call knows, communicating via telepresence is very different from communicating in person. “It's all the little things,” says experimental psychologist Elizabeth Krupinski, associate director of evaluation for the telemedicine program at the University of Arizona. “I mean, there's the technology bit, obviously. Webcam resolution, internet connection, and so on. And you have to think about your backdrop, your lighting, what you're wearing as well. But what you've really got to monitor is your behavior.” Krupinski should know: U of A is one of the first schools in the country to incorporate telemedicine instruction into its medical school curricula.
"It sounds strange, but when you're on camera all your actions are magnified," Krupinski says. Sitting six feet away from your doctor, in person, you might not mind or notice her slouching, fidgeting, or gesticulating. But a webcam's intimate vantage point augments these actions in ways that patients can find distracting or off-putting. "You take a sip of coffee and your mug takes up the whole screen, and all they hear is the sound of you slurping," she says. "Or you turn away to make a note, and now all your patient sees is your shoulder. Maybe you disappear from the frame entirely."
If these all sound like awfully little things for physicians to concern themselves with, well, you're right. But that's kind of the point. The considerations are so small and numerous that they can wind up overwhelming otherwise competent clinicians, interfering with their ability to connect with patients. "There are some people who are great in person and you put them on camera they're a dead fish," Krupinski says. Some physicians are camera shy. (For others, the physical isolation can actually help them be more empathetic—Krupinski says she's seen it both ways.) Telemedicine students are often instructed to disable their video chat's picture-in-picture feature. "Turn it off and look at the patient," Krupinski says. That's also kind of tricky: To appear as though they're making eye contact, clinicians are taught to look not at the patient on their screen, but directly into their device's webcam.
Some hospitals have gone so far as to design telemedicine clinics, purpose-built to address the peculiarities of virtual examinations. "We try our best to control as much of the environment as we can, so the doctors can be doctors," says Jim Marcin, director of the pediatric telemedicine program at UC Davis. The room is staged like an office but with better lighting. There's a nice desk for the clinician to sit behind, a computer situated stage left, and books in the background. A physician taking a video call from home, or somewhere in the ICU, might wear a gaming headset—a pair of brawny headphones, equipped with a mic—to ensure whatever the patient says isn't broadcast to anyone off-camera (a clear violation of patient privacy, Marcin says). But in the secluded confines of the telemedicine clinic, the whole room is mic-ed. The clinician can forego the gaming rig and focus on projecting a natural, empathetic presence.
UC Davis' clinic is in many ways the polar opposite of what patients see when they use online services like Teladoc and HealthTap, which rely on networks of tens of thousands of doctors to deliver health care directly to users, often without ever having met. (Neither Teladoc nor HealthTap responded to request for comment.) Marcin, Krupinski, and Steinhorn all say their institutions use telemedicine primarily to follow up with patients they've already worked with in person—something no longer required in the United States. (Texas was the holdout; earlier this year, it became the last state to allow physicians to connect with new patients virtually rather than first meeting in person.)
Ad hoc, virtual visits can work great when a patient needs a quick diagnosis for a sore throat or weird rash. But many experts are skeptical of clinicians' ability to deliver compassionate, high-quality care to virtual strangers. "Look, there's variation whether you see a clinician in person or whether you see them online, so I'm not saying in any way that telemedicine is less helpful than in-person visits, or that webside manner is worse than bedside manner," says UCSF pulmonologist Adams Dudley. "But webside manner definitely requires more cooperation, and a different kind of cooperation, than bedside manner."
That cooperation was often missing from doctor-patient interactions in a study—led by Dudley and published in JAMA Internal Medicine last year—that investigated the quality of virtual urgent care. The researchers conducted their investigation secret-shopper style, sending dozens of trained patients to direct-to-consumer telemedicine companies. Their scripted symptoms reflected acute illnesses such as ankle pain, low back pain, and recurrent urinary tract infections—and the researchers observed a huge range in quality of care and webside manner.
But more concerning to Dudley was the infrequency with which clinicians referred their first-time patients to specialists in their area. "Our ankle protocol was a situation where the clinician should have ordered X-rays. And in an ER, 90 percent of our test patients would have gotten it. But over telemedicine, fewer than 20 percent of patients were referred to radiologists."
The reason for the disparity isn't totally clear, but Dudley has a hypothesis: If you're a doctor in Philadelphia diagnosing a patient in Albuquerque, you're not familiar with which local provider to refer them. It's the kind of problem that could be solved with some back and forth or an ongoing patient-doctor relationship. But absent both, a surprising number of clinicians wound up not connecting the dots. "So yeah, it's terrible webside manner, and terrible care" says Dudley.
Regardless of the current state of virtual care, conscientious providers are always looking to improve. That's why Steinhorn set up his pilot palliative care program in the first place. When he thinks back to the young cancer patient in LA, Steinhorn believes that telemedicine was able to provide the girl and her family support and reassurance. And it can help physicians, too. "In my own interactions, I’ve used telemedicine to see how a family 100 miles away is coping, that the scene I see in the home appears orderly, and that the family seems together, even in times of tension and distress," he says. "And that's been reassuring.”EY creates the Wine Blockchain with the goal of certifying and communicating the quality and geographical origin of wines made in Italy. Involved in this project also the EzLab startup.
Thanks to a partnership between EY and EzLab, the Wine Blockchain was born to certify the whole traceability of wine production, allowing to guarantee quality, provenance and production.
How it works
This is the first case of a digital relationship between the producer and final customer who - thanks to a smart label on the wine bottle - can read about the wine producer (identified by a digital signature), the entire process of cultivation, production and processing of wine maximizing the trust of the consumer.
This process happens thanks to the Blockchain technology that provides all the information linked to the product so the consumer can verify its origin, organoleptic characteristics and the entire agri-food and industrial process anytime, by using his/her own smartphone to scan the QR Code printed on the wine label.
The first tracked and certified product is the Falanghina Wine produced by Cantina Volpone. In a few days, you will be able to buy their wines online too.
This “digital ID card” is an opportunity to fight against the dumping in prices created by foreign products or "fake Italian" and to create a recognition and promotion mode for Made in Italy wines.
The Ethereum Blockchain
Wine Blockchain uses a smart contract built on top of the Ethereum Blockchain.
This smart contract contains all the info that have been collected along the production process.
Gerardo Gabriele Volpone, Digital and Innovation Consultant, Volpone Winery Director, says:
"The whole thing was tied to the physical world through the registration of the digital signature of the company owner so that there is not another individual who can be able to register something by using the Volpone name.”
There is a worldwide growing interest of consumers in the products: 74 percent claim to be affected by the purchase by the search for traceability information and 60 percent controls the product labels.
Also, nine out of ten consumers said they would like to know more about Italian wines and their certification criteria and more than 70 percent would be willing to pay a higher price if there was a guarantee of transparency and provenance."We are very excited to bring soccer back to Busch Stadium and to play host to our first women's soccer match," said Bill DeWitt III, President of the Cardinals. "This is a unique opportunity to see the U.S. Women's team in one of the most iconic settings in St. Louis. Soccer fans won't want to miss it."
ST. LOUIS, MO (January 26, 2015) - The St. Louis Cardinals announced that the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team (U.S. WNT), in its first domestic game of 2015, will play the New Zealand National Soccer Team in a match at Busch Stadium on Saturday, April 4 th at 2:30 p.m. The match will be broadcast on FOX Sports 1.
ST. LOUIS, MO (January 26, 2015) - The St. Louis Cardinals announced that the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team (U.S. WNT), in its first domestic game of 2015, will play the New Zealand National Soccer Team in a match at Busch Stadium on Saturday, April 4th at 2:30 p.m. The match will be broadcast on FOX Sports 1.
"We are very excited to bring soccer back to Busch Stadium and to play host to our first women's soccer match," said Bill DeWitt III, President of the Cardinals. "This is a unique opportunity to see the U.S. Women's team in one of the most iconic settings in St. Louis. Soccer fans won't want to miss it."
The WNT's first home game of 2015 prior to the FIFA Women's World Cup could feature two St. Louis natives in defenders Becky Sauerbrunn and Lori Chalupny. The U.S. team will also play a three-game Send-Off Series in May prior to departing for Winnipeg, Canada, in advance of the team's first match of the Women's World Cup. The St. Louis match is the only domestic game to be played in the Midwest by the U.S. Women's National Team leading up the Women's World Cup.
The game against New Zealand represents the U.S. WNT's first visit to Busch Stadium. The U.S. has played in St. Louis three times before, including a 5-1 win against Mexico at the Edward Jones Dome in 2007, a 4-1 win against France in 1996 and a 1-1 tie against Germany in 1998 at St. Louis Soccer Park.
The match marks the third soccer match at Busch Stadium and the first involving a U.S. National Team, as well as the first women's game. Tickets to the match, which start at $25 for field box level seats, will go on sale to the general public on Friday, January 30th at 10 a.m. at cardinals.com/soccer, ussoccer.com, the Busch Stadium box office and 314.345.9000. A special pre-sale for Cardinals season ticket holders and club VIPs will begin on Wednesday, January 28th.
This summer, the USA will face Australia, Sweden and Nigeria in Group D at the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup. The USA opens against Australia on June 8 at Winnipeg Stadium, followed by Sweden on June 12 in Winnipeg and Nigeria on June 16 at BC Place in Vancouver. The 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup runs from June 6-July 5 and all 52 games will be shown live on FOX, FOX Sports 1, FOX Sports 2 and on tablets and mobile devices through the FOX Sports GO app and FOXSportsGO.com.
Fans can join the conversation with #SocceratBusch, follow the U.S. National Team on Twitter @ussoccer_wnt and @ussoccer_esp, and enjoy behind-the-scenes coverage in the days leading up to the match at Busch Stadium on the Cardinals various social platforms (cardinals.com/connect). Learn more and purchase tickets at cardinals.com/soccer.As reported yesterday, Apple has today made the brand spanking new Mac Pro available to order, and alongside it the Sharp 32" 4K monitor that appeared in the store briefly before. We've known the starting prices for some time now, but only today do we learn how much we'll be putting down for some of the upgrades. Time to grab your wallets.
We'll update our Mac Pro buyers guide with the full rundown, but needless to say I just ticked all the boxes to take a look and ran it up to $9599. If you want the Sharp 4K monitor on top of that, add another $3595.
It's expensive, and it's not necessarily for you, but it's extremely impressive all the same. If you've been waiting, and waiting, and waiting, then wait no longer. Hit up the Apple Store where you are and get configuring!
Source: AppleUFO Sightings in New York As Crowds of People Stare Into The Sky. Confirmed by Multiple News Networks
The Intel Hub
We normally wouldn’t cover a set of UFO sightings but seeing as a retired NORAD officer claimed that their would be an alien invasion today this seemed very important to document. Stay tuned for updates as they come in. It is very possible that this is a beta test for some sort of Project Blue Beam like operation.
Today reports of UFO activity over New York City went ultra viral. Twitter erupted with reports of numerous unknown objects in the sky. This story has gone so viral that ABC and The New York Daily News are now reporting on it. We should remain skeptical as to the origins of this sighting until proof is put forward.
Remember the retired NORAD general who predicted a UFO visit on October 13, 2010?
Fox News New York reports on major sightings all throughout New York City.
MYFOXNY.COM – The NYPD and the FAA fielded numerous phone calls Wednesday afternoon from freaked out New Yorkers who say they saw UFOs hovering over Manhattan, the New York Post reported. Callers said they saw strange silver objects bobbing or hovering in the sky. “Some people saw something described as yellow with blue lights surrounding it,” FAA spokesman Jim Peters told the Post. “Every once in a while you get phone calls from people who see something they can’t explain.
ABC News 7 reports that indeed large groups of people were looking up into the sky at this unknown object. What this is remains to be seen.
New York Daily News reports on mass sighting that caused a “frenzy”
A mysterious shiny object floating high over Manhattan‘s West Side set off a flurry of reports and wild speculation Wednesday that a UFO was flying over the city. Police and the FAA said they began getting flooded with calls starting at 1:30 p.m. from people reporting a silvery object hovering high over Chelsea. Law enforcement sources said they believed the object was likely some sort of balloon, but as of late Wednesday they had not confirmed exactly what it is.
Weird Report Out of Yahoo China.
More Pictures of the event.
Fox News reports New York airport shut down due to gas smell?
People are suggesting that balloons were released hours before all the sightings.
You can view a live feed from Times Square Here. All looks calm here.
UFOs Over Seattle, Puerto Rico, The Golden Gate Bridge, And Malaysia. [The videos are somewhat inconclusive but are interesting to say the least.]
The Huffington Post just posted a few updates:
UPDATE:
Twitter user jensenmatchett says the UFOs were actually balloons. UPDATE: HuffPostNY follower JWags confirms seeing “dozens of silver objects hovering over Manhattan from my office at around 1230.”
Crowds of people stare and point into the sky.
The video that was posted seems to be getting so many hits that its not working. This upload to Youtube seems to work. The person who took this video claims that their were cops with M-16s across the street!
Balloons or UFOS?
NYC EarthCam Footage
Comments posted on the Above Top Secret forum from people claiming to be an eyewitness:
First Comment: I just joined this site looking for a forum to tell about what I saw today, I live near 23rd and 8th and just went out to catch the ABC and NY1 reporters who did there report that you can see online or TV. Again, I feel compelled to write about what my girlfriend and i witnessed today. Make no joke about it, they were not balloons and the reports speak nothing about the formations that were formed and then broken between the smaller objects or about the “mothership” looking objects. I spoke to the ABC reporter after he finished his report and he was sarcastic and joking about it, and the report of course comes off that way. Nothing about the military fighters that I and several other people saw. The military did scramble jets at high altitudes without a doubt. The guys I spoke with were older blue collar guys that saw the jest with me as did my girlfriend. Their contrails and speeds were definitive. Also, the patterns and the quantity of the smaller objects and their separation and then their union were beyond belief. They were not normal. They covered several hundred miles in seconds to unite and then breakaway from each other. I only witnessed one, near the ending of the entire event, smaller object proceed from a standing holding pattern across what must have been miles of sky to unite with a larger object. They were not balloons. They stop and moved. Scattered and formed. The military fighter (s), was as I said extremely high, well above the commercial air traffic. Their was something up, and it was not normal. Second Comment:
Well I am am the guy who called into the Jack Blood show. I saw these UFOs, whatever the hell they were with my bare eyes. I live on 34th btw 9th and 10th in NYC. We got a call from a friend who was shopping in Midtown. I went out side and didnt see #. Went up to our fire escape and sure enough these were these silverish glowing orbs that changed position, stood still at times, and vanished and appeared spontaneously. I don’t give a # if anyone believes me, I really didnt feel like typing this crap up. I have better things to do… but it made me laugh after I did a google search on it to see what was being said. Anybody who says it was ballons is talking out of their ass. These things had to be at 50,000 ft. I worked on A-6 Intruders in the Marine Corps, VMA 224, 2nd MAW out of Cherry Point, NC. I can gage these things pretty well. I believe they were some kind of military eye in the sky type of craft. I dont believe in aliens. Even if a craft landed in front of me and a little green man walked out I would still suspect the government. But that didnt happen. Third Comment: I have been a long time reader of ATS, but this is the first time I’ve actually had something important to contribute. I am a believer in UFOs and many other conspiracies, but today I actually felt like I was in the middle of something very strange. I recently moved to Manhattan 3 months ago for a job and regularly use the subway to commute between the West Village/Chelsea (where I live) and Midtown (where I work). This afternoon I got out of work early and boarded a World Trade Center-bound E Train… this is when I started hearing talk first-hand of possible UFOs over New York. A group of businessmen boarded my train and were talking about something that looked like giant golfballs flying around in the air. They all seemed a little shocked at what they had seen and couldn’t really explain what had just happened. As soon as I got off the train at my 14th St./ 8th Ave. stop and had reception, I quickly put in a search for “UFO” on my mobile Twitter application… apparently they were not the only people to see what was in the sky. My apartment has roof access, so I immediately headed up there to see if I could see anything. Although I did not see the proposed UFO, I did see SEVERAL helicopters as well as other non-commercial aircraft flying over the city. I am not an expert on aircraft by any means, but the helicopters I saw were black/white, red/black, and all black. Additionally, I can confirm that I did see a very large-bodied helicopter that looked as if it was US military. I wasn’t paying a lot of attention to the jets that I read about in previous posts, but now that it was brought up I can say from my perspective there were about 3 different altitudes aircrafts were flying (with the commercial airliners being in the middle altitude). As I stood on my roof, I would estimate that two of the helicopters, one black/white and one black/red, hovered stationary around 23rd St. for about 20 minutes with other helicopters/ small aircraft flying back and forth. Again, I was standing on my rooftop on 14th St. facing north, so this is only an estimation – my view was also hindered by another large building, but without a doubt, I saw a lot of action in the sky. Witness who posted on God Like Productions I was in NYC today near the Flatiron District when this happened. There were orbs flying all over the sky, and CROWDS of people were pointing and exclaiming the entire time. This was real. It is the talk of the town now. This cannot be covered up
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UFO Sightings in New York As Crowds of People Stare Into The Sky. Confirmed by Multiple News Networks ©,. This copying or redistribution of this material requires that this license must remain intact
Read more at Alexander Higgins Blog
Source:According to a whistleblower who remains actively involved in litigation with the state of Louisiana, over the course of the last decade, the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources spent millions of taxpayer dollars in phony environmental projects that earned a small cabal of lawyers, land owners and oil and gas companies an enormous fortune. In the process, each of them allegedly violated scores of federal and state laws, deceived the public and likely harmed Louisiana’s already-imperiled and fragile marshlands and ecosystem.
In 2008, Stephen Street, the state inspector general, told Baton Rouge’s Business Report that he simply didn’t have the resources to pursue an investigation. “It’s difficult to commit to such a large project,” he said at the time. The FBI backed off.
The story was supposed to be over. It wasn’t.
Today, Scott Angelle, the man who had led the state agency responsible for these projects, is running for Congress, only months after coming up short in a campaign for governor. Additionally, a recent court decision demands serious scrutiny over Angelle’s decisions during his eight-year tenure as secretary of the Department of Natural Resources and his relationships with an industry he continues to regulate as a member of the Public Service Commission.
“This is a John Grisham novel,” Dan Collins tells ABiz from his home in Baton Rouge. Collins is a veteran landman, a job that required him to spend countless hours surveying every nook of the vast landscape of coastal Louisiana, often in the service of DNR. He knows Louisiana like the back of his hand, which is why, for more than a decade, he was so valuable to the state agency tasked with protecting the sustainability and responsible use of its treasured reservoirs of oil and gas.
But, beginning in 2007, when Collins realized the real intent of a “water quality” project in Bayou Postillion, located 70 miles south of Baton Rouge, and discovered the state had misled the public and the federal government, he blew the whistle, alerting two of his superiors at DNR, Robert Benoit (now part of Lafayette Mayor-President Joel Robideaux’s administration) and then-Sec. Angelle, who was first appointed to the position by Gov. Kathleen Blanco.
In December, Collins won a $750,000 judgment against the state, after a jury determined he had been improperly denied contracts from DNR in retaliation for his decision to alert authorities about the agency’s wrongdoings.
“This case involves retaliation for reporting violations of environmental law associated with a publicly funded project in the Atchafalaya River Basin under the pretense of ‘water quality,’” Collins states in his brief to the court, “when the purpose for dredging the bayou was to access oil and gas exploration for the benefit of private landowners and companies.”
Back in the summer of 2007, Mary Tutwiler and Nathan Stubbs, former staff writers for ABiz sister publication The Independent, wrote a piece called “The Newman Trowbridge Files” about the duplicitous dealings of the late Newman Trowbridge, a well-connected Lafayette attorney who brokered deals with the state, big landowners and his own oil and gas partners.
The story led to a whistleblower lawsuit filed in 2010 by Collins against DNR where Collins claimed he suffered damages by DNR in the form of reduced state contracts for his firm — retribution after he reported what he believed were violations of environmental law connected with the Bayou Postillion Water Quality Project in the Atchafalaya Basin. The jury ultimately agreed with Collins.
Over a roughly 12-year period stretching from 1997 through 2010, Collins performed title research, ownership identification, servitude acquisition and mineral research for the Atchafalaya Basin Program and the Coastal Restoration Program under DNR.
In 2005, Bayou Postillion, which is located in the protected wetlands of the Basin, was dredged in excess of 150-200 feet wide in certain areas by a length of about three miles. The project was part of the Atchafalaya Basin Program in cooperation with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and used Collins’ land services in the process, under the guise of improving the waterway.
In February 2007, Collins and his firm performed contract services for a second project called the Bayou Pigeon Water Quality Project, which also involved publicly funded dredging in the same area. Later that year, Collins found himself at the North American Prospect Expo in Houston where by sheer chance he saw oil and gas prospects being advertised for the same area.
“I just found it coincidental,” says Collins. “They were actually promoting oil and gas deals [for Bayou Postillion] at this trade show.”
When Collins returned home to do some digging, he discovered that the state of Louisiana spent upwards of $1 million on dredging only to retain ownership of a mere 25 feet in the middle of the bayou channel — within the actual waterway — from the mouth of the bayou for a considerable distance that essentially created toll road conditions for commercial barge traffic, which are typically about 50 feet in width. This in effect restricted the public from navigating from bank to bank without crossing an invisible boundary line within the waterway.
According to Collins, the publicly funded dredging project being promoted as a water quality project for fishermen and crawfishermen was, in fact, being used for the primary purpose of giving access to oil and gas exploration for the benefit of private landowners and oil companies.“Lo and behold, I find out that coinciding with the exact time period that the dredge occurred in 2005, they drilled seven wells at the direct end of the dredge,” says Collins. “Those seven wells were very prolific, very productive natural gas wells. And, I mean, it was at the direct end of the dredge. And that occurred in 2005, and the wells coincided exactly with the same time period.”Collins also revealed that the state
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itself.'
But Irvine, who also works as a waiter in Aberdeen, said: 'It's a drag show. It's supposed to cause offence.
'I've heard one negative comment but so much praise. I entertained on the night.'
Asked directly about the feelings of the McCanns, he said: 'I feel for the family.'
He added of the performance: 'It was supposed to be extreme and edgy.'Astronomers worldwide agree: there's a heck of a lot of planets out there. Thanks to tools like the Kepler Space Telescope, scientists have been discovering hundreds of new planets each year, and many believe it's only a matter of time until we find one very similar to our own earth. The big question now is, just how common are planets, and how many of them can we expect to look like Earth—or least hold liquid water?
In new study, researchers led by Steffen Jacobsen at the Niels Bohr Institute in Denmark have taken a crack at these questions and come up with some pretty stunning conclusions. By extrapolating on recent planet discoveries found though the Kepler mission, the astronomers have estimated that, on average, every star has between one to three planets nestled into its liquid water-supporting habitable zone. And of those planets, one in six should be rocky like the Earth, Jacobsen says.
Habitable zones for different kinds of stars NASA / Kepler
"In our galaxy alone, this would mean billions and billions of planets [in their star's habitable zones], with very good chances at finding an Earth twin," Jacobsen says. "But to be clear, these numbers are highly dependent on many assumptions at work here."
How they got those numbers
Since it started staring at the stars in 2009, Kepler has spotted hundreds of new planets and many more planet candidates that could be confirmed in time. It upended what we know and how we think about what's out there in the cosmos.
"In our galaxy alone, this would mean billions and billions of planets."
It also missed a crazy number of planets—many more than it ever saw. That's because the space telescope surveyed only a small swath the galaxy and could only see planets when they pass directly in front of their stars from our viewpoint. If the planets don't transit in front of their star from our point of view—or if they just take too long to do so, as Kepler only remained in full operation 5 years—it wouldn't find them. This is important, because any estimate on the number of planets in our galaxy will have to include planets that astronomers know satellites like Kepler are unable to detect with certainty.
Jacobsen's estimate is based on a modern reworking a 240-year-old astronomical observation called the Titius-Bode law. In short, the T-B law is a hypothesis that the planets in solar systems are spaced at mathematically specific intervals. (The upshot: If you know the distances between the Sun, Mercury, and Venus, then you can use math to estimate where Earth and Mars would be located). Jacobsen and his team used this law to infer planets where Kepler didn't our couldn't find them.
Our solar system, scaled to a football field Wikimedia Commons / Tdadamemd
The astronomers began their calculation by considering 151 star systems found by Kepler that had three or more planets. For 124 of these systems, Jacobsen found that the T-B law fit even better than it does in our own solar system, and so he used it to infer the existence and location of the next few planets. For the other star systems, Jacobsen and his colleagues found that inserting planets Kepler may have missed into specific gaps actually aligned the system to fit the mathematical proportions of the T-B law.
Big ifs
Jacobsen puts two caveats on his prediction. First, the numbers are correct only if those planets he assumes to be there really are there. That much is obvious. Secondly, though, his model assumes that the Kepler planetary systems are the norm, and representative of what the rest of the galaxy is like. Those are two big ifs.
"These predictions are not crazy—they just have a pretty high error [range] attached to them."
Jeff Coughlin, a SETI astronomer working with and who was not involved in this research, says that the trouble with Jacobsen's type of estimation is that with the information we have now, it's difficult to prove or disprove how valid the inserted planet predictions really are.
"It's certainly very interesting," says Coughlin, "but until we have actual data showing us how much we should trust these predications, we should be careful. These predictions are not crazy—they just have a pretty high error [range] attached to them."
Jacobsen wholeheartedly agrees. To this end, he provided a list of 77 planets whose existence he inferred in this study, and which he hopes might be found by meticulously combing through the Kepler data in the upcoming months. Finding them could provide a solid clue as to whether he's right about the great abundance of new worlds out there waiting to be discovered.CEO Jeff Bezos: Probes add to labour issues of rapidly expanding network. — Reuters file pic
SAN FRANCISCO, June 14 — Amazon.com Inc’s labour issues are growing at its sprawling network of fulfilment centres, where it ships everything from books to big-screen televisions.
The US Department of Labour said this week that it’s examining two worker deaths at warehouses operated by the world’s largest online retailer. One man was crushed to death in December 2013 after getting caught between a conveyor system while sorting packages at a facility in Avenel, New Jersey, and another fatality occurred on June 1 at an Amazon fulfilment centre in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
The probes add to labour issues Amazon is facing as c hief executive officer Jeff Bezos spends to open new distribution centres worldwide. The Seattle-based company has faced criticism for treatment of its employees, including from labour unions. Earlier this year, an attempt to form a labour union of Amazon workers at a centre in Middletown, Delaware, was rejected by workers. Last year, Amazon also grappled with strikes in Germany, as warehouse workers demanded collective wage agreements and increases in minimum pay.
Amazon has been building more distribution centres to get closer to consumers to help speed delivery of items. As of mid-2013, the company had spent almost US$13.9 billion (RM44.7 billion) on fulfilment expenses — including 50 new facilities — since 2010. Amazon had 89 warehouses at the end of 2012 and had announced five more for the US last year. The centres are in locations from Beijing to across the US in states such as New Hampshire and Indiana.
In the first quarter, fulfilment expenses climbed 29 per cent to US$2.3 billion. For this past holiday season, Amazon said it was hiring 70,000 full-time seasonal workers for its fulfilment centres.
Safety probes
The Labour Department’s probe is being handled by its Occupational Safety and Health Administration division. Ronald Smith, a temporary worker, died in December, OSHA said, citing five companies for violations at the Amazon facility in Avenel, New Jersey. Thy included the contractor responsible for the sorting operation and four staffing agencies that hired temporary employees to work at the warehouse. Amazon was not cited by the government for the death.
“Any accident that occurs in a facility is one too many and we take these matters seriously,” Amazon said in a statement.
The incident shows the risks of working at the facilities where everything from electronic gadgets to baby diapers are shipped to millions of customers. Amazon’s shares rose less than 1 per cent yesterday to close at US$326.27 in New York.This is a fixture that will hide your tablet underneath your cabinet. When you want to use your tablet the holder will fold out to provide easy access to the tablet. The holder bed will fit any tablet under 11" wide x 7.5" tall x.43" thick. This would be perfect for any kitchen that dosent have lots of space to spare or if you want to hide your tablet. Everything is designed to be printed without using supports and I was able to keep the width to only one inch so that it will disappear behind the bottom lip of your cabinet when folded up. The largest part to be printed will fit on a bed that is at least 6.3" (160mm) X 8.27" (210mm). Some of the parts do require gluing together and I have included the locatios in the instructions. I included a couple assembly pictures and tried to include everything that you would need to make it. The part names also say how many of those parts are to be printed. The only hardware that you will need will be four screws to attach it to the bottom of your cabinet.The rooftop solar array is about twice the size of one typically found on a comparable suburban home. The amount of electricity generated by the solar panels and stored in the battery pack allows the home to operate independent of the power grid, if necessary.
Image A homeowner can use an iPad to wirelessly control and monitor the solar home’s functions. Credit Thor Swift for The New York Times
The home sends excess electricity to the grid. And if the utilities become overloaded, say, in the summer when temperatures spike and everyone turns on their air-conditioners, the local electricity provider can send a signal directing the home to send solar electricity to the grid to help avert blackouts.
A similar size home would consume 13.3 megawatt-hours of electricity a year while the smart home would generate an estimated surplus of 2.6 megawatt-hours annually, according to Honda.
“We can get our carbon footprint below zero,” said Michael Koenig, the project leader for the Honda Smart Home, as he stood in the living room of the airy, light-filled house while a rerun of “McHale’s Navy” played on a large flat-screen television embedded in a wall.
He held an iPad that wirelessly controlled all the home’s functions, from lighting to the power systems, and that showed the house generating 4.2 kilowatts of electricity on a partly sunny morning while consuming 0.84 kilowatt.
“The system will calculate the household electricity load for the day based on the home’s history as well as the expected solar output and it’ll only buy power at the lowest price,” Mr. Koenig said.
The Honda Fit EV in the garage has been modified to accept energy directly from the solar array, too.
To minimize electricity consumption, Honda and the university have installed several energy-saving technologies. A geothermal system taps heat in the ground below the house to provide heating and cooling while an energy-efficient automated lighting adjusts the hue of LEDs to mimic natural daylight. In the early evening, for instance, the lights cease to emit blue hues, which have been found to interfere with sleep.In January, our friend Aaron Swartz killed himself. Aaron was unable to carry on against an overzealous government prosecution enforcing a grossly unfair and outdated law. We, and millions of others around the world, were saddened beyond words. Aaron was prosecuted for using legendary academic institution Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)’s open network to download articles from JSTOR, the digital library that sells scholarly articles, largely funded by public tax dollars, back to the public at something like $5-12 per article. Academic institutions like MIT, however, don't pay for each article but instead pay subscription fees that give access to everyone within their communities, including visitors like Aaron.
In light of Aaron's death, we and many others (including prominent alumni) have asked whether MIT could have done more to halt or limit his prosecution. Even JSTOR publicly and privately opposed the prosecution, so MIT had an easy path to follow, but chose not to. So we were somewhat heartened when we heard that MIT was appointing esteemed computer science Professor Harold Abelson to do a thorough report. We have tremendous respect for Professor Abelson and waited patiently for he and his colleagues to complete their work. We hoped that at last someone would talk clearly about why MIT hadn’t stirred itself to stand up against a prosecution that targeted a man the university should have been proud to embrace – and against a law that would doubtless, sooner or later, be used to target or chill others within the MIT community.
Professor Abelson's report was released this week, and we are deeply disappointed. Instead of looking critically at what MIT did and criticizing it where warranted, the report simply recites the same old excuses some members of the MIT community have been giving for the MIT’s failure to act. The most criticism it can muster is to gently chide MIT for being “neutral” when an educational institution of its stature and importance might have considered playing a “leadership” role.
Others have given good criticisms of MIT’s choice to remain “neutral,” pointing out that neutrality wasn’t the right position for MIT to take here. We strongly agree. MIT could have pointed out that Aaron was likely authorized to use JSTOR given MIT’s open campus, something the head of the Media Lab asked it to do in a letter in June 2011, and it actually did in the David LaMacchia case in 1994. MIT also could have appealed to higher ups in the U.S. Attorneys office to investigate what was obviously a prosecutor who was overreaching. MIT’s own conversations with the prosecutor, where he likened MIT to a “rape victim,” claimed that the JSTOR articles cost "millions of dollars" to create and falsely accusing Aaron of conducting a “wild Internet campaign” were clear enough signals. MIT certainly had the capability to reach out to U.S. Attorney Ortiz or trigger any of the other processes by which a prosecutor’s actions can be investigated. Worse, the assertion that this and similar conversations led MIT to decide that it could actually hurt Aaron by standing up for him is simply incredible.
But based on the report itself, we don’t think MIT was actually even “neutral,” by any reasonable definition of the word. Apparently MIT assisted the government from the very beginning -- offering documents to the prosecution before being subpoenaed and allowing multiple interviews of MIT personnel, including without having counsel present. It did nothing similar for the defense, which it didn't even seriously talk to until June, 2011, five months after Aaron's arrest and then shined on for months at a time thereafter. In a particularly heart-wrenching example, the report notes with mild concern that MIT’s general counsel and outside specialist counsel incorrectly assumed the government would give documents MIT provided to the prosecution to the defense in a timely fashion. That’s not even true -- federal law doesn't require all documents to be turned over, just those deemed exculpatory, material to the defense, or that the government intends to use at trial. MIT’s inside or certainly its outside criminal counsel should have known this. But regardless, Aaron’s defense counsel fought with the prosecution to obtain even the required disclosures, which were essential to Aaron's defense, up until Aaron’s death. The government’s gamesmanship with documents greatly increased the pressure on Aaron and MIT couldn't even be bothered to call the defense to check on its faulty assumptions.
Eventually, the report admits that even the semblance of neutrality was abandoned when the defense filed motions to suppress some evidence and had the audacity to criticize MIT’s investigative processes. Yet the report just meekly states that the motions “had the effect of aligning MIT’s interests more with the prosecution than with the defense.” At that point, MIT's counsel actually helped the government respond to the suppression motions and decided to let the government have ongoing access to its employees without counsel present through trial.
Let’s be clear: MIT faced no likely consequences from the suppression motions except perhaps a modicum of (perhaps deserved) embarrassment. Even if it bought the unconvincing claims of neutrality before this point, the report should have criticized the university harshly for abandoning its “neutrality” and directly aiding the government in this prosecution.
While Aaron’s prosecution is certainly not MIT’s fault, and neither is his death, MIT should be held accountable -- indeed, it should hold itself to account -- for its failure to live up to its own ideals. Aside from its failure to help Aaron, MIT's actions in helping the government prosecute Aaron are shameful, and betray the institution’s commitment to technologists.
Aaron did what he did because of his deep and abiding belief that technology should make the world a better, more just place. This is the lesson MIT should be teaching the world's technologists -- that this goal is noble and important and that even if you "color outside the lines," in pursuit of it, you will be treated with fairness and a sense of proportion in any punishments that follow.
Over the years, we’ve advised many MIT students and professors about the risks to technologists of overbroad computer crime, intellectual property, and other laws aimed at technologists who “color outside the lines.” MIT well knows that these people also push innovation, are crucial to improving computer security and generally serve the public interest. So we were happy to see the report recommend that MIT participate more directly in the policy and legal debates that affect technologists so profoundly. We call on MIT to publicly support Aaron’s law, the bipartisan bill aimed at reforming the CFAA, as well as the FASTR act and other efforts to fix some of the problems that both befell Aaron and that he was working to solve.
We also urge the MIT alumni and community to actively push its leadership into strongly supporting these efforts. Another disappointing part of the report is the claim that MIT didn’t think the community cared. That wasn’t true then and it’s not true now, but MIT folks need to take active steps to make sure there’s no misunderstanding in the MIT Office of General Counsel.
Together, maybe we can help bring MIT into the leadership role on technology and protecting technologists that it should have held all along.The parasitic worms that lurk in some people’s intestines may be revolting, but they seem to forestall Crohn’s disease and other types of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). A new study might explain how, revealing that the worms enable beneficial microbes in the intestines to outcompete bacteria that promote inflammation. The results could lead to new ways of treating gut diseases by mimicking the effects of the parasites.
“It’s a beautifully done paper,” says immunologist Joel Weinstock of Tufts University in Boston, who wasn’t connected to the work. “It had not been previously shown that one of the mechanisms [of IBD] is through changes in the intestinal flora.”
In people with IBD, inflammation in the digestive tract results in symptoms such as diarrhea and bleeding and can sometimes lead to intestinal obstructions or other severe complications. Because parasitic worms, or helminths, can be harmful, they appear to be unlikely allies against these diseases. “They are called parasites for a reason,” says immunologist Ken Cadwell of the New York University School of Medicine in New York City, a co-author on the new study. However, IBD is rare in parts of the world where helminths are prevalent, and it is surging in more developed countries, where few people now carry the intestinal intruders. That difference suggests, researchers say, that they are protective.
To determine how the worms could be our frenemies, Cadwell and colleagues tested mice with the same genetic defect found in many people with Crohn’s disease. Mucus-secreting cells in the intestines malfunction in the animals, reducing the amount of mucus that protects the gut lining from harmful bacteria. Researchers have also detected a change in the rodents’ microbiome, the natural microbial community in their guts. The abundance of one microbe, an inflammation-inducing bacterium in the Bacteroides group, soars in the mice with the genetic defect.
The researchers found that feeding the rodents one type of intestinal worm restored their mucus-producing cells to normal. At the same time, levels of two inflammation indicators declined in the animals’ intestines. In addition, the bacterial lineup in the rodents’ guts shifted, the team reports online today in Science. Bacteroides’s numbers plunged, whereas the prevalence of species in a different microbial group, the Clostridiales, increased. A second species of worm also triggers similar changes in the mice’s intestines, the team confirmed.
To check whether helminths cause the same effects in people, the scientists compared two populations in Malaysia: urbanites living in Kuala Lumpur, who harbor few intestinal parasites, and members of an indigenous group, the Orang Asli, who live in a rural area where the worms are rife. A type of Bacteroides, the proinflammatory microbes, predominated in the residents of Kuala Lumpur. It was rarer among the Orang Asli, where a member of the Clostridiales group was plentiful. Treating the Orang Asli with drugs to kill their intestinal worms reversed this pattern, favoring Bacteroides species over Clostridiales species, the team documented.
Cadwell and colleagues also asked whether Clostridiales and Bacteroides microbes were at odds in other people. They analyzed two sets of data on the frequencies of different intestinal microbes, which include results for healthy U.S. residents and kids in North America who have IBD. They saw the same relationship—when Clostridiales species are up, Bacteroides varieties are down, and vice versa.
The study’s findings suggest that parasitic worms deliver their benefits indirectly through their impact on the microbial mixture in the intestines. Worms are “having an anti-inflammatory effect by kicking out something that is inflammatory,” Cadwell says. Members of the Clostridiales group may get a boost when worms are around, he says, because the intestines produce more mucus, which the bacteria feast on.
“This is a good proof of concept,” says immunologist Gabriel Nunez of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, who wasn’t connected to the research. It supports “the principle that some of these diseases may be related to changes in the microbiome.” But he cautions that researchers still need direct evidence that Bacteroides species are responsible for Crohn’s disease.
Turning the results into a treatment for IBD could be difficult. Two recent clinical trials of helminth treatment for Crohn’s disease, in which participants drank a solution containing the worms’ eggs, stopped early because the results were disappointing. These studies may not be the last word, however. Cadwell says that worm therapy might work in the roughly 30% of Crohn’s patients who have the same genetic flaw as the mice. And Weinstock notes that if researchers can determine how the parasites trigger the shift in microbe composition, “we may be able to bypass the worms and develop a small molecule drug to get the effect in a safe way.”After four years and 2 months since the release of a last album in February 2012, solo artist Se7en will finally be making a comeback!
On February 14th, Star News reported Se7en is currently immersed in gathering songs for his new album with an expected release date for mid-April. It is further noted that while this may not be a full album, the release will most likely be that of a mini-album.
This year, Se7en is celebrating his 13th year as a singer.
Se7en entered the military services in March 2013, returning in to the public in December 2014. Additionally, his contract with YG Entertainment was mutually not renewed as Se7en went on to create his own agency, ELEVEN9. Since then, he has been holding events in Japan as well as appearing in his first musical Elizabeth.
Look forward to his new mini-album expected in April!
Source: Star NewsEastman Chemical officials said in a news conference Wednesday evening that emissions released during an earlier explosion did not pose a risk to the public.
In Wednesday's conference, officials said crews are still analyzing and assessing what happened during the reported explosion earlier in the day.
Eastman Senior Vice President David Golden told media that emissions including carbon monoxide and hydrogen were released, but they did not pose a risk.
Earlier in the day, officials confirmed a precautionary shelter had been removed after it was deemed unnecessary.
"Eastman has removed the precautionary shelter in place advisory for most personnel at its Kingsport site. We’ve also removed the precautionary shelter in place for the surrounding community within a half-mile radius. Eastman’s near neighbors can resume all normal activities. We appreciate the cooperation from all our neighbors and community during this time. In an event like this, we take every precaution to ensure the safety of our employees and our site neighbors," the company wrote in a statement.
Emergency crews responded to reports of an explosion just after 10 a.m. at Eastman Chemical Company in Kingsport, according to CBS affiliate WJHL.
Tom Patton with the Kingsport Police Department said fire and EMS crews from Sullivan County were dispatched to the scene.
Officials with Eastman Chemical told WJHL no one was injured in the incident apparently caused by a process upset in the coal gasification area.
Kingsport City Schools and employees of Eastman Chemical were ordered to shelter in place. The shelter in place advisory was lifted later in the day for Eastman employees.
WJHL crews close to the situation said a portion of JB Dennis Road had previously been been blocked by Kingsport Police.
A spokesperson with the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation confirmed with News Channel 11’s Sydney Cameron that they were notified of the incident at Eastman and that they are closely monitoring the situation.
Here is the full statement from TDEC:
"TDEC has been notified of the incident at Eastman Chemical Company. We are closely monitoring the situation and working with local agencies to provide technical expertise as needed. All incident-related inquiries should be directed to the local EMA office at (423) 323-6912 or Eastman at this time.”
News Channel 11 obtained a copy of the Kingsport reverse 911 call, find it here.
Officials with Eastman Chemical released a statement to WJHL just before noon.
"Around 10:00 a.m., Eastman experienced a process upset in the coal gasification area of its Kingsport manufacturing site. The upset created a loud noise and a visible plume. No one was injured.
In an excess of caution, our employees are currently sheltered in place as we are working to secure the area. Until more information is known, near neighbors are advised to do the same. That means to stay indoors, turn off your HVAC system. More information will be updated on eastman.com, the Eastman Careline 423-229-CARE and local media.
We have reported the incident to the proper regulatory authorities."
No further details were immediately available.
This is a developing story. Updates will be posted here.A Malaysian airliner was shot down over eastern Ukraine by militants on Thursday, killing all 300 people aboard, a Ukrainian interior ministry official was quoted as saying by Interfax-Ukraine news agency. Sources say around 80 children are also dead.
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According to reports, various airlines are now avoiding eastern Ukraine airspace. Meanwhile, Ukraine separatist group blames Ukraine Air Force for the incident. Pro-Russian separatists have told Russian news agency Ria that they are willing to have up to 3-day ceasefire in Ukraine to allow for recovery work at site. The US has said that they don’t have their own confirmation about the incident. There are no confirmation about Indians being on board the airliner either.
I’m shocked and saddened by the Malaysian air disaster. Officials from across Whitehall are meeting to establish the facts. — David Cameron (@David_Cameron) July 17, 2014
Russian President Vladimir Putin has sent ‘deep condolences’ to the Malaysian prime minister. US President Barack Obama said they will offer any kind of assistance to Malaysia.
The aircraft, which other sources said was a Boeing 777 flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, came down near the city of Donetsk, stronghold of pro-Russian rebels, Anton Gerashchenko said, adding that it was hit by a ground-to-air missile.
There was no further confirmation of the report, although Ukrainian officials said local residents had found wreckage.
A holiday crowd boarded the Malaysian Airlines in Amsterdam. Not long later 295 innocent people are killed. This is akin to a war crime. — Sanjay Jha (@JhaSanjay) July 17, 2014
Malaysia Airlines said on its Twitter feed it had lost contact with its flight MH-17 from Amsterdam. “The last known position was over Ukrainian airspace,” it said.
Malaysia Airlines has lost contact of MH17 from Amsterdam. The last known position was over Ukrainian airspace. More details to follow. — Malaysia Airlines (@MAS) July 17, 2014
Gerashchenko was quoted as saying: “A civilian airliner travelling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur has just been shot down by a Buk anti-aircraft system … 280 passengers and 15 crew have been killed.” Indian airline carriers have been told to avoid using the Ukraine airspace.
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Malaysia’s Star newspaper quoting sources said the plane was “shot down” while cruising at an altitude of 30,000 feet. Ukraine Interior Ministry said 295 people are feared dead in the crash, it said.
ITAR-Tass news agency reported that the airliner flying at the altitude of over 10,000 metres was supposed to enter the Russian air space at 17:20 Moscow standard time (13:20 UTC).
“However, it fell down in 60 kms from the border; the plane’s emergency location beacon went off,” the agency reported quoting sources.
The shooting down of Malaysian Airlines flight tells us how vulnerable humanity is in a complex violent world of international politics. — Sanjay Jha (@JhaSanjay) July 17, 2014
Ukraine Prime Minster orders investigation into Malaysian “airplane catastrophe”, says plane was en route from Amsterdam, Reuters said.
Ukrainian Interior Ministry adviser said the Buk missile was fired by separatists, Interfax said.
Interfax-Ukraine quoted another Ukrainian official as saying the plane disappeared from radar when it was flying at 10,000 metres (33,000 feet), a typical cruising altitude for airliners.
It came down at Torez, near Shakhtersk, some 40 km (25 miles) from the Russia border. The area has been the scene of fighting between Ukrainian troops and pro-Russian rebels.
A number of Ukrainian military planes have been shot down by missiles in recent weeks. Ukraine has accused Russia’s military of supplying advanced missiles to the rebels, the BBC reported.
Earlier on Thursday, Ukrainian officials blamed the Russian air force for shooting down one of its ground attack jets on Wednesday.
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Tensions have been high between Ukraine and Russia since street protests forced former pro-Moscow President Viktor Yanukovych from power in February.
(With inputs from Reuters, PTI)I am sitting in a small estate car, which is tailing a black 1980s Jaguar XJ, in which Nick Cave is pretending to chauffeur Ray Winstone along Brighton seafront, eavesdropping on their conversation via a listening device. They are supposed to be discussing the transformative possibilities offered a rock star as opposed to those offered an actor – Cave has previously expressed the opinion that, unlike an actor, a rock star can never truly remove the mask they have created for themselves, even when offstage – but the conversation seems to have gone slightly off-piste. It has shifted from Cave's early career in Melbourne ("You never wrote a song on the beach? But you're an Australian!" splutters an incredulous Winstone, not perhaps entirely au fait with the oeuvre of the Birthday Party, which was famously light on carefree paeans to the sunkissed sands and bikini-clad lovelies of St Kilda) and has now settled on the unlikely subject of fish and chips. Like so many things, Cave attests, they are of a superior quality in his homeland to those in Britain: "The fish and chips over here are fucking terrible," he complains. This suggestion appears to sting Winstone's sense of national pride. "If the fish and chips are so fuckin' good in Australia," he snaps, "why don't you fuckin' move back there?"
Eavesdropping on Cave and Winstone arguing about fish and chips while pretending to drive from Brighton to Rottingdean feels a deeply odd way to spend a wet Wednesday afternoon, but then an atmosphere of strangeness seems to have attached itself to 20,000 Days on Earth, artists Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard's feature documentary about Cave. For one thing, it has thus far been shot in secrecy. It was already long underway when Cave released his 15th album with the Bad Seeds, Push the Sky Away. The pair, who first worked with Cave on the video for his 2008 single Dig! Lazarus Dig!, began shooting at the singer's invitation during the writing sessions for the album. "They filmed everything," he says. "They had a camera set up in my office when I'm just writing the first lines of things, picking out the first melodies on the piano. That's kind of why I let this go in the first place because you just don't have cameras on bands doing the actual thing. In the past, I've let cameras into the studio, but we've basically already finished the record. So you get shots of people sitting around in the control booth, listening to music."
Pollard, Forsyth, Cave and his wife Susie Bick look at the rushes to 20,000 Days on Earth.
Nevertheless, Cave made no mention of the film in the interviews he gave to promote its release earlier this year. "I think one of the reasons why we didn't talk to anybody about this is because we didn't know exactly what it was going to be before we started making it," says Pollard, sheltering from the rain in a Winnebago parked by Brighton marina. "We had an ambition, and we said to Nick: 'Just trust us.' And it's only now through actually beginning to shoot it and see what's happening that I think he's beginning to see what we meant. Every time we show him rushes, it's like: 'Good, I get it now, all right, that makes sense.'"
It seems surprising that Cave agreed to a documentary at all. It's de rigueur for journalists who meet him to note what a charming and funny interviewee he is, largely because there was a significant proportion of his career when he was anything but. Nevertheless, there's no mistaking that he's also a guarded interviewee, keen to protect his privacy, weary of having the details of his past raked over and fond of telling journalists to "Google it" rather than retell old stories. What made him think a documentary was a good idea? There's a very long pause. "I don't really know if it is a good idea," he says. "I'm extremely reluctant to be filmed. But I trusted Iain and Jane enough to give them complete access to the studio and they've just expanded the idea into a feature-length, cinematic-style documentary. The thing is, they presented something that wasn't just telling the Nick Cave story we do or do not know. It's their idea. I'm just sort of being blindly told what to do."
20,000 Days on Earth certainly takes an unconventional approach. "The thing that seems so kind of prevalent in contemporary music docs is that they're all about getting behind something, revealing something, taking away the mask, taking away the myth," says Forsyth. "The important thing for us was not breaking the mythology," which fits with the duo's work as visual artists: they have in the past restaged both David Bowie's final performance as Ziggy Stardust and the Cramps' 1978 gig at Napa Mental Institute, and made two films about the emotional potency of mixtapes. 20,000 Days on Earth was influenced, they say, by One Plus One – in which Jean-Luc Godard intercut film of the Rolling Stones recording Sympathy for the Devil with staged footage involving black power militants and an actor purporting to be the personification of democracy – and The Song Remains the Same, the oft-derided Led Zeppelin movie featuring lengthy fantasy sequences in which the band members rode to the rescue of fair maidens and climbed mountains on quests for self-enlightenment. "A kind of odd failure of a film," laughs Pollard. "But its strangeness is brilliant, its ambition is just glorious. There's a kind of drive, or at least a push, to just create a new language for how you might consider rock music, or the rock star. I mean," she adds quickly, "it's not going to be Nick on a white horse with, you know, a sword. Although he'd love that."
Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard's File Under Sacred Music, 2003. Photograph: Alison Wonderland
Inspired by an unused line in Cave's songwriting notebook, in which the singer had worked out that he was precisely 20,000 days old when work on Push the Sky Away commenced, the film tells the story of a fictionalised day in his life, filled with scenes devised by Forsyth and Pollard "as kind of constructed real situations in which Nick can improvise, we don't script at all": writing in his office, having lunch with his main songwriting collaborator Warren Ellis, and visiting the Nick Cave Archive, which exists – alongside those of Barry Humphries and Dame Nelly Melba – at the Melbourne Arts Centre, but was shipped to Brighton for filming. "There's some incredible photographs, a series of slides of a Birthday Party gig in Germany where a guy jumped onstage and actually pissed on the bass player Tracey Pew," says Forsyth. "And Tracey Pew punched him offstage. Nick talks it through, almost like a football commentary." Driving between his various destinations, Cave explains: "The car becomes this place of imaginings, I guess, where the thoughts I'm having materialise in the forms of people that have played some part in my story." Hence Ray Winstone, who starred in The Proposition, for which Cave wrote the screenplay: another passenger turns out to be his one-time duet partner Kylie Minogue.
For all the talk of artifice, the film seems remarkably intimate. The rushes I see contain a scene of Cave eating toast in front of the television with his 12-year-old sons Arthur and Earl, the cosy domesticity only slightly undercut by the fact they're watching the bloodsoaked closing scenes of Scarface: "Say hello to my leedle friend," they chorus together. Another scene features Cave visiting a psychoanalyst: not, he swiftly points out, a regular occurrence in his everyday life. "The interview went on for two days," says Pollard. "We thought it might take a day for him to settle in. How wrong we were. Within minutes, it was completely guard down, doors open." Cave describes the experience, a little surprisingly, as "a pleasure": "You know, I haven't done much of that sort of thing, but he was a very clever guy. I have absolutely no idea what they got. I mean, I have a vague recollection of what I said, but what it looked like, I don't know. There's certain things within this film that I have no idea how they're going to go. But you've got to take risks.
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Rights Act by putting up a sign that read "Public Swimming Pool, White Only" at her Cincinnati duplex.
The commission, meeting this week in Columbus, concluded last year that the sign "restricts the social contact between Caucasians and African Americans as well as reinforcing discrimination actions that are aimed at oppressing all 'people of color.'"
The case was brought by Michael Gunn, a white man who said had unrestricted access to the pool area for himself and his guests during the nearly two years he lived in the duplex, he said in a December interview.
Gunn, a software engineer, said he and his girlfriend, who is also white, lived upstairs; their 31-year-old landlord lived downstairs. However, he said their relationship soured in May 2011 when he invited his 10-year-old biracial daughter to visit and swim in the pool.
"Complainant states that the owner, Jamie Hein, accused his daughter of making the pool 'cloudy' because she used chemicals in her hair," the commission said in its summary. "Days later, the owner posted a sign on the gate to the pool which read, 'Public Swimming Pool, White Only.'"
Hein said she received the sign from a friend and posted it in early May, the summary says. Several people interviewed by the commission staff confirmed that they had seen the sign, it added.
Hein did not respond to a request for comment at the time. But she told ABC News in December that she collects antiques. She said the sign, which was dated 1931 and from Alabama, was a gift from a friend.
"I don't have any problem with race at all. It's a historical sign," she told ABC.
Gunn said he was outraged by the sign and made arrangements to find another place to live as soon as he could.
"We were extremely upset and moved out on June 21, 2011, in order to not expose my daughter to the sign and the humiliation of the message," Gunn wrote in his complaint.
He said he never confronted Hein about the matter, but has no doubt that the sign was intended for his daughter.SAN JOSE — In a scathing opinion published Thursday, a state appellate court reversed a judgment against a felon accused of being a sexually violent predator, saying the prosecutor handling the case — now District Attorney Jeff Rosen’s right-hand man — engaged in a “pervasive pattern” of misconduct.
The misconduct finding against Chief Assistant District Attorney Jay Boyarsky is the first black mark against Rosen’s administration since he took office two years ago on an ethics platform and appointed Boyarsky as his top assistant.
Rosen handled the situation Thursday with the same aplomb he demonstrated as a homicide prosecutor to defuse potential courtroom crises. Boyarsky, who is also Rosen’s best friend, tried the case when he was a line prosecutor before Rosen came into office.
“We respect the court’s decision,” Rosen said. “Any prosecutor in my office may err, and when we do, we learn from it and improve.”
The ruling, written by Conrad Rushing, the presiding judge of the 6th District Court of Appeal, stems from a civil court hearing in Santa Clara County in which Dariel Shazier was involuntarily committed to a state mental hospital on the grounds that he was a sexually violent predator.
Boyarsky erred by asking improper questions of the witnesses that elicited inflammatory answers and by making improper arguments to the jury, Rushing wrote. For instance, Boyarsky implied without offering any evidence that Shazier had molested other boys. The prosecutor also essentially asked jurors what their friends and family would think of them if they found Shazier wasn’t a predator.
“This is not a case in which the prosecutor engaged in a few minor incidents of improper conduct,” Rushing wrote. “Rather, the prosecutor engaged in a pervasive pattern of inappropriate questions, comment and argument throughout the entire trial.”
Boyarsky said he accepts the court’s ruling about his conduct, though he made his arguments in “good faith.”
“Based on the court’s opinion, if I had it to do over again,” he said, “I would make my arguments differently.”
Although the ruling reverses the involuntary civil commitment order, Shazier will remain at Coalinga State Hospital while the case is pending. Rosen noted Shazier has a “serious history of sexually preying on young teenagers,” and said his office will try him again if doctors conclude he is a predator. Under another scenario, the state Attorney General’s Office could appeal the ruling to the state Supreme Court, which could strike down the appellate decision, allowing the involuntary commitment to a mental hospital to stand.
The case dates back to 1994, when Shazier pleaded guilty to sodomy with a minor under 14, sodomy with a minor under 18 and oral copulation where the victim is unable to resist due to an intoxicating substance. He was sentenced to 17 years and eight months in prison.
Shortly before he was to be released, the DA’s Office sought to have him involuntarily committed to a state mental hospital on the grounds he was a sexually violent predator. The first attempt resulted in a mistrial when the jury voted 11-1 in favor of finding he was a predator. The second attempt, by now-disgraced former prosecutor Ben Field, was also reversed on the grounds of prosecutorial misconduct.
To qualify Shazier as a predator, Boyarsky had to show he had “a diagnosable mental disorder that predisposes him to sexual violence.”
Two of the two state doctors testifying for Boyarsky said Shazier has hebephilia, a sexual attraction to teenage boys who have attained puberty. However, hebephilia is not classified as a mental illness, Rushing noted. One of the doctors also testified that the defendant was not a pedophile and was not aroused by force or violence, and that the only reason his prior crimes were considered nonconsensual was because the victims were minors who could not legally consent.
Rushing said that Shazier presented a “vigorous defense,” including evidence that he had spent the last 15 years while incarcerated seeking every voluntary treatment available. The justice also criticized the trial judge, Alfonso Fernandez, for overruling all of the many “well-taken” objections made by Shazier’s defense attorney, Deputy Public Defender Patrick Hoopes.
Dallas Sacher, director of the Sixth District Appellate Program, which handled the appeal, praised the ruling.
“Nobody in their right mind wants people on the street doing this to boys,” Sacher said. “But creating a make-believe genre of crazy people isn’t right either. The ends do not justify the means.”
A spokesman for the Attorney General said the office is reviewing the opinion and hasn’t decided whether to appeal it to the state Supreme Court.
“We argued in our appellate court brief that none of the cited instances constituted prosecutorial misconduct and reversal was not required because it is not ‘reasonably probable that a result more favorable to the defendant would have occurred’ absent the misconduct.”
Contact Tracey Kaplan at 408-278-3482. Follow her at Twitter.com/tkaplanreport.Members of the Taliban at the site of the execution of three men accused of murdering a couple during a robbery in Ghazni province, Afghanistan, April 18, 2015. Thomson Reuters
KABUL (Reuters) - The Taliban warned on Friday against sending more Western troops to Afghanistan, while pledging that it sought only independence under Islamic rule and rejecting concerns it would harbor foreign militants.
In a statement marking Eid al-Fitr, the festival at the end of the holy month of Ramadan, Taliban leader Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada combined defiant calls for the United States to get out of Afghanistan with more conciliatory messages.
"The occupation is the main obstacle in the way of peace," he said, in comments which echoed similar messages the movement has sent in the past.
While not explicitly acknowledging the recent debate in Washington over U.S. policy in Afghanistan, the message appeared to address several of the arguments made for maintaining or even boosting support for the Western-backed government in Kabul.
In particular, it rejected the concerns that Afghanistan could once again become a haven for foreign militants seeking to attack the United States and its allies as al Qaeda did when it struck the Twin Towers in 2001.
Taliban fighters training with their weapons in an undisclosed location in Afghanistan, July 14, 2009 Thomson Reuters
Calling for "complete independence of the country and establishment of an Islamic system", he warned against plans under consideration to increase the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan by up to 3,000-5,000.
"The more they insist on maintaining the presence of their forces here or want a surge of their forces, the more regional sensitivity against them will intensify," he said.
However, he also promised "constructive and good relations with you and the world" once "your illegitimate occupation of Afghanistan comes to an end".
He dismissed widespread accusations that the Taliban benefited from aid from other countries including Pakistan and, more recently, Russia, saying it would "not allow anyone else to intervene in Afghanistan".
"Likewise, we don't permit others to use the soil of Afghanistan against anyone," he said.
Afghan security forces arrive for battle with the Taliban in Kunduz province, Afghanistan, April 16, 2016. Thomson Reuters
He urged the United States to accept the "legitimate demands of the Afghan people" and seek peace through diplomatic means but appeared to offer no concession on the Taliban's central demand that foreign forces must leave before peace talks begin.
"The solution of the Afghan issue through peaceful means is part and parcel of the policy of the Islamic Emirate, should the occupation come to an end," he said.
The statement had harsh words for the government of President Ashraf Ghani, which it dismissed as a "stooge" of America and blamed for rising ethnic and factional tensions in Kabul and elsewhere.
It also urged Taliban fighters to avoid civilian casualties, a call likely to be dismissed by the government and its allies following Thursday's attack on a bank in Helmand that killed at least 34 people and last month's deadly truck bomb in Kabul that killed at least 150 civilians.
Although the Taliban have denied responsibility for the Kabul attack, Afghanistan's main intelligence agency said it was planned and carried out by the Taliban-affiliated Haqqani network.
(Reporting by James Mackenzie; editing by Nick Macfie)Fantastically detailed, visually arresting photographs of Andromeda, a spiral galaxy that lies 2.5 million light-years from Earth, have been available for years. But getting a full panorama of our own Milky Way Galaxy is considerably more difficult. Nestled in the thick of the galaxy, we are unable to see it from the outside. For astronomers trying to map out the Milky Way's structure in detail, the exercise is a bit like trying to figure out what one's own face looks like—without the aid of a mirror.
That means that new discoveries are still possible in our own cosmic backyard, a fact made apparent by a new study that identifies a previously unseen spiral arm of the Milky Way. The newfound structure, some 70,000 light-years away, may be the continuation of a major, previously known spiral arm, part of which is visible much closer to Earth. Thomas Dame and Patrick Thaddeus of the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announce the finding in a study that is set to appear in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Astronomers can map distant galactic structures using telescope dishes operating in the microwave or radio bands that can identify spectral signatures of specific atoms or molecules. Dame and Thaddeus found the new appendage by tracing the well-known Scutum–Centaurus arm to where it ought to extend on the far side of the galaxy. Something tantalizing showed up in telescope surveys that had scanned the galaxy for microwave emissions from hydrogen atoms. But with so much hydrogen in the galaxy, discrete structures can be hard to identify, and false positives abound. "You can pick up all kinds of patterns in the wallpaper" with hydrogen, Dame says.
So he and Thaddeus went looking for carbon monoxide, which is thought to be a reliable tracer of the kind of molecular gas clouds that form stars. Finding molecular clouds strung along the purported arm would verify that it was a genuine piece of the Milky Way's structure and not a mere pattern in the wallpaper. And indeed the researchers did find several molecular clouds along the arm, one of which they mapped out in detail. It is roughly 300 light-years in diameter, with the mass of 50,000 suns. Mapping the entire arm will take years, Dame says.
The location of the arm matches where the Scutum–Centaurus arm would emerge from behind the galactic center. That region that is difficult to observe; for one thing, the galactic center is dense and roiling with activity. It is nearly impossible to see the middle span of Scutum–Centaurus behind the center that would connect the inner portion of the arm to the newfound outer portion. "We've apparently found it much farther out than anyone has ever traced it before," Dame says. "If our proposition is correct, it means that the Scutum–Centaurus arm goes almost all the way around the galaxy."
It makes sense that Scutum–Centaurus would continue outward to where the newfound structure lies; indeed, such an extension of Scutum–Centaurus would preserve the galaxy's general symmetry. The Perseus arm, a sort of mirror image of Scutum–Centaurus whose arc carries it past the sun's neighborhood, wraps around the galaxy in just the way it now appears Scutum–Centaurus does on the opposite side of the galaxy.
So it is not entirely unexpected that such a structure would exist; some artists' renderings have shown Scutum–Centaurus encircling the galaxy in just the way that the new observations suggest. But seeing is believing, and the new arm has not been convincingly spotted before. "I would say that it's been scarcely noticed," Dame says. "A couple other people sort of drew a line through it and didn't even mention it."
Part of the reason the newfound spiral arm was easy to miss is that it does not sit neatly in the plane of the Milky Way. "It's following the warp in the galaxy," Dame says. "The galaxy is sort of—roughly speaking—like a sombrero hat." Such warping is not uncommon on the outer fringes of spiral galaxies. "When the star density gets low, there's less to hold it in place," he says, and the tug of dwarf galaxies or of other perturbers can bend the disk out of shape. The new structure is at the very edge of the galaxy, where stars become scarce, but there may nonetheless be some stars there to complement the gas astronomers have detected. "It's interesting, of course, that there are molecular clouds there," Dame says. "It's hard to prevent molecular clouds from forming stars."SCP-1152
SCP-1152 during initial containment, note the missing digit on the front-left paw.
Item #: SCP-1152
Object Class: Safe
Special Containment Procedures: SCP-1152 is to be kept in a solitary habitat in the Site-98 Animal Housing Wing. SCP-1152 is to be given 5kg of feed meeting its nutritional standards, detailed in document SCP-1152-NI, laced with 25mg Venlafaxine. SCP-1152 is to be examined once every two months by an onsite veterinarian following repeated health issues. Access to SCP-1152 is reserved to Level 3 personnel only.
Description: SCP-1152 is superficially similar to standard members of the Procyon lotor (common raccoon) species. SCP-1152 weighs approximately 75kg, despite only being 60cm from the nose to the tip of its tail, and its current state of malnutrition. SCP-1152 does not share the genome of other members of its species, but is a near complete match for the human genome. After logging SCP-1152's genome in the Foundation Database it was found to share 99.87% of its genetic code with the late Agent ████. Along with its human DNA, SCP-1152 has proven susceptible to pathogens normally restricted to infecting humans. SCP-1152 also has been verified to have a lifespan much longer than others of its species, having been in containment for six years. SCP-1152 is missing the fifth digit on its front-left paw; how SCP-1152 was injured is as of yet unknown.
SCP-1152 has exhibited intelligence on par with an average post-pubescent human, eluding capture from staff for two weeks after initially being found in Site-98's personnel wing. SCP-1152 is suffering from long-term depression following its capture. SCP-1152 is capable of manipulating objects with considerable dexterity beyond what should be feasibly possible with paws. It is also capable of opening doors and bypassing low security manual locks, requiring the lock to its room to be replaced with keycard access.
Along with the anomalous mass of SCP-1152's body, it appears that SCP-1152 may possess cognitohazardous effects in carnivorous and omnivorous land animals. Any such animal introduced to SCP-1152, even members of its own species, has displayed hostility to SCP-1152. As such it is now contained in a secluded habitat.
Addendum SCP-1152-A: After the events of its escape on ██/06/20██ all personnel are advised to keep their keycards hidden on their person when interacting with SCP-1152. The incident report follows:This article was first published on December 17, 2016 and is being republished on November 8, 2018 to mark two years since demonetisation.
Major historic events, after a while, are represented only by their photographic representations. The details are forgotten, it is the images, and often just one image, that encapsulates the entire story and human drama that may have played out over months and years.
Thus, while we may not recall what exactly happened on the night of December 2, 1984, when lethal gas leaked out of the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, we instantly recognise the photo of a father’s hands around his dead child’s face. Similarly, the running girl, naked because the napalm US planes had dropped had burned off her clothes, triggers off the memory of bombing in Vietnam. Other iconic images include the sailor kissing the nurse in New York – representing th symbolic end of the Second World War, and two memorable photographs – one of a sword-wielding man, out to taste blood, and the other showing a teary man with folded hands, begging for his life – tell the complete story of the 2002 pogrom in Gujarat.
Many such images are powerful in themselves; the story behind them enhances their power. By itself, the Hindustan Times photo of an old man crying, apparently because he lost his place in a queue to withdraw his pension, is the kind experienced photographers looking for human interest stories bring back fairly routinely. It is one of the many pictures that have appeared in the media in the past month or so, telling tales of the frustration and helplessness of ordinary Indians, of people shouting, crying and even dying as they try and access their own money. Yet, this one went viral on the social media, and has become symbolic of a decision gone horribly wrong.
It has become clear that the praja is suffering real pain, even as it is being told that all this suffering is for its own good and a way to serve the nation. Think of it as labour pains, our suave law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has said – the end result is pure joy.
To an extent, we have probably even got inured to the daily tribulations of those for whom small amounts of cash are the difference between eating and going to bed hungry at night. Stories about hardship are now fodder for the inside pages and will soon disappear from the media – you can’t keep doing the same stuff, can you? Besides, hasn’t the government and many more people, including film stars, said that it is actually a good thing? Time to move on to new stories.
Ironically, the photo, taken by Praveen Kumar, did not make it to the front page of his newspaper on the day it was published. But it became a hit on social media, where the human tragedy of Nand Lal, an old, former army man weeping struck a chord. It has become, six weeks after the brutal strike that has knocked out the livelihoods and dignity of millions of ordinary Indians, the iconic image that will for long come to represent demonetisation and its depredations.
Look at the photo carefully. The face of the man tells us countless stories of hardships suffered and misfortunes borne with fortitude. We now know that he lives alone in a small room and that he was a soldier; he would have faced enemy bullets and much else, but the failure to withdraw a few hundred rupees even after queueing up for three days proved just too much for him. Knowing that he would have to start all over again, and fully aware that at the end of it he may still come back empty handed, his dam just burst.
It is the others around him that give the photo its real meaning. The women may or may not be sympathising with him, but they don’t want to step out to console him because they could lose their place in the line too. Sympathy and solidarity must take second place to survival. The women’s faces are full of quiet desperation too, because they must get money, however little it may be, and go home, otherwise their families could suffer. The country is united in its suffering, but given that there is so little cash to go around and that even that is so difficult to get, it is each man or woman for themselves. Others’ sadness must wait.
We now know the old man was finally allowed to jump the queue and withdraw Rs 1000. Another photo shows him happy and grateful. The whole cycle could start once again when that money runs out, but for the moment he is happy with this small bit of good luck.
The pain of demonetisation is not going to disappear any time soon. And even when it does, the lives of the poor are not going to improve. The lines may disappear, but they will have to cope with a regime hellbent on imposing technology on to them; what if a limit of cash withdrawal is set as a permanent feature? We would be foolish to think of this radical step being a whimsical, one-off move; this is part of a larger plan to redraw the way not just the country is administered but also how citizens themselves run their lives. In the meantime, the lines show no signs of getting shorter and people no closer to getting hold of cash.
More stories and more images of hardship will emerge. It is possible that the world will forget Nand Lal and move on. But his image will remain seared in our collective memory, if not our conscience. It is another matter that those who can and should ease his pain will not face that dilemma because they never even registered the photo in the first place.Great stay at the Rubin Wellness and Conference Centre. Lovely location; out of the way from the hustle and bustle but with great transport links. Just down the road is the metro station which takes 5 minutes to get into the city centre. It's just a £1 for a single journey - what a treat. The breakfast is outstanding with lots to choose from. My only flaw is that there are no tea and coffee facilities in the room - outrageous. I couldn't have a morning coffee or a quick brew before bed. Such a simple facility that goes such a long way. The best feature of the hotel are the spa facilities - there are approx 4 saunas to choose from (only two of them were open) and the pool and jacuzzi is fantastic. We used the facilities on a couple of occasions and on one day it was raining so used it all day. They also offer massages; great prices and she did a great job.
All in all, great hotel.
Thanks for a lovely stay.Well for modesty and facebooks sake, the nipple shields sit on the main picture.
I’m still wondering why as women we can’t walk around like this in today’s society and not feel like it’s perfectly ok?
Every single day in the summer months I see men walking around with no shirts, nipples pointed out to the world and it’s perfectly fine, but our boobies are not.
Those same boobies that have fed many a mouth of a child and adorn our bodies in many sizes and shapes. We have a right to be proud.
We have to hide them in case someone finds them offensive, sexually exciting or just plain non interested.
Now let me tell you if my boobies pointed in the direction these do, I’d be totally proud to walk tall.
Sadly the reality is that the majority of us have discovered gravity!!
Gravity is only surpassed by amazing genetics or plastic surgery it seems.
My boobies have seen many things in their lifetime. They’ve been fondled upon, fed children, seen hospitals, travelled extensively. But most if not least, are present with me at every single moment of my 24/7 day, 365 days a year.
My boobies have had shared the good and the really bad times. They’ve supported many a plate of dinner when I can’t be bothered sitting at the dining table.
They’re my best friends and frankly I am proud that I was lucky enough to make friends with them, despite the fact they really have let me down by their attention to gravity.
Women, be proud of your boobies. Big or small, scarred, dimpled, whatever state they come in.
Every single day at least 140 women in the U.K. are diagnosed with breast cancer.
Check your boobies regularly. Feel proud of them and remember, they walk with you for life.
Credits:-
Zara outfit from ASIA now at the Hash in Black
Betty hair from [elikatira]
One shot pose (with guns) from Gingerfish I picked up from eBENTO
Only in my dream pose from Luanes Pose
Gothic backdrop from Focus Poses
Catya bento head from CATWA
Angel shape for the Catya head LizBitz
Lara mesh body Maitreya
Grace toffee skin from [theSkinnery]Five years since Canada’s constitutional coup
By Keith Jones
4 December 2013
Five years ago today, Canada’s Conservative government used the arbitrary powers of the un-elected governor-general to shut down Canada’s parliament so as to prevent the opposition parties from defeating the government in a non-confidence vote.
The governor-general’s action was patently undemocratic. The opposition parties had won a majority of the votes and seats in a federal election held less than two months before. But the short-circuiting of parliament was strongly supported by Canada’s ruling elite.
Recognizing this, the opposition parties, including the social-democratic NDP and their trade union allies, meekly submitted to the December 4, 2008 constitutional coup. When parliament reconvened in late January the Official Opposition Liberals, to all but universal support from the corporate media, voted to sustain the minority Conservative government in office.
Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, by contrast, had vowed—in a nationally televised speech on the eve of his formal request to the governor-general for the suspension of parliament—that he would “use every legal means” at his disposal to remain in power. In that speech, Harper also termed the attempt of the opposition parties to form a coalition government a threat to Canada’s “national unity” and “democracy” and made an open appeal to anti-Quebec chauvinism. As the World Socialist Web Site explained at the time, Harper’s actions raised “the question as to how far he and his fellow Conservatives are prepared to go in subverting parliamentary and democratic procedures.”
The 2008 crisis was a pivotal political event that laid bare important truths about the character and crisis of Canadian democracy as well as the role of the NDP, unions and the pseudo-left. In the ensuing five years the Canadian ruling class has expanded its attack on democratic rights: criminalizing worker struggles, including strikes by Canada Post, Air Canada, and Quebec construction workers; employing unprecedented police violence and draconian legislation (Bill 78) against striking Quebec students; and using the Canadian partner and counterpart of the US National Security Agency—the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC)— to illegally spy on Canadians’ telephone calls, e-mails, texts, and internet use.
Here we republish an article on the 2008 events written by Keith Jones, the national secretary of the Socialist Equality Party (Canada). Titled “Canada: Vital lessons from last month’s political crisis, it was originally posted on January 26, 2009.
Canada’s parliament will reconvene today seven-and-a-half weeks after it was shut down by the unelected governor-general at the behest of the minority Conservative government and big business.
The proroguing of parliament was a flagrant attack on parliamentary norms and democratic rights. Its explicit purpose was to prevent the Members of Parliament (MPs) from defeating the Conservative government in a December 8 non-confidence vote and authorizing the formation of an alternate government—a Liberal-NDP coalition supported from the “outside” by the Bloc Québécois.
The opposition parties had joined forces in response to the government’s November 27 fiscal and economic update. The update slashed public expenditure even as Canada’s economy was being rocked by world recession and Canada’s rivals were rushing to boost their manufacturers and other sections of business with economic stimulus packages.
A crisis has the salutary impact of laying bare the real relations between, and the trajectory of, different parties and social classes. Irrespective of what happens in parliament this week—the Liberals have repeatedly voiced their readiness to abandon the coalition and sustain the current government in office if the Conservatives will only heed their calls for a “substantial” economic stimulus—it is crucial that working people ponder the significance of the extraordinary events of late November and early December 2008.
There are at least three vital lessons.
First, in pursuit of its class interests the Canadian bourgeoisie is ready to run roughshod over fundamental democratic rights.
The shutting down of parliament was, as the World Socialist Web Site has previously explained, a “constitutional coup.” Through the reactionary office of the governor-general (that is the representative of Canada’s monarch, Queen Elizabeth II), the ruling class succeeded in short-circuiting parliament to prevent an outcome it deemed undesirable.
Under Canada’s parliamentary system, it is the MPs, the reputed elected representatives of the Canadian people, who choose the government and a government is constitutionally compelled to resign if it is demonstrated to have lost parliament’s “confidence.” Yet last month MPs who had been elected in a federal election less than two months before were prevented by the executive—the minority government acting in collusion with the unelected governor-general—from exercising their right to unseat and replace the government.
There is no precedent in modern Canadian history or that of any other country with a British-style parliamentary democracy for parliament being prorogued for the express purpose of avoiding defeat in an impending non-confidence vote. That opposition parties enjoying the support of a majority of MPs had formally informed governor-general Michaëlle Jean of their intention to defeat the Conservatives and form an alternate government only underscores the arbitrary and anti-democratic character of her decision to shut down parliament.
In clinging to office, the Conservatives mounted a vicious right-wing campaign, claiming the proposed coalition would serve as an instrument of “socialists” and “separatists” and suggesting it was quasi-treasonous. Even supporters of the proroguing of parliament such as the Globe and Mail had to concede that the Conservatives were inciting anti-Quebec chauvinism.
The Conservatives’ failure to include measures to stimulate the economy in their November 27 economic update caused widespread dismay and dissatisfaction within the ruling class. But it quickly became apparent that Canada’s elite was opposed, at this juncture, to the coming to power of a coalition government in which the trade union-supported NDP would serve as junior partner and which would depend on the indépendantiste Bloc Quebecois (BQ) for its parliamentary majority.
When it became clear that the only way to prevent the coalition from coming to power was to shut down parliament, the ruling class—as attested by the editorial pages of the country’s leading newspapers—overwhelmingly supported such action. No matter that it was a flagrant violation of the precepts of Canada’s parliamentary democracy.
The Liberals got the message. Within days of parliament being shut down, the Liberals expedited the exit of Stéphane Dion as party leader and replaced him with Michael Ignatieff, the acknowledged leader of the party’s right wing and a “coalition skeptic.”
Last month’s constitutional coup must serve as a warning to the working class. If the ruling class is willing to trample on basic democratic principles and shut down parliament so as to prevent the coming to power of a coalition led by the Liberals, its traditional party of government, what authoritarian measures will it employ if faced with a genuine challenge from the working class?
One final point should be made about last month’s constitutional coup. The media and all the opposition parties have enveloped the actions of the governor-general in a blanket of silence.
Apart from a single column by the Globe and Mail’ s Lawrence Martin, no influential newspaper or journalist has called on the governor-general to explain her actions or, for that matter, to reveal what transpired during the two-and-a-half hour, December 4 meeting at which Prime Minister Stephen Harper sought and she granted him the order proroguing parliament.
Canadians have been led to believe that the office of the governor-general is a regal decoration, a relic that stands above politics. But as last month’s events demonstrated, the governor-general has vast reserve powers. The bourgeoisie, with the complicity of the opposition parties, wants to ensure that this reactionary institution is not subject to public scrutiny and debate—does not become “politicized”—so it can be deployed to uphold its interests in future crises of a more fundamental character.
Second, the trade unions and social-democratic NDP have responded to the capitalist crisis by moving still further right.
The eruption of the most severe financial crisis since the Great Depression and the descent of the world economy into recession underscore the urgency of the working class advancing its own program to resolve the crisis at the expense of big business, not working people. To defend their jobs, wages and rights, the working class must challenge the capitalist order, the subordination of socioeconomic life to the socially destructive pursuit of profit by the tiny plutocracy that controls the bulk of society’s wealth.
The unions and the NDP, the purported organizations of working people, are utterly opposed to such a struggle.
In the name of securing an economic stimulus package that will protect working people from the economic crisis, the NDP with the full support of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) and the Quebec unions have announced their intention to support a Liberal-led coalition government.
In fact the NDP and CLC were instrumental in putting together the coalition, serving as interlocutors between the Liberals and BQ, longtime bitter rivals. And the unions and NDP have continued to cling to the coalition even as the new Liberal leader, Michael Ignatieff, has distanced himself from it and signaled his preference for a de facto Liberal-Conservative coalition.
Quebec Federation of Labour (FTQ) president Michel Arsenault lavished praise on Ignatieff last week after the Liberal leader visited the union's Montreal headquarters. In reference to Ignatieff, Arsenault said, “We need somebody who believes that government has to reinvest in infrastructure, has to reinvest in the economy.” But while the QFL leader was imploring Ignatieff to bring down the Conservatives, the Liberal leader was declaring, “I think the Canadian public demands that I give him [Prime Minister Harper] one last chance to win back the confidence of the Commons.”
NDP leader Jack Layton has been anxious to assure the press that the coalition is alive and well. “I think it’s a happy marriage and we had a nice cup of coffee and a good discussion,” Layton told CTV following a closed door meeting with Ignatieff January 13.
A Liberal-NDP coalition would be a right-wing government that under the cover of “progressive” phrases would press forward with the anti-worker and anti-democratic agenda pursued by its predecessors, the Harper Conservative government and the Liberal governments of Paul Martin and Jean Chrétien.
To secure the Liberals’ support, the NDP not only had to agree to the Liberals’ controlling three-quarters of the seats in cabinet, including the posts of prime minister and finance minister; the NDP also pledged to implement the Liberal-Conservative plan to reduce corporate taxes by $50 billion over five years and to support Canada waging war in Afghanistan through 2011.
The coalition’s policy accord begins by affirming the Liberals’ and NDP’s commitment to “fiscal responsibility”—a euphemism for declaring their subservience to big business and its mantra of “international competitiveness” and their opposition to any serious redistribution of wealth in favor of working people. The accord’s second paragraph begins, “This policy accord is built on a foundation of fiscal responsibility.”
The accord goes on to proclaim the parties’ “top priority” to be “an economic stimulus package.” But the proposed stimulus measures, such as spending on infrastructure, are vague, made dependent on the government’s financial capacity, and are entirely from the standpoint of reviving Canada’s capitalist economy, of making it profitable for big business to operate.
What this means for working people is exemplified by the auto industry “bailout.” The Canadian bailout put together by the federal Conservative and Ontario Liberal governments, like the US bailout, is conditional on the wages and benefits of workers at the Detroit Three’s Canadian plants being reduced to the level paid nonunion workers at the Japanese transplant operations in the southern US.
The Canadian Auto Workers (CAW), one of the most vocal supporters of the Liberal-NDP coalition, has already signaled its readiness to accept such concessions in the interests of “protecting” workers from the crisis!
In justifying their allying with the big business Liberals, the social-democratic politicians of the NDP and the union bureaucrats invariably point to the rapacious anti working-class character of the Harper Conservative government. But the Harper government has only continued and extended the policies of the Liberal governments that preceded it—from the redistribution of wealth to the most privileged layers of society via tax cuts, through the expansion of the Canadian Armed Forces and the war in Afghanistan.
If the Liberals have long served as the Canadian bourgeoisie’s principal party of government, it is precisely because of their ability, with the complicity of the unions and NDP, to use the Conservatives as a right-wing foil, while implementing the program of big business.
Third, the petty bourgeois left trails in the wake of the union bureaucracy and the NDP.
Canada’s ostensible “radical” left was quick to embrace the Liberal led coalition as a “lesser evil.” The prominent anti-globalization activist Naomi Klein, feminist media-personality and rabble.ca co-founder Judy Rebick, and Amir Khadir and the left Quebec sovereignist Québec solidaire all welcomed the coalition. So too did the Stalinist Communist Party of Canada.
Taking their cue
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variety of styles in our tasting, the range of flavors was vast. The best brews were beautiful and absolutely delicious. Some were more complex than others, but the best were balanced and precise. Some showed clear American touches like dry-hopping, the act of adding hops to the beer after the fermentation process, as it rests or ages.
“It’s like putting an aromatic stamp on it,” Chase said.
We also noted that more than a few of these brews seemed to be still in an experimental phase, as if the brewers were not quite in control of the results. These beers tended to be unbalanced, piercing or otherwise flawed. It may also have been a product of inexperience or lack of resources.
Many Old World brewers of sour beer employ a blending system like the solera of sherry, in which new batches of beer are combined over time with older batches in ways that can result in a more consistent product as well as compensate for any noticeable flaws in a particular batch.
“Some of these brewers may not have taken the time to blend with a solera, or they may not have the experience,” Matthew said. “They may be brewers, but they’re not blenders yet.”
One brewer that has mastered consistency is Cascade of Portland, Ore. Its 2014 Kriek, flavored with cherries as it aged in barrels, was our No. 1 beer: bright, lively, distinctive and complex. We gave it four stars, our highest score, which is rarely achieved, except that Cascade’s 2010 Kriek also earned four stars in our 2011 tasting.Montana lawmakers this week passed a repeal of the state’s sodomy laws. Why, when those laws are unenforceable, is this still a necessary and worthwhile use of lawmakers’ time?
Gay Montana Lawmaker: This Law Makes Me A Criminal
Montana, like several other states, still has a law that makes consensual gay sex a crime but, it seems, not for very much longer. This week, the Montana state House voted overwhelmingly to repeal the state’s sodomy law.
During a debate earlier this week, Representative Bryce Bennett (D-Missoula) gave an impassioned speech on how the current law makes him a criminal, and why repeal legislation (SB 107) is necessary.
“Under this law,” Bennett told the House, “I could be imprisoned for up to ten years for being part of a loving, caring relationship. [...] The fact that years later this language is still on the books means that our state still sees me as a criminal. The belief that I am a second-class citizen in a state I was born in and called home my entire life.”
Watch the speech below:
A number of Republicans voted with Democratic legislators to advance the repeal 65-34.
Rep. Duane Ankney (R-Colstrip) asked the Legislature to remove the language because it infringes upon personal rights, saying the law is an “embarrassment,” and that it “should go away … as quietly as it came.”
Still, a majority of Republicans opposed the repeal, with a number of legislators citing supposed concerns that a repeal of the sodomy statute was like promoting homosexuality, and that this could be used to somehow introduce gay indoctrination in schools.
The legislation now heads to Governor Bullock’s desk.
In the above video, Rep. Bennett makes the point that Montana’s sodomy statute is not being invoked by the police, yet he still feels marginalized because the law remains on the books — this despite the Supreme Court in 2003 ruling in Lawrence v. Texas that such bans are unconstitutional.
There is also evidence that bans like this continue to be the darling of anti-LGBT lawmakers and officials.
Which U.S. States Still Have Sodomy Laws?
If we discount Montana, 13 states still have some form of sodomy statutes.
Three states specifically outlaw gay sex: Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas. Montana’s former ban also specifically targeted homosexual couples.
Ten other states outlaw anal and oral sex, so while such bans could apply to heterosexuals, the statutes were historically used to aggressively criminalize homosexuality.
These states include Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah and Virginia.
Are Sodomy Laws Really Still Invoked Today?
As fellow Care2 blogger Judy Molland recently noted, Virginia’s anti-gay attorney general Ken Cuccinelli has petitioned the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals to review the court’s own opinion that the state’s so-called “Crimes Against Nature” ban, which makes anal and oral sex a felony, is unconstitutional.
Cuccinelli has issued a slew of opinions against anti-LGBT ordinances and LGBT-rights protections, so while the above case does not specifically deal with LGBT rights, its wider implications are a concern.
Fortunately, the court has rejected the en banc appeal. At the time of writing it is not known whether Cuccinelli will appeal to the Supreme Court on this issue.
This is by no means an isolated incident, either.
The Texas Republican Party in 2010 published its party platform with the following language:
“We demand that Congress exercise its authority granted by the U.S. Constitution to withhold jurisdiction from the federal courts from cases involving sodomy.”
While the party has recently backed off from such explicit calls, it still resists repealing the sodomy statute.
Now this may all seem like bluster but, while cases like this are decreasing, sodomy laws are still invoked to deny LGBT people their rights and to stifle companies and business owners who are LGBT-affirming.
For instance, such bans have been used to prevent same-sex couples from adopting or gaining access to their own children after a marriage breakdown. They’ve also been used to deny people employment. Among the most infamous of cases is Georgia’s then-Attorney General Michael J. Bower, who rescinded a job offer to a lawyer because she was marrying a woman, and then successfully invoked the state’s sodomy law as a justification.
There is evidence dating from as late as 2009 that authorities in states like Michigan and Texas may also still be citing the so-called “legislative intent” behind the sodomy bans in order to prosecute, without legal challenge, consensual sex between men.
More than this, though, sodomy bans have one specific and chilling function quite apart from any explicit hounding: such laws send a very clear message to LGBT people that they are politically powerless and still a group to be marginalized and discriminated against.
So yes, the states should have better things to do than repealing these statutes. Nevertheless, repealing the intrusive and discriminatory bans remains an important step and a crucial safe-guard to eliminating opportunistic bigotry and affirming LGBT equality.
Related Reading:
Virginia Lawmaker: “Sodomy is Not a Civil Right”
Sodomy Law Retained in Kansas
Texas GOP: Recriminalize Sodomy and Make it a Felony to Marry Same-Sex Couples
Image credit: Thinkstock.A former state senator from Massachusetts was charged last week with collecting about $1 million in bribes and kickbacks that he allegedly laundered through his company.
Brian A. Joyce, 55, a Democrat who served from 1998 until January of this year, also accepted hundreds of pounds of free coffee from a Dunkin’ Donuts store owner in exchange for his influence, the Boston Globe reported.
Joyce was escorted from his home in handcuffs Friday, the paper reported. He faces federal charges including corruption, embezzlement, mail fraud and money laundering.
“Brian Joyce represented over 100,000 Massachusetts citizens in the state Legislature,’’ acting U.S. Attorney William Weinreb said at a news conference announcing the indictment. “He had a duty to serve them honestly. And he violated that duty by accepting bribes and kickbacks in exchange for his official action.”
Republican Gov. Charlie Baker called the allegations against Joyce disturbing.
‘‘People in public life need to respect the offices they hold and that means not using them for personal gain, and if the feds believe there’s enough there to justify an indictment then the investigation needs to be thorough and move forward accordingly,’’ Baker said.
"People in public life need to respect the offices they hold and that means not using them for personal gain." — Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker
In one case, prosecutors alleged Joyce used his position to exert influence on behalf of a New York-based energy brokerage business and formed a shell company to collect secret kickbacks from the firm. In another scheme, prosecutors say Joyce pressured a local planning board to approve a waiver sought by a developer, who gave Joyce a Jeep from one of the developer’s car dealerships.
The indictment also accuses Joyce of taking legislative action to aid a coffee franchise whose owner was paying him tens of thousands of dollars for ‘‘purported legal fees’’ and providing him with hundreds of pounds of free coffee.
Weinreb would not say whether charges would be brought against any of the companies accused to be involved in the schemes but said the investigation remains ongoing.
Joyce pleaded not guilty Friday before U.S. Magistrate Judge David Hennessy, and was released on a $250,000 bond. He will return to court Feb. 23, the Globe reported.
Joyce’s arrest was the second blow to the state Senate last week.
Senate President Stan Rosenberg, also a Democrat, announced Monday that he was stepping aside during a Senate Ethics Committee investigation into the circumstances surrounding reported sexual misconduct allegations by several men against his husband, Bryon Hefner.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.When the Jets signed Tim Tebow last offseason, I thought the idea of platooning him and Mark Sanchez was crazy enough to work if the two embraced their roles. Because neither was a truly viable NFL starting quarterback on his own, I felt that perhaps an experiment designed to optimize the sum of the parts could be beneficial to all involved. I was wrong. As Tebow was inserted randomly and haphazardly for Sanchez, both quarterbacks failed to settle into a rhythm and seemed to regress from where they were last season.
Monday night’s debacle, in which Sanchez threw four interceptions before fumbling in the final minute after being in an undeserved position to beat a horrific Titans team, was a microcosm of the Jets season. It was a game in which the Jets would have won if they got anything more than a putrid performance out of Sanchez. Ironically, the defensive struggle (“offensive” struggle would probably be a more apt description in both definitions of the word) was the archetypical game in which Tebow thrived last season, pulling some Angels-in-the-Outfield type shit to win on the final drive.
However, where we are now is almost certainly in the Jets’ long-term best interest. If they would have won an extra game or two and made the playoffs by starting Tebow and hoping for some magic, it would have masked structural issues that need to be addressed for the team to ever legitimately contend for a Super Bowl. To do so, they need a better quarterback than they have.
This has been quite the fall from grace for Tebow, who graced Sports Illustrated’s cover this time last year and would go on to lead the Broncos to a playoff victory over the Steelers in an overtime thriller.
I might be delusional, but I still feel like Tim Tebow is salvageable if he were to land in the right system, like that of the Packers or Patriots. At the same point where Tebow is now — three years into his pro career — Aaron Rodgers had yet to start a game. Everybody remembers his great game against the Cowboys in 2007, but people forget how skeptical fans and media were that Rodgers could replace Brett Favre before and even after that.
I’m sure that Tebow would prefer to start right away, but if he were to go to a team that has an elite starter and a coaching staff with a proven ability to develop quarterbacks, there’s still a chance that he could go on to sustain a long career at the position.
Here’s why New England would make a ton of sense if the Jets are unable to find a trade partner this offseason:
1. Bill Belichick loves to invent offensive weapons out of nowhere.
Three weeks ago, Dante Stallworth was sitting on his couch waiting for an NFL team to call. Two weeks ago, he caught a 63-yard touchdown pass. Nobody who’s paid even a little attention to New England over the last decade was remotely surprised.
There’s also precedent for the Patriots’ picking up a scrappy player whom the Jets could not find use for. Before the 2010 season, Danny Woodhead made a name for himself with the Jets on Hard Knocks, but was cut soon after the season began. The Patriots picked him up. The rhyme and reason for Woodhead’s success seem to be that his big plays occur when the team decides for that to be the case. He’s scored 13 touchdowns for the Patriots in a little under three seasons.
While Woodhead deserves a ton of individual credit for making the most out of his diminutive 5-9, 200 lb frame (that’s what he’s officially listed as, but I’ve seen as low as 5-7, 190), one cannot help but wonder if he is actually an interchangeable part that Belichick chooses to utilize out of sadistic spite for Rex Ryan and the Jets.
“Oh you couldn’t figure out a way to use this guy? Sorry you’re not a football genius like me,” one imagines Belichick’s inner and implied dialogue to be.
Rex Ryan even inferred as much in 2010, seemingly implying that lots of players could be used in Kevin Faulk’s role. Via The Jets Blog:
I think when Kevin Faulk got hurt and he was put in that role, it’s not surprising. He’s a talented kid. He does a great job in those situations. He’s a good receiver out of the backfield and running in the seven-man spacing. This guy is tough. As we all know, he’s a tough kid. He covers kicks. Do I regret cutting him? Yeah, absolutely, right now I do.
After the Tebow experiment exploded so publicly and violently in the Jets’ faces, any use the Patriots could get out of him – especially in games against the Jets – would be Woodhead multiplied by infinity.
2. Nobody has a more vested interest in Tebow’s success than Josh McDaniels.
If McDaniels stays as New England’s offensive coordinator next season, you know he would relish another opportunity to develop the quarterback that he was maligned for drafting in the first round in Denver. The connection spurred trade rumors last offseason.
3. New England can effectively stonewall the excessive media attention.
Even as he’d go weeks without catching balls, notorious attention whore Chad Johnson was as invisible in the media as he was on the field during his tenure in New England.
Rob Gronkowski can almost say and do whatever he wants because his quirky character and lack of an ‘off’ switch are part of what makes him one of the best football players in the world. Other than Gronk, though, Belichick has a system where players fall in line, recite platitudes, and focus their attention on winning football games. You’re not going to see ESPN cameras at training camp practices that capture Tebow running shirtless through the rain in New England. Tebow’s getting a birthday cake from the media over Belichick’s mutilated corpse.
This would all be good for Tebow’s development.
***
TL;DR: Tim Tebow is at a crossroads in his career right now. For his career to be sustainable, it’s probably not in his best interest to start for a crappy team like the Jaguars. He needs to spend a year or two backing up an elite quarterback with a coaching staff that will take pride and interest in his ultimate development.(Recasts with claim of responsibility)
ATHENS, Nov 16 (Reuters) - A Greek anti-establishment group has claimed responsibility for a drive-by shooting this month that killed two supporters of the far-right Golden Dawn party and raised fears of an escalation of political violence.
The previously unknown group "Militant People's Revolutionary Forces" said the attack had been carried out in retaliation for the fatal stabbing of anti-fascism rapper Pavlos Fissas, to which a Golden Dawn sympathiser has confessed.
Police could not confirm the authenticity of the claim, which came on the eve of rallies to commemorate the 40th anniversary of a bloody student uprising against the military junta that ruled Greece at the time.
"The brazen murder of Pavlos Fissas was the drop of blood that made the glass overflow," the group wrote in an 18-page letter filled with anti-establishment invective published on the news website www.zougla.gr. It called the rapper's killing a "turning point".
"The armed attack-response... is the starting point of the people's campaign to send the neo-Nazi scum of Golden Dawn where they belong, to the dustbin of history," it said.
The shooting of the two young Golden Dawn supporters outside the party's offices in Athens on Nov. 1 came at a time of growing public anger against a party widely regarded as neo-Nazi and accused of attacks against migrants and leftists.
Golden Dawn denies accusations of violence and rejects the neo-Nazi label. It denies any involvement in Fissas's killing.
An opinion poll released on Saturday indicated that support for Golden Dawn had grown since the two men were gunned down.
The party, Greece's third most popular in surveys, had shed almost a third of its support after Fissas's death in September.
The poll by ALCO for Sunday's Proto Thema newspaper, conducted on Nov. 12-15, put support for Golden Dawn at 8.8 percent, up 2.2 points in a month but still below the 10.8 percent it enjoyed in June.
A government crackdown on Golden Dawn after evidence linking it to Fissas's killing has led to party leader Nikolaos Mihaloliakos and five more of its lawmakers being charged with belonging to a criminal group. Mihaloliakos and two of the lawmakers have been remanded in custody until their trial. (Reporting by Karolina Tagaris; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.In the eyes of the entertainment industry, The Pirate Bay is nothing but a piracy outfit dedicated to destroying their business. These groups make it vocally known that they hate copyright infringement. Maybe they could be taken a little more seriously if they weren’t violating other’s copyright.
TorrentFreak reports that Finnish anti-piracy outfit CIAPC has recently opened a new Web site. Here’s the front page design:
What does this look like? Oh right, it’s the exact same layout as used by The Pirate Bay:
Besides the graphic and text, the sites are essentially the same. That’s not a coincidence as a spokesperson for The Pirate Bay says CIAPC stole their CSS code to build their parody Web site. That’s not exactly sitting well with the The Pirate Bay.
You might be wondering why The Pirate Bay cares so much about this. The group doesn’t exactly care that people use their Web site to share pirated content with others. So why do they suddenly care about copyright? The Pirate Bay has a strict usage policy in place that restricts other from using its site design.
The group also feels that their lawsuit is a matter of principal. In a statement to TorrentFreak, a Pirate Bay spokesperson said:
“We feel that we must make a statement and therefore we will sue them for copyright infringement. If not even IFPI and their friends can respect copyright, perhaps it’s time to move on?”
It’s not known how serious The Pirate Bay is about this potential litigation, but I kind of hope that they go forward with it. It would be absolutely hilarious to see The Pirate Bay sue CIAPC for copyright infringement – the very thing such anti-piracy groups stand against.A QUACK who "spun a web of lies" to trick children into believing they had radiation sickness and gave them "painful" remedies has been caged for 16 years.
PA/GETTY LIAR: John Beaumont put his victims through painful and unnecessary medical procedures
John William Beaumont pretended he was a doctor in the Ministry of Defence to gain the trust of youngsters and a woman whom he later prodded with needles in their necks and genitals. His victims were terrified they had caught deadly radiation poisoning from the Chernobyl nuclear explosion in 1986 – even though none of them had ever been to the Ukraine, where it took place. But crafty Beaumont placed a Geiger counter – a machine which detects radiation – in his "treatment" rooms to convince "patients" they were seriously ill.
“I have never dealt with a case as unusual as this” Det Const Debra Gallagher The faker claimed he was taking "samples" which would be sent off for "testing", but really he was no doctor at all. Traumatised abuse victims kept their horrifying treatment at the hands of Beaumont secret for years. But they finally came forward in 2014 and told police of their ordeal.
Haunting images of Chernobyl's no-go zone 30 years on: Haunting images of Chernobyl's no-go zone abandoned after radiation blast 1 / 17 Caters A child's bedroom is a desolate scene in Chernobyl
Beaumont, of Byron Road, Bury, was handed a 16-year jail term in Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court on Friday after pleading guilty to one assault and nine indecent assaults between 1986 and 1996. He had even been convicted of similar crimes 30 years ago in Scotland. Following sentencing, Det Const Debra Gallagher, from Greater Manchester Police, said: "In my career as a detective I have never dealt with a case as unusual as this one, and I will never comprehend how anyone could use such tragic circumstances to manipulate and abuse people.It's been a little more than a year since media outlets and police organizations first started reporting about a mounting "war on cops." Law enforcement officials and commentators blamed budget shortfalls, anti-government sentiment, gun ownership and other causes for the rising violence against police.
We're now about halfway through 2012, and this year is on pace to be the safest ever for America's police officers. Oddly, no one is reporting it.
Fifty officers have died on duty so far this year, a 44-percent decrease from last year, according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund (NLEOMF). More remarkably, 17 have died from gunfire, down 55 percent from last year. (21 died in traffic accidents, the remaining 12 in various other incidents.) If the second half of this year follows the first, fewer officers will have died on duty this year than in any year since 1944, a time when there were far, far fewer police officers.
Not only aren't media outlets reporting on the dramatic drop this year, some are still using last year's figures to push the line that anti-police violence is on the rise. As recently as April, the New York Times ran a front-page story based on the 2011 figures under the headline, "Even as Violent Crime Falls, Killing of Officers Rises." Like those before it, the April Times article speculated on why violence against cops is on the rise. Some sources blamed the economy, which led to cutbacks in police departments, and emboldened criminals or meant officers to provide backup during emergencies. The article then quoted law enforcement officials talking about the dangers of the job.
"We try and teach that every day you go out, you are going to be encountered with deadly force by someone trying to kill you," said one FBI official who trains police officers. The Times piece did note that, at the time of its publication, officer deaths were down in 2012.
The "war on cops" articles from 2011 were even more foreboding.
One included a criminology professor at John Jay College, who blamed the violence on the "don't tread on me" sentiment of the Tea Party movement. Police officials blamed anti-police web sites, citizens who exercise their right to record misbehaving cops, the militia movement, and a decline in respect for authority. Salon writer Amy Steinberg said the attacks on cops raised "an increasingly pressing need to revisit the conversation on gun control." Craig Floyd, who chairs the NLEOMF, told UPI that cops "are being put at greater risk than ever before."
If all these trends were really happening a year ago, it's hard to explain why the last six months have seen such a change. There hasn't been any new gun control legislation in recent months. Citizens are still recording police with their cell phones (and still, in some instances, wrongly getting arrested for it), and websites critical of police are still up and running. If you believe groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center, anti-government sentiment is as strong as ever.
The truth is, the widely reported "war on cops" in 2010 and 2011 was exaggerated. Overall police fatalities did rise in 2010 and then again in 2011, but those figures are compared to 2009, which saw the fewest number of police fatalities since 1959. Generally speaking, police fatalities have been steadily declining since the early 1990s, along with the overall crime rate. And that's merely the raw number of deaths. Over the same period, the total number of police officers in America has also increased. So the drop in the fatality rate has been even more dramatic.
The spikes in 2010 and 2011 appear to have been driven by a few anomalous months in which there were several incidents involving the deaths of multiple officers. In March 2011, for example, 24 cops died while on-duty, and in January 2010, the figure was 22. But those are the only two months in the last 42 when the number topped 20. The following months, those figures fell back to 11 and 15, respectively.
Moreover, the rate of assaults against police officers also has been dropping since the late 1980s, so the drop in fatalities cannot be attributed only to better police armor, tactics, or weaponry. Criminals aren't merely killing police less, they're also attacking them less, which would seem to put the lie to the notion that citizens today respect police less, or that criminals have grown more emboldened.
According to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports, the homicide rate for police officers in 2010 (the last year for which data is available) was about 7.9 per 100,000 officers. That's about 60 percent higher than the overall homicide rate in America, which is 4.8. But it's lower than the homicide rates in many large cities, including Atlanta (17.3), Boston (11.3), Dallas (11.3), Kansas City (21.1), Nashville (8.9), Pittsburgh (17.3), St. Louis (40.5), or Tulsa (13.7). In fact, of the 74 U.S. cities with populations of 250,000 or more, 36 have murder rates higher than that of police in America.You're more likely to be murdered just by living in these cities than the average police officer is to be murdered while on the job.
The job of police officer also isn't anywhere near the most dangerous job in America. If we include traffic fatalities, the job of police officer will in some years rank among the 10 most dangerous in America (PDF). But take away car accidents, and it doesn't come close.
Blips in 2010 and 2011 aside (and of course, the terror attacks of 2001), the job of police officer has been getting safer for about a generation now -- much safer. That's a good thing.
None of this is meant to diminish the deaths of those police officers who are killed on the job. But how these figures are portrayed in the media, and how they're perceived by politicians and the public, can significantly impact public policy debates. Exaggerated portrayals of the dangers of police work are used to argue for more gun-control laws, to argue for increased police departments (or, in recent years, to argue against budget cuts), to defend the increasing militarization of America's police forces, to argue against more accountability and oversight with reforms like civilian review boards, and to argue for more leeway for police officers to dispense "street justice" in order to maintain order and to ensure that criminals still fear them.
There may be sound arguments on either side of these issues, but it is important that the debate and discourse be based on an accurate assessment of the dangers of police work, not one perpetuated by police interest groups and media outlets pushing a narrative that favors their own policy preferences.
Instead of exaggerating the threat police officers face, we should be celebrating the fact that their job is as safe as it has ever been.In the context of the story, the Husks are, in addition to their body/position/overall look being symbolic of their defining sin, associated with motifs that I gave that sin. The ideas are mostly built off of either the punishments of the different levels of Hell/Purgatorio from Dante's Inferno, the Princes of Hell, and also off of related themes associated.
As it was a practice on posing, here are the short versions of the themes/body language as reference for what they're supposed to be:
Lusts have exaggerated hips/bust/pelvises, are covered in flowers, spew fire out of random but suspiciously placed holes, and in this case is outright in a BDSM arm binder. Tend to be in very provocative positions, splayed out or otherwise showing off what would otherwise be features associated with lust.
Sloths are weighed down by metallic cylinders/spheres, and are covered in sick machines and pistons. Can't stop moving as punishment, but have to carry their varying weights, so they usually trudge along.
Greeds have multiple elongated arms, abnormal eye/s, are covered in gems, and have open stomachs that consumed gold falls out of. They're constantly moving, hopping around and poking at the ground for loose desirables.
Wraths are large, twisted, bulky, are blinded by acrid smoke, and are both covered and skewered by blades, occasionally replacing limbs. Jacob's Ladder twitch their way around, attacking anything close by, leading to a hostile look at all times.
Gluttonys have large mouths, have insectoid traits like buglike legs and large eyes, and are incredibly skinny with horns, based on the Wendigo myth. Because I'm sick of pigs, Gluttonys are voracious hunters, always feasting on anything nearby at high speeds. Some have wings, but all are constantly skittering.
Envys are physically small, have glowing green eyes, have fishlike traits (Though not super represented here), and are pierced by broken mirror shards. They're always miming, "Don't look at me!" and in positions denoting that.
Prides retain their original human bodies, but with their hair and eyes exaggerated color wise, and are covered/chained/bursting with crystals of varying sizes and colors. Their positions revolve around forcibly humbling them, like being forced to their knees in a bow.
TL;DR, Silent Hill.The top legal officials for the states of Nebraska and Oklahoma have joined in a lawsuit arguing legal marijuana sales in Colorado violate the United States Constitution.
It will be up to the U.S. Supreme Court to decide if the case has any merit.The precedent setting argument comes from neighboring states where pot is still illegal and arrests for trafficking and possession have shot up in the past year.
Attorney General Bruning announces lawsuit against Colorado marijuana. (Photo: Bill Kelly/NET News)
Attorney General Jon Bruning made the announcement just days before he leaves office. At a news conference at the State Capitol he said the State of Nebraska joined with Oklahoma in filing the lawsuit in response against Colorado. That state legalized medical marijuana in 2013 and recreational pot has been available from licensed retailers since the beginning of this year.
Bruning said he finds it “frustrating to have a sister state reaping tens of million ns of dollars in tax revenue and sending over the problem side of it to us.”
Those problems, according to Bruning, include a significant spike in marijuana busts by local law enforcement, and increased numbers of impaired drivers, both of which have impacted police and the courts.
“I think it’s a moral issue,” Bruning said.. “It’s a gateway drug that is a detriment to society. I think this is a critical issue to the future of our state. I don’t’ want it to be a legal option for my children or your option or anyone’s children in this state or in this country.”
Colorado Attorney General John Suther said the case “is without merit” and intends to challenge it.
For law enforcement in western Nebraska the decision to take Colorado to court over pot is long overdue. Interstate 76 delivers Colorado travelers and tourists directly into Deuel County, where it intersects with I-80 at the Nebraska border.
Deuel County Sheriff Hayword displays pot seized in a 2013 traffic stop. (Archive Photo)
Sheriff Adam Hayward points out his county saw another record year for pot busts. He has seen an impact on his department’s budget and time-consuming processing by his four deputies.
“Colorado legalized marijuana, we did not,” Hayword said. “We didn’t ask for the issues its causing. It’s a burden we did not ask for.”
For the past two years Scotts Bluff County Sheriff Mark Overman advocated challenging state-legalized marijuana in the federal courts. He was delighted to hear a forceful statement of support coming from the Attorney General.
“If they can accomplish what they set out to do it will be far more helpful than putting more cops on the street,” Overman said. “If you can stop Colorado from selling it openly. We can’t just put roadblocks up at the border and stop everybody. We can’t battle it that way.”
The lawsuit filed by Nebraska and Oklahoma does not ask Colorado to pay damages associated with the impacts in neighboring states. The question being asked of the U.S. Supreme Court remains fairly narrow. It asks if the federal government still defines marijuana as an illegal narcotic is it constitutional for a state to pass a law that, in effect, supersedes federal law.
Attorney General Bruning points to “Supremacy Clause” in the U.S. Constitution which has long been used to uphold the principle that when a state law and a federal law are in conflict, the federal law wins.
“That is the issue here and in the end it’s not more complicated than that,” Bruning said. “This is whether or not Colorado’s law conflicts with the Controlled Substance Act. Whether or not that should be thrown out because of the Supremacy Clause. We of course think it should be.”
(CLICK HEAR TO WATCH AG BRUNING DISCUSS THE LAWSUIT AND HIS PAST MARIJUANA USE)
In a prepared statement Colorado’s Attorney General John Suther said he will defend his state’s citizen driven legalization of marijuana.
“It appears the plaintiffs’ primary grievance stems from non-enforcement of federal laws regarding marijuana, as opposed to choices made by the voters of Colorado. We believe this suit is without merit.”
A representative for the retail marijuana industry said his organization does not think the lawsuit will succeed.
Michael Elliott, the director of the Marijuana Industry Group argued that “what these states are asking for is to put the drug cartels back in charge” by taking away a regulated open market place for cannabis. Elliott says continuing to try and ban marijuana is “an awful policy.”
“It hasn’t worked and I think we here in Colorado have shown this can be responsibly done,” Elliott said.
The case is being filed at the end of a year when Colorado growers and sellers have seen undeniable economic success. Combined sales of both medical and recreational topped 700 Million dollars in 2014. Elliott claims legal cannabis is on track to become a billion dollar industry next year.
A significant portion of the legal sales come from out of state customers.
The Marijuana Industry Group commissioned a study that found about half of the recreational sold went to out of state customers who laid out 150 to 200 million dollars for their purchases.
Cases settling arguments between states traditionally go straight to the U.S. Supreme Court. They are fairly rare cases and the justices pick only a very few to hear as a trial case.
Jill Robb Ackerman, an attorney with Baird Holm in Omaha with experience in litigating constitutional cases said these types of challenges are “rare."
"You don’t see it that often," she said.
Ackerman said when states have these types of arguments,” this is really the only forum that they have to probably resolve that.”
The Supreme Court could elect not to hear the case at all. Ackerman says whether they pass on it or hear the arguments at trial their actions will be an important precedent for the future of legalizing marijuana in the United State.
“This case, if it’s decided, could have great impact on what’s happening in Washington and the state of Colorado,” Ackerman said.
Arguing the lawsuit will be left to Nebraska’s new Attorney General, Doug Peterson, who will take office early in January. Peterson previously he would be open to taking some kind of legal action in response to Colorado’s marijuana making its way into neighboring states.
(EDITORS NOTE: NET News staff members Grant Gerlock, Fred Knapp, and Mike Tobias also contributed to this story.)
(CLARIFICATION: Earlier versions of this story, broadcast and online, referred to attorney Jill Robb Ackerman as having "consulted for the Governor’s office on legal matters." This incorrectly characterized her role as a Commissioner for the Commission on Uniform State Laws, appointed by the Governor.)"While President Obama and [Democratic presidential nominee]are shrinking America's military, they are also expanding, through allowing it to happen, the military of Iran," Trump said at a rally in Fredericksburg, Va.
"They are doing this with their disastrous deal that puts Iran on a path to nuclear weapons and gives them another $150 million, not to mention the $400 million in cash, which turned out to be a ransom payment after all, just like I said. In other words, our president lied to us. He lied to us."
The cash payment to the Iranian government is at the center of a new fight between Republicans and the Obama administration. Republicans allege that the payment was a ransom in exchange for the release of three American prisoners in Iran.
Obama has denied that it was a ransom and dismissed the criticism. He said it was money the U.S. owed Iran and had been announced months ago as part of a larger diplomatic agreement over Tehran's nuclear program. The payment was part of a $1.7 billion settlement resolving a dispute from an arms deal that occurred in the 1970s.
The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that U.S. officials had withheld the payment until they were sure the captive Americans had been released.
The State Department on Thursday said they had withheld the payment as "leverage" but insisted again that it was not a ransom.This spring, MIT Technology Review will introduce a new event, here on the Institute’s campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. We invite you to join us at The Business of Blockchain in the MIT Media Lab on April 18, 2017.
Working with our knowledge partner the MIT Media Lab Digital Currency Initiative, the leading center of research in the field, we have
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.[25] While meeting with his mother, he reportedly confessed to the killings and kidnapping.[31] When he confessed to the Chesnee shootings, Kohlhepp said he shot each of the victims once in the forehead, a detail in the investigation that was never released to the public.[4]
A search of Kohlhepp's property also uncovered numerous weapons, including 9mm pistols outfitted with suppressors, semi-automatic rifles, and an undetermined amount of ammunition. Because there was no record of a background check under Kohlhepp's name for the purchase of a firearm, investigators believe he likely acquired the weapons illegally.[37]
Following his arrest, Kohlhepp claimed to his mother that there were no victims aside from the aforementioned. However, during interrogation, he claimed to have shot a victim in Arizona.[4] On November 18, 2016, it was reported that the Tempe Police Department had begun an investigation into Kohlhepp's claim, searching through unsolved homicides in the past three decades.[38] They said they will focus on cases dated from 1983 to 1986, when Kohlhepp was living with his father;[9] and also between August 2001, when Kohlhepp completed his sentence for kidnapping, and November 2001, when he moved back to South Carolina.[39]
On November 25, 2016, police in Greer, South Carolina, announced that they have named Kohlhepp as a person of interest in an unsolved 2003 bank robbery and triple homicide at the local Blue Ridge Savings Bank. This crime was separated from the Chesnee shootings by six months.[40]
In December 2017, Kohlhepp wrote to the Spartanburg Herald-Journal claiming that he had more victims who have not been discovered.[41] Kohlhepp's cold demeanor is evident in prison mugshots.
Legal proceedings and guilty pleas [ edit ]
Kohlhepp was charged with four counts of murder in relation to the Chesnee shootings, and one count of kidnapping in relation to Brown's abduction.[22] He was later charged with three additional counts of murder for the murders of Carver and the Coxies, along with one additional count of kidnapping and three counts of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime.[35][36][42] Kohlhepp's next court appearance was scheduled for January 19, 2017,[17] but on that date, Kohlhepp's attorney waived their right to appearance.[43] According to a report by WLTX, relatives of the Chesnee shooting victims will also file a wrongful death lawsuit against him.[39] On December 1, it was announced that Brown will also file a civil lawsuit against him.[44] On May 26, 2017, Kohlhepp pleaded guilty to seven counts of murder, two counts of kidnapping and one count of criminal sexual assault and was sentenced to seven consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole in a plea bargain that spared Kohlhepp from capital punishment.[45][46] Although his defense swore at his sentencing that there were no other victims to be found, Kohlhepp has since repeatedly admitted there were at least two other murders. As of August 2018, has yet to give authorities the details.[47]The Whitecap Dakota First Nation in Saskatchewan took a major step toward self-government on Thursday.
The First Nation, located 26 kilometres south of Saskatoon and with a membership of 616 people, signed an agreement-in-principle with the federal government.
This stage of paperwork is the second of four steps leading to self-government, according to the federal government. The last two stages are a final agreement and implementation.
Power over land, health, education
Once signed, the self-government agreement will give the First Nation power over, among other things, lands and resources, the environment, taxation, health and education.
One of the key points the final agreement will settle is how much money the First Nation needs to handle its affairs.
"We look forward to working with Canada to complete negotiations and achieve self-governance for our members," said Chief Darcy Bear.
The government and the First Nation have set a target date of 2020 to bring the final agreement to a community vote.Prices have hit the National Electricity Market limit of $13,800 a megawatt hour several times in the state in recent months. That makes industrial users uneasy and leads to speculation the government may have to pay thermal-coal generators to provide standby capacity.
"The signal in that market is you actually need more thermals in reserve," Mr Zema told a Committee for Economic Development of Australia lunch in Melbourne.
He said rather than being like Germany, which also has a large share of renewable generation and is fretting over security of supply, South Australia is "more like Portugal - it's at the end of the grid".
"So if they are going to go completely renewable they are going to rely more and more on the interconnectors for system security."
The Delta Lithgow power station. Nic Walker
Intervening to balance the market
Mr Zema said the Energy Market Operator was intervening to balance the market to avoid blackouts in South Australia while the existing interconnector is upgraded, causing outages and complaints from industry.
Peter Dobney, the head of energy and resources at packaging company Orora, told the lunch South Australia "has become a basket case for large industry energy users" and the outages were costing industry millions of dollars.
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But Mr Zema said the upgrade had to be completed before the summer of 2016-17 because Alinta will close its Northern and Playford B thermal power stations in 2016, dropping15 per cent of current capacity in South Australia.
He said the Energy Market Operator was purchasing frequency controlled ancillary services or FCAS "to stop SA actually going black if the interconnector drops out".
"How much do you want to pay for system security in SA because that's what we are buying," Mr Zema said. "If we don't buy FCAS and the system trips, we lose the whole state."
Mr Zema said Germany, Spain and Italy were dealing with a similar problem by relying on interconnectors with France, which has a large surplus of nuclear power. He said France is planning six new interconnectors worth $250 billion.
"When you ask about the business case, they say 'don't worry about the business case - they'll make money'" he said.before after
Noted Sep. 29, 2015 by Armin Industry / Sports
About
(Est. 1992) Český florbal (Czech Floorball) is one of the largest leagues and unions for the sport of Floorball, which is basically hockey without ice and a round ball instead of a puck. The Czech Republic apparently are bad-asses at the sport. Their league has 412 teams and a total of over 38,000 players.
Design by
Dynamo (Prague)
Related links
Czech Floorball brand micro site
Dynamo project page
Relevant quote
Perforated ball has been for years a clear and undisputed symbol of floorball. As a graphic element, however, appears over and over in most of floorball logotypes, both in clubs and competitions and various floorball organizations. "Our goal was from that detach and create a unique design based on national symbols and other classic floorball elements like the typical shape of the blade or floorball goalie mask. We know that some might see the identity of hockey immediately at first glance, but given the uniqueness of processing very quickly puts himself," is convinced Filip Suman. Czech Floorball brand micro site
Images (opinion after)
Logo detail.
Logo explanation.
Secondary logos for individual competitions.
Stationery.
T-shirt.
Floor graphics.
Logo introduction.
Opinion
The previous logo had a representation of the Floorball ball and that's about all there is nice to say about it. It wasn't terrible but it definitely wasn't memorable or useful or particularly Czech. The new logo remedies by using a lion (from the Czech Republic's coat of arms) as the starting point and then blending it with the sport's stick and goalie mask. The formula shown below could have easily yielded a convoluted icon but the result is quite impressive. It's unmistakably a lion and the grid of the goalie mask isn't, um, in your face but rather subtle and shaped into the mane of the lion. The resulting icon is both regal, competitive, and serious-looking. It makes for excellent swag too. The typography is alright and it matches the visual cues of the lion. Overall, a drastic and positive improvement.LAREDO, TX—Armando Fernandez, Special Agent in Charge of the San Antonio Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), whose territory includes Laredo, Texas, and regional law enforcement, announce the implementation of a new regional crime reduction venture, the Bandit Shield Initiative.
The Bandit Shield Initiative was developed to reduce bank robberies, and to assist local, state, and federal law enforcement with their robbery investigations. Financial institutions participating in the Bandit Shield Initiative have agreed to implement a variety of “best practices” and other security measures developed to deter robberies in an effort to assist law enforcement. Additionally, participating financial institutions have undertaken other innovative steps as part of this initiative to make their institutions unattractive targets for would-be robbers. Banking institutions in compliance with the Bandit Shield Initiative will be provided with Bandit Shield decals to be affixed to the institution’s doors. Initially, the Bandit Shield Initiative will be implemented in the FBI’s San Antonio Division territory, and it will be considered for broader participation at a later time.[Editor’s Note: This piece is part of our series on Podcasting Basics. You can find the the rest of the pieces in the series here.]
In our first column about podcasting, we discussed microphones, and the other accessories required to record voices for a podcast. The next crucial technical element is software: for recording into, and for editing and mixing a final production.
Transom has many articles about different audio editing software, and any of these may be helpful in choosing which one is right for you, or in providing details about using it. In this column, we’ll concentrate on how the various software is more or less appropriate for podcasting.
Of course, a podcast is not fundamentally different from any other audio production, and so the sophistication level of your content will help determine what software is best for you. Many podcasts are structurally fairly simple, based around one or two voices, perhaps with cutaways to music or clips of other audio, maybe with theme music that gets layered under the voices. More elaborate productions, with multiple elements and special effects will likely need one of the more complex software packages, but the good news is that a basic production can be made with simple and inexpensive software.
Why record into a computer?
You don’t have to. You could simply employ a small portable audio recorder, especially for certain circumstances, such as conducting an interview at a subject’s house or office, or recording at a live event. There are many recorders that would work for this, but keep in mind what you need the recorder to do. If you’re recording a simple interview, you’ll get the best results using an external microphone, not the built-in mics on small handheld devices. Ideally, you might want to use two microphones, one for the interviewer and one for the interviewee, so you want to be sure to use a recorder that has (at least) two XLR inputs for external microphones, and, crucially, independent input gain controls for each input. Recorders such as the Tascam DR-100mkII, Tascam DR-60D, or Zoom H5 would be good choices. If you’re recording at a live event and would like to include the sound of the audience, the Zoom H5 would allow you to plug voice mics into the external mic inputs and also use the built-in stereo mics to record the audience. If you were to need more inputs, for more than one interviewee, or a panel discussion, recorders such as the Zoom H6 and Tascam DR-70D have four XLR inputs for external microphones (the Zoom H6 can be expanded to six XLR mic inputs with an optional module).
Ultimately, you will probably want to load this audio into a computer for editing and mixing — every recording can benefit from editing, adjustment of levels and other clean-up. Plus, your recording needs to be converted to an appropriate file format, have metadata tags added to it, and then uploaded to a server, all of which are easiest to do on a computer. So, even for remote recording, you may want to skip the step of using a field recorder and go directly into a computer. (That said, for live, unrepeatable events, there is something to be said for using a dedicated recorder: computers crash, are more cumbersome to set-up and monitor, and some make noise that could bleed onto the recording.)
When recording directly into a computer, you’ll want to use an external audio interface, rather than the computer’s built-in microphone inputs. Microphone signals are very low-level and need to be amplified significantly, and it’s best to do this outside of the electronically-dirty environment inside a computer. Additionally, a dedicated audio interface is likely to have better-quality components to handle the amplification and analog-to-digital conversion than the average computer.
There are many different audio interfaces, with varying configurations of microphone and line-level inputs, so there’s surely one that fits your needs and budget. It’s most common for these devices to connect to the computer via USB, but there are also versions that use Firewire, Thunderbolt, Ethernet, or even WIFI. Some interfaces are tied to specific software, but most can be used with all of the most common recording and editing software. Before you buy a specific interface, check to make sure that it’s compatible with the software you want to use – AND – just as important, with your computer’s operating system.
Recording Software – Basic
If your podcast is just one or two voices — without additional music or effects layered-in — multitrack audio workstations, free or paid, might be overkill. There are basic recording applications that can capture sound files from any valid audio source, be it an external USB microphone, or the internal audio from an application, such as Skype or other VOIP programs, a web browser, or teleconferencing/ meeting software. These basic recorders might have rudimentary editing capability as well, and processing can be added, making them sufficient for producing a complete podcast. Even if your production is more complicated, and you use a full Digital Audio Workstation to create your final project, these simpler programs are often good tools for capturing audio from computer-based processes, prior to assembling those elements in a more sophisticated editor.
There are many applications that can make simple recordings of computer processes, but there are two that stand out in their versatility and popularity. Total Recorder is a Windows-only program that can capture almost any audio event that happens on your Windows-based computer.
Audio Hijack is a Mac-only program that can capture the system audio of your Macintosh computer, or be set to “hijack” the audio from specific applications, ignoring other system sounds. The program also allows the addition of effects and other audio processing, as well as flexible signal routing, handled by a handy graphical flowchart-like interface.
Multitrack Recording and Editing Software – Free
If your podcast is going to involve more than one or two voices, recorded in close to real-time, you will likely want more elaborate software to edit and mix your sound. Even the simplest podcast often sounds more polished with some intro and outro music, or you might want to insert audio recorded previously. In that case, you might use a multitrack audio editing and mixing program, often called a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation).
There are several good editing and mixing software packages available for free. Some are open source and can be downloaded by anyone, others come with certain computers, and still others are provided at no extra cost with the purchase of other audio equipment.
Garageband (Mac only)
Although Garageband comes free on Mac computers, and is designed primarily for music-making (by assembling audio loops or playing MIDI instruments), it also works just fine as an audio recorder, editor and multitrack mixer. There are even versions of the application that will run on iPads and iPhones, and sessions can be shared across those devices and your desktop or laptop computer. As you might guess, the iOS app is not as powerful as the desktop version, so projects created on an iPad or iPhone can be opened and edited in the full version, but not the other way around.
Unfortunately, Apple removed several podcast-specific features from the latest versions of Garageband: There’s no longer a podcast template to start from, nor is there a “Podcast track” that allows placement of chapter markers and other aspects of “enhanced” podcasts. But even the newest version of Garageband remains a simple platform for making a podcast: Create a new “voice” project, which brings up a variety of vocal processing set-ups in separate tracks (just pick the simple “Narration” track, delete or ignore the others, and start recording).
In Garageband, you can select a USB microphone or an audio interface as the input source for a track, record multiple tracks at once, or additional tracks at a later time. You can trim the resulting audio recordings, deleting unwanted sections, and slide clips along the timeline. You can overlay music or sound effects, automate the playback volume of the tracks, and add processing, such as Equalization and Compression to make your recordings sound better. Once you’ve adjusted the elements to your liking, you can export your mix to your computer’s iTunes library, or upload it directly to SoundCloud, or to your own iCloud account.
Audacity (Windows, Mac or Linux)
One of the most popular options is the open-source software Audacity. Our Transom review is from many years ago, so some details may no longer be accurate, but the overall operation of the program is much the same. The application is frequently updated, so be sure that you download the most recent version — a bug or quirk may have been fixed since you first downloaded it. While it’s possible to create sophisticated, multi-layered multitrack productions in Audacity, it’s best suited for more simple projects. Doing basic recording, trimming and editing, adjusting levels, and adding simple music or ambience beds is quick and easy in this program; you can even apply a wide variety of audio processing and effects (including a surprisingly good de-noise plug-in). But many of Audacity’s actions employ “destructive editing,” which is to say that once a cut or deletion is made, or an effect applied, it makes a permanent change to the audio — you can’t later return and adjust the edit, or remove the EQ or other processing. This can be a quick and efficient way to work, but it removes some flexibility. Audacity’s volume automation is not as easy to write and adjust as in many other programs, and audio metering is not implemented as elegantly as in some other programs, making it a little harder to meticulously craft a mix, but hey, it’s free...
Tracktion (Windows, Mac or Linux)
Mackie makes stand-alone audio interfaces and mixers with interfaces built-in (amongst other audio products). Their interfaces are compatible with most editing software, but they also ship with a free copy of their own program, called Tracktion. (The version provided free may not be the most recent one, and upgrading may involve a fee.) While oriented primarily toward music production, like the programs mentioned above, Tracktion is more than capable for recording and editing voice tracks, adding music beds, inserting pre-produced segments, etc. There’s a free demo here: http://www.tracktion.com/
Cubase LE (Windows or Mac)
Cubase is commercial software sold by Steinberg (makers of the professional-level DAW Nuendo, and other audio software) but a stripped-down version – Cubase LE – is provided for free with many audio interfaces. More sophisticated versions of the software are available for purchase. Like many Digital Audio Workstations, Cubase is oriented toward music production, but it also has all the usual tools needed for producing a podcast: non-destructive editing, volume automation, plug-ins for EQ, compression and special effects.
Pro Tools First (Windows or Mac)
Pro Tools is one of the most-used audio workstations in the world, from independent producers’ bedroom studios to professional facilities. Current versions of even the most basic full version of the software have become expensive, although there are upgrade paths if you own an earlier version. Yearly subscription plans are now offered too. Or — there’s the completely free Pro Tools First.
We don’t like that sessions created in Pro Tools First cannot be opened and revised in the full version of Pro Tools, or that the projects are stored primarily in the cloud, not on a user’s own computer or external hard drive (although projects can be worked-on off-line,) or that there are a limited number of projects that can be worked on simultaneously without purchasing additional capacity. But, the program is free, and while projects cannot be moved into the full version, the user’s skills can, so it might be a good way to learn the program, and to see if it feels worth investing in the full version. Even this free version is quite capable: it can handle up to 16 tracks, and provides editing and mixing tools similar to the full Pro Tools, along with several useful free processing plug-ins.
Recording and Editing Software – Full Digital Audio Workstations
Hindenburg (Windows and Mac)
We’ve been big fans of the Hindenburg software since the program was first introduced. That’s partly because it’s relatively easy to learn to use, while providing lots of powerful editing and mixing features. But perhaps the aspect that we like best is that it was created by radio people, for radio people, rather than being focused mainly on music creation. That orientation toward montage-style radio-like production naturally lends itself toward podcasts as well; in fact it has several built-in capabilities focused specifically on podcasting. Metadata for basic audio file info, or enhanced podcasts can be easily edited and embedded in the sound files from within Hindenburg. The Pro version of the software includes utilities for exporting and uploading audio files to FTP sites with a single click. Hindenburg can even update a podcast’s XML file automatically. Audio can be directly exported and uploaded to other destinations, among them SoundCloud and PRX.
Of particular interest to podcasters: version 1.5 of the software allows recording from multiple sources — such as more than one USB microphone and/or audio interface — without reconfiguring the computer’s audio inputs at the system level, and without conflicts from varying sample rates or clocks.
We’ve come to rely on the program’s built-in loudness controls, making it easy to arrive at consistent audio levels, as well as its quick and simple editing and mixing tools. Hindenburg 1.5 also adds an option for loudness-normalization upon file export, meaning that the user can be sure that the levels of all files they export will be adjusted to meet loudness standards, including the increasingly-accepted podcast standard of -16 LUfs. These new features are included in the Pro version of the software, which also has a very easy-to-use Skype call recorder built-in, a real time-saver if you do lots of Skype interviews.
Even though some of the most impressive features are reserved for the Pro, and Broadcast, versions of the software, the less-expensive basic version of Hindenburg includes automatic leveling in the workspace and very easy-to-use editing and mixing functions, and is a very capable tool for podcast and radio production.
Adobe Audition
Cool Edit was a popular audio editing program for radio production. Adobe purchased the program and renamed it Audition, and has gradually added features over the years, so that it now is a very sophisticated, fully-featured audio workstation. The program has lost its appealing simplicity, but it’s still oriented more toward making documentary-style audio productions than many other music-focused workstations. Audition has very sophisticated editing and mixing tools, and includes a wide array of built-in processing plug-ins. Of particular interest is a powerful and effective broadband noise-reduction plug-in. That functionality usually requires an expensive third-party plug-in when using other audio workstations. The program even provides a helpful podcast session template that sets up an audio track with useful voice-processing plugins.
Audition includes many ways to adjust audio levels, including a very clever “Match Clip Volume” function that can quickly align audio levels to accepted loudness standards.
Like many of these fully-featured (and expensive) multitrack audio workstations, Audition might be overkill for creating a basic podcast, but for productions that require fine editing, processing and compiling of many elements, the power of a program such as this can be very helpful. Like most Adobe programs, Audition is available now by monthly subscription as an individual program, or as part of the Creative Cloud bundle that includes many popular media editing tools, such as Photoshop and Premiere. It’s a little frustrating that there’s not an option to simply buy the software outright, rather than signing-on for endless payments, but at least the initial threshold for beginning is lower — there’s no dauntingly large purchase price dissuading you from getting started. Even better, there’s a free 30-day trial, so you can see if the application fits your workflow.
ProTools
Like Adobe Audition, a full Pro Tools system could be considered overkill for the average podcast production. The price for getting even a basic Pro Tools system has greatly increased; the software alone sells for almost $700, and it’s no longer bundled with an audio interface. Pro Tools has become much more flexible in the last few versions, allowing the use of a wide variety of hardware interfaces, adding faster-than-real-time-bounces (finally) and adding more importing and exporting options. Unlike Audition, Pro Tools does not have any built-in noise reduction capabilities, but it does come with an array of quite capable plug-ins for EQ, compression, and special effects. Pro Tools has the distinct advantage of remaining something of a standard in the professional studio world, so projects can be easily moved between professional studios, and more casual production facilities. Pro Tools editing and mixing functions are quite sophisticated, and expertise on this program is a very practical skill in the professional audio production world.
REAPER
Many radio producers have found that REAPER has all the editing and mixing power of a program like Pro Tools, but at a much more affordable price. A basic individual license is only $60, and even the full license for larger-scale commercial work is only $225. REAPER does indeed have all the power of any of the modern audio workstations, although the interface might not be quite as slick and polished as some. Like similar workstations, REAPER might be more complicated than is necessary for the average podcast, but it’s nice to have options available when needed. A large number of processing plug-ins are available, many created by users. In fact, the program itself is broadly customizable by those using it, and is constantly being updated by both the original developers and a wide community of users.
Other Audio Workstations
There are many more audio editing and mixing applications that would be perfectly good for creating a podcast, including Garageband’s big-brother Logic, the full version of Cubase, Cubase’s professional relative Nuendo, Cakewalk, the list can go on and on… If you can record, edit and mix audio in it. and you’re comfortable with it, you can use any application you want.
Universal Truths
In the end, it doesn’t matter what hardware and software you use, it’s the result that counts. Your content is the most important element of your production, but you also want to record and mix your podcast in a way that makes people want to listen. Distortion, hiss, bad EQ, and wildly fluctuating levels are distracting and annoying, and will dissuade listeners from sticking with your podcast. So, get a decent USB mic, or even better: a good analog announce mic and an audio interface. Listen on headphones when you record yourself. Do you sound thin, distant and echoey? Get closer to the mic. Are you getting distorted popping P sounds and crunchy S sounds? Back-off the mic a little, place it a little off to the side, at an angle, and get a decent pop filter.
Learn your recording software
There are articles here on Transom. Many software companies offer tutorials available on the web, or included with your software purchase. And of course, there’s an endless supply of lessons on YouTube. Sure, some of those videos were made by people who know less about the programs than you do, but there are some very helpful guides too.
Edit! Once your elements are recorded, be critical: did you go off on a pointless digression? Did that joke fall flat? Did your cell phone ring, or your dog bark while you were recording? Cut those bad parts out. Did you cough, bump the microphone, pause a bit too long while you tried to remember that name? Clean it up. Digital audio editing programs make it quick and easy to remove sections of audio that distract from your purpose.
Watch your levels.
Watch your level meters when you record: You want to see a healthy signal level, but you don’t ever want to see the red “over” indicators light up. If they do, your sound will probably be distorted and you need to turn your input gain controls down. If you don’t see much signal indicated on the meters, the resulting sound file will be too low, and it may become noisy as you raise the level later.
In a future column, we’ll go into more detail about how to mix multiple audio tracks together smoothly, and how to keep your audio levels consistent throughout your podcast. But if you’re using Hindenburg or Audition, take advantage of their loudness-based clip-leveling functions. If you’re using other programs, use a loudness-based audio meter to monitor your levels, and make adjustments based on those readings.
Our article about Loudness explains that the standard for Public Radio has been declared to be -24 LUfs, but there’s no “official” level for podcasting. That said, there’s increasing acceptance of -16 LUfs as a standard for podcasts. That’s louder than the Public Radio broadcast standard, and may require the use of compression or limiting of peaks in order to reach that level. We’ll give you more tips on using those processes in a future column, but in the interim, take advantage of your DAW’s capabilities — some of them have loudness-based normalization built-in, and can automatically export your project at your desired level.
Keep audio quality high
Yes, it’s “only” a podcast, but when recording your original tracks, either in a studio or in the field, record.WAV files, not.mp3 or AAC, or another compressed format. Record at 16-bit, 44.1 kHz. There’s nothing wrong with recording at higher sample rates or bit depths, but they take up more disc space and require more computer resources to process, and those higher resolutions don’t ultimately benefit you much when your final product will be eventually crunched down to an MP3 or AAC. For efficiency of storage and delivery, your podcast will ultimately be delivered in one of those compressed file formats, but you should keep the resolution of your original files, and of your project, at a high level, and only convert to MP3 or AAC as a final step.
When setting up your session in your audio editing program, define those audio parameters as described above:.wav file, 16-bit, 44.1 kHz. Again, there’s nothing inherently wrong with using 24 bit, or 48 kHz, or 96 kHz, or even higher, but the increased file sizes don’t result in much better sound when your final product will be a relatively low-resolution MP3 or AAC.
Export as MP3 or AAC
Once you’ve recorded your tracks, cleaned them up, added any additional elements and adjusted their placement and volumes, output your mix. Podcasts need to be distributed as compressed files, the most widely-accepted formats are MP3 and AAC. The quality settings are up to you, but as a rule, smaller file sizes are preferred, so go with the lowest encoding rate that still sounds good enough to you. If your podcast will sound fine in mono, export, and encode, in mono: the resulting file will be only half as big as a stereo version. We recommend keeping the file at 16-bit and 44.1 kHz, and experimenting with different compression settings in your MP3 or AAC encoder, but some voice-only podcasts can sound OK at lower sample rates or bit depths.
It’s always a good idea to export and save a full-quality version of your production as an uncompressed WAV file. You may want to make simple changes or updates to your program and in some cases it might be easier to tweak a mixed version than to go back and re-adjust the elements of your original multitrack project. Also, the technology of audio delivery changes, so at some time in the future, you may want to re-encode your production in a different format, or using newer software. If so, you’ll want to start with an un-compressed, full-bandwith version, not a compressed file such as an MP3, which would likely not tolerate transcoding to a new compressed format as well as a WAV file would.
Many digital audio workstations let you export in many file formats, and you might want to output your final podcast in the MP3 or AAC format directly from that application. Keep in mind that there are different encoding algorithms that result in different qualities and file sizes, so you may want to experiment with different ways of creating that final compressed file. Remember that iTunes does a very good job of converting WAV files to MP3 or AAC, so you can always output an uncompressed WAV from your audio editor, then import that file into your iTunes library. Highlight that file and choose File>>Create New Version, or Advanced>>Create MP3 version (or create AAC version). The specific parameters of the conversion are set in Preferences>>General>>Import Settings. (Apple is notorious for changing the ways things are done in iTunes, so the specific process might be different in your version of iTunes, but it will be something similar.)
Once you’ve created the MP3 or AAC version of your podcast, you can upload it to your own website, or to Soundcloud, or some other podcast hosting service. We’ll discuss options for hosting and syndicating your podcasts in a future column.
For more about microphones and audio interfaces for podcasts, be sure to read our column: Podcasting Basics part 1: Voice Recording Gear.The top political news on Friday was the unexpected resignation of Trump campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, which was the result of emerging revelations that his political consulting firm, DMP International, had orchestrated a covert Washington lobbying operation in the period 2012-2014 on behalf of Ukraine's then ruling political party, attempting to sway American public opinion in favor of the country's pro-Russian government (which was overthrown in a CIA-orchestrated coup in early 2014).
As the AP reported yesterday, the lobbying included attempts to gain positive press coverage of Ukrainian officials in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Associated Press. Another goal: undercutting American public sympathy for the imprisoned rival of Ukraine's then-president. At the time, European and American leaders were pressuring Ukraine to free her. Furthermore, under the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act (or FARA), US entities who lobby on behalf of foreign political leaders or political parties must provide detailed reports about their actions to the Justice Department.
The 1938 U.S. foreign agents law is intended to track efforts of foreign government's unofficial operatives in the United States. A violation is a felony and can result in up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.
The issue is that neither Paul Manafort, nor his deputy, Rick Gates, disclosed their work as foreign agents as required under federal law. "There is no question that Gates and Manafort should have registered along with the lobbying firms," said Joseph Sandler of Sandler Reiff Lamb Rosenstein & Birkenstock, a Democratic-leaning Washington law firm that advises Republican and Democratic lobbyists.
Now if this was the extent of the violations, it would be an open and shut case of potential non-disclosure of lobbying on behalf of a foreign (soon to be overthrown) government, one which could result in felony charges and potential prison time for employees of DMP International, up to and including Manafort. Which is why it is clear why Trump had to quickly get rid of Manafort as his ongoing presence was a major risk factor overhanging the entire Trump campaign, one which could even lead to incarceration and ongoing accusations of pro-Russian influence.
It also explains why as CNN reported yesterday, the FBI and DOJ prosecutors have started a probe into possible US ties to alleged corruption of the former pro-Russian president of Ukraine, including the work of Paul Manafort's firm, according to multiple US law enforcement officials. "The investigation is broad and is looking into whether US companies and the financial system were used to aid alleged corruption by the party of former president Viktor Yanukovych."
* * *
However, where things get trickier is that in addition to Manafort and his deputy Rick Gates, other, far more prominent firms are also implicated, chief among them the Podesta Group, headed by Tony Podesta - the brother of Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.
Tony Podesta, the Podesta Group
As reported yesterday, emails obtained by the Associated Press showed that Gates personally directed two Washington lobbying firms, Mercury LLC and the Podesta Group, between 2012 and 2014 to set up meetings between a top Ukrainian official and senators and congressmen on influential committees involving Ukrainian interests. Gates noted in the emails that the official, Ukraine's foreign minister, did not want to use his own embassy in the United States to help coordinate the visits.
The emails further illustrate how Gates worked with Mercury and the Podesta Group on behalf of Ukrainian political leaders. None of the firms, nor Manafort or Gates, disclosed their work to the Justice Department counterespionage division responsible for tracking the lobbying of foreign governments.
And this is where the plot thickens, because while the bulk of the press has so far spun the entire Ukraine lobbying scandal, which led to Manafort's resignation, as the latest "proof" that pro-Moscow powers were influencing not only Manafort but the Trump campaign in general (who some democrats have even painted of being a Putin agent), the reality is that a firm closely tied with the Democratic party, the Podesta Group, is just as implicated.
As AP further adds, the European Center for a Modern Ukraine, a Brussels-linked nonprofit entity which allegely ran the lobbying project, paid Mercury and the Podesta Group a combined $2.2 million over roughly two years. In papers filed in the U.S. Senate, Mercury and the Podesta Group listed the European nonprofit as an independent, nonpolitical client. The firms said the center stated in writing that it was not aligned with any foreign political entity.
Sure enough, the chairman of the Podesta Group, Tony Podesta, brother of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, repeated the excuse and said his firm believed Gates was working for the nonprofit. Podesta said he was unaware of the firm's work for the Ukraine's Party of Regions, led by Yanukovych. On Thursday,
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former NFL player Colin Allred, are vying for the a chance to take up the mantle of that missed opportunity.
About 225 miles miles south of Dallas on Interstate 45, Clinton also carried Culberson’s Houston congressional district. His own town hall meeting was less raucous than Sessions’s, but Culberson often could not be heard over boos from his constituents. Clinton’s plurality over Trump in Congressional District Seven is viewed as showing institutional weakness and a changing demographic in the once reliably Republican district once held by former President George H.W. Bush. However, her victory there may be no more telling than the one in Sessions’s district.
Clinton may have carried Session’s district, but Sessions received almost 28,000 more raw votes than the Democratic presidential nominee. Also, the Libertarian and Green party nominees took more than three times the vote they did in the 2012 election, indicating they may have been a safe harbor for Republican voters—and a some Democrats—who disliked Trump but couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Clinton. If there are Democratic regrets in Culberson’s district, it would be that they did not fund his Democratic opponent, James Cargas. Culberson outpaced Clinton by 18,000 ballots, while Cargas could not even keep pace with his party nominee, gathering 12,731 fewer votes than Clinton.
Probably the most telling statistic about the Sessions and Culberson districts was the performance of the next statewide Republican on the ballot, Wayne Christian for Railroad Commission. Christian won his race with 53 percent of the votes statewide. He’s a nice guy, but hardly a household name. He spent less than $75,000 on paid media in last year’s general election. But he received 5,800 more votes than Clinton in Culberson’s district, and 4,100 more than Clinton in Sessions’ district. In short, a candidate who essentially was a generic Republican harvested more votes in those two districts than the Democratic presidential nominee.
No one needs Clinton’s results to know that Hurd’s Twenty-third District is a swing territory. Whoever holds it will be a target for the opposition party in each election for the foreseeable future. Gallego won the seat in 2012 by defeating freshman Republican Quico Canseco, and then Gallego lost to Hurd in 2014 and 2016. Arguably, both Gallego and Hurd lost to Clinton in 2016 because she gathered almost 5,000 more raw votes than either of them.
A federal court recently declared that the district violated the Voting Rights Act, arguing that it was drawn in 2011 to diminish minority voting power. Hurd makes a point of noting that he won office using a map drawn by the court and adopted by the Legislature in 2013, not the 2011 map the has been ruled illegal. But Hispanic plaintiffs in the redistricting lawsuit claim the district is, as the very least, the fruit of a poisoned tree and, at worst, represents only a minor tinkering with the 2011 map and therefore still violates voting rights. The federal court plans to hold hearings on whether the current map should be voided and a new one drawn. In a district of 698,000 people, the court would only have to swap about 3,000 Republicans for the same number of activist Hispanic Democrats to change the election outcome.
All of this may be naught if the Democrats fail at the top of the ticket, where every statewide office is held by a Republican incumbent. Facing reelection next year are U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, Governor Greg Abbott, and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, to name a few. Democrat Beto O’Rourke has announced against Cruz, and Mike Collier against Patrick. It’s far too early to predict the statewide races, but when the bottom fell out on the Democratic nominees in 2002, 2010, and 2014, they took the rest of the ticket with them.
Probably the best play for Democrats in 2018 is to follow the Republican playbook of 2010. That election was nationalized against the Obama administration and the Affordable Care Act. The GOP game plan led to a tidal wave of Republican victories both nationally and in Texas. The state and nation are ripe for that kind of political effort against Trump.
The recent Texas Lyceum poll found 54 percent of Texans disapprove of Trump as president, but 85 percent of those who voted for him still support him. That is in keeping with national polling that shows a majority of Americans disapprove of Trump, but only 2 percent of those who voted for him regret their decision. As many political professionals will tell you, in a race against an incumbent you cannot tell voters they made a mistake. You have to convince voters the incumbent either fooled them or misled them. To get Republican voters to abandon incumbents like Sessions or Culberson, the Democrats will have to link them to Trump and then convince voters that they have been the victim of a political swindle. Whether voter anger toward Trump can be sustained until November 2018 is the wild card in next year’s elections.
For a national Democratic Party stunned by its 2016 defeats, every glimmer of hope provides optimism, and the mantra is run everywhere. Special elections in Kansas and Georgia have given heart to Democrats on the idea that they can increase turnout and win elections. A DCCC memo from January bragged that nationally there are 23 seats held by House Republicans in districts carried by Clinton, while another 10 seats are in districts where she lost by four points or less. That’s a total of 33 potential victories, when only 24 seats need to change hands for the Democrats to once again rule the House. “In all midterms over the last 23 years, the sitting president has needed a net-positive job approval in the double-digits in order to stave off losses,” the DCCC January memo stated.
Republicans just want to ride out the storm.Do you release your toddler from his car seat, turn to grab the grocery bags, and suddenly see your child darting across the parking lot? This is certainly a heart-pounding challenge that many parents face.
Stopping your young child from running away from you takes coaching, patience, and knowing when your child’s natural desires are taking over his ability to keep himself safe.
Toddlers run away because they are excited and love the freedom of running. They certainly are NOT doing this to “be bad” or “make you mad.” They don’t have the brain power to associate running away with danger—they just don’t realize the risks they take doing this.
I remember one day when our family was at the beach. Focused on shoving the umbrella into the ground, I didn’t see that my toddler had run after a tractor that was cleaning the sand. I’m sure he just saw the tractor and went, “YAY! TRACTOR!!!!” rather than, “Danger! Water—drowning! Stranger abduction! Go back!”
Here are the steps to controlling your sprinting child:
Be Realistic
Ask this: Is staying close a skill my child is unable to use right now?
Your toddler will not be as careful as you need him to be: it is your responsibility to keep him safe. This means that you will need to decide if taking him out in open public areas is not in his best interest. It’s okay to admit that your child just can’t handle being out of enclosed areas or unrestrained for the time being—it won’t always be this way. Stick to controlled areas until he demonstrates that when you shout, “Freeze!” he will.
Try, and try again. When you think your child might be ready to try following your instructions, you can try to release him from any restraints to see how he does. If he isn’t ready, put him back in some form of control, or go home, and try again later.
Go to Places He CAN Run
Give your child an opportunity to run in an enclosed space or controlled area where you can see him at all times. As often as you think your child needs it, find a safe area for your child to run around of his own free will. You can gauge if taking him out for a hike in the forest or to a park is a good idea. Often, children will run away, eventually look to see where you are, and return. When he comes back, offer big hugs so he learns that coming back is a good idea.
Provide Limits
Coach your child to stay away from areas that might be hazardous. To prevent a power struggle, use “You can…” rather than “Don’t do…” like this, “You can run in this spot away from the thick bushes.” Also coach your child not to pick up things from the ground (like a discarded piece of food)!
Use the word, “Freeze” instead of “Careful” or “Stop.” Freeze is a specific word that tells your child what you need him to do. “Careful” or “Stop” aren’t actually clear instructions.
Use the "Everyone With", “People who…” Tool To Increase Cooperation
If your child gets upset because you won’t let him out of the stroller to run free, you can use this parenting gem: “People who run away aren’t safe—they have to stay in the stroller. People who stay close can walk.” Another application is, “Everyone wearing life jackets can go on the dock.”
I like this one, too: “People who run in parking lots can’t come along. People who hold hands can.” I believe that a holding-hands rule is a great idea for parking lots, crowded areas and crossing the street. If your child refuses to hold your hand, you can try an “either/ or” there: “Holding hands keeps you safe. Are you going to be able to hold my hand or are we going back?”
Oftentimes, toddlers try to cut and run when you’re out because they’re at the end of their ability to be cooperative or they don’t feel they are getting enough of your attention. Spend your one-on-one time with them just before you need to head out. If you are out doing errands, find a job that your toddler can do: they love to feel helpful. Perhaps they can pick a banana bunch or help push the stroller.
Clearly Explain Your Behaviour Expectations
Tell your toddler where you are going and how you expect him to behave. Use clear, simple words like, “We are going to the mall to get a birthday present for Simon. We will hold hands in the parking lot and when we are in the mall.” Remember not to phrase your instructions as “yes/ no” questions, or put “OK?” at the end: these both give your child an opportunity to shout, “NO!” Rather than saying, “OK?” you can ask, “Do you understand what I said?” Oh, and don’t use expressions like, “I need you to be careful/ good or a big boy” because that doesn’t actually tell them what actions you expect from them.
If your child does run away and won’t come back when you call, use the puppy technique: make him want to chase you! You can try shouting, “I bet you can’t catch me?” and then start running in a goofy zigzag pattern.
Use Encouraging Statements When He Behaves Safely
Encourage your child when he does what you have asked of him. Saying, “You held my hand so nicely today. Thank you for that,” helps him feel he is capable and doing well. Another example of that is: “You ran ahead and came back when I called. Thank you!” Use simple language to describe what he did and how you feel about his actions.
Talk About Safety Throughout the Day
Make being safe a common topic of conversation and/ or the books you are reading. When you see someone else doing something “unsafe,” talk about with your child. For example, if you see a child riding a bike without a helmet on, you can say, “Oh, I hope that child doesn’t fall. His head isn’t protected if it hits something. That would really hurt!” Turn to your child and ask, “What can he do to be more safe?”
Also, if you happen to hurt yourself because of a silly mistake, you can tell your child. I just whacked my leg on the corner of the bed. After I finished hollering, I said, “Whew. I made a mistake. I should have been looking where I put my leg. Ouch!” Another one I’m adamant about is going down the stairs. We have a little sing-song we use when on stairs: “Slow and careful on the stairs, on the stairs, on the stairs. Slow and careful on the stairs: let’s be safe.” (To the tune of London Bridge)
IMAGE SOURCE: CHRISTINAFELSING VIA GETTY IMAGESRIO DE JANEIRO — Scroll back to 2011 for a minute. In the quarterfinals of the Women’s World Cup, with the United States down a goal and a player in the final seconds of overtime, Megan Rapinoe curled a 45-yard crossing pass onto the forehead of Abby Wambach, who smashed it into the net for a 2-2 tie in a game that the Americans won on penalty kicks.
The degree of difficulty alone made it one of the great goals in United States soccer history — think of sinking a 50-foot putt on the 18th green to win the United States Open — and it propelled Rapinoe and Wambach, and their teammates, to the final, where they had a 2-1 lead late in overtime against Japan but could not protect it as Japan won on penalty kicks.
Check out 2012 for a second. At the Summer Olympics in London, the same group of American women fought off a huge upset bid by Canada in the semifinals, finally prevailing, 4-3, when Alex Morgan headed in the winning goal, again in the final seconds of overtime. This time the United States held onto a 2-1 lead against Japan in the finals, only because Hope Solo made a great body-extension save in the final minutes of regulation to prevent a tying goal.FILE PHOTO: Russia's President Vladimir Putin makes his annual New Year address to the nation in Moscow, Russia, December 31, 2016. To match Exclusive RUSSIA-KREMLIN/HOSPITAL-PLAN Sputnik/Mikhail Klimentyev/Kremlin via REUTERS/File
MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Kremlin said on Monday it expected to soon agree a date for the first phone call between President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump, but that it had no information for now about when the two men might hold their first meeting.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a conference call with reporters that contacts between Moscow and Washington about the date of the first phone call were being handled by the Russian Foreign Ministry.
It was too early to talk about the details of any possible cooperation between Russia and the United States in fighting Islamist militants, Peskov said. Trump has named defeating Islamic State as a priority for his administration.
Related Coverage Trump and Putin see eye to eye on many foreign policy aims: Foreign MinisterA few weeks ago I was interviewed by a science reporter from Vox.com. Frankly, I wasn’t familiar with this site but the reporter sent me a link to a New York Times article regarding its launch in April. Masterminding the enterprise is a former editor of the Washington Post. After I received the notice, I immediately went to check out the Vox.com site to see what kind of reporting I could expect. (Reporting styles can vary from balanced to hatchet jobs and I wanted to see what alley I might be turning into.) I was pleasantly surprised by the Vox.com site itself. A tagline is “Vox Explains: Everything you need to know, in two minutes.”And it turns out she was a former editor of Popular Science magazine. Impressive.
Our interview lasted about 10 minutes and we talked about how I began working on the documentary and various other issues, some of which apparently appeared in the piece. How can I not be sure? Well, she interviewed at least two other people and I have no idea what transpired during those conversations. Frankly, it was laudable that she worked to get at least three interviews. Some reporters don’t like to put that kind of time in when they’re under deadline, as she was.
I was very happy to see that the title of the piece was “It’s time for the US to use the metric system.” I could talk more about what’s in it but I’d recommend that you read it for yourself. While I wasn’t directly quoted, there was a link to this blog at the bottom of the story. I was even MORE happy to see that (as of this writing) there were more than 3,900 Facebook shares and more than 1,100 tweets of the story. The Vox pages don’t allow comments but the reporter’s contact information is on the page. I wrote her a follow-up email inquiring what kind of feedback she’d gotten and she said “Lots of passionate responses from readers from both sides of the aisle.” As of today, there were almost 260 click-throughs to this blog page. Not a huge amount but any publicity on this subject is fine by me.
Metric system undercurrents
I’ve said it before, but there seems to be an undercurrent of interest in the metric system that is on the rise. Not only did this article come out of nowhere (may ask her what prompted her to research this topic) but the number of articles is starting to pick up.
As brought to my attention by the Metric Maven, just recently the Journal of the American Association ran a story called “Group Urges Going Metric to head Off Dosing Mistakes.” A guest blogger and HUGE help to this project, Peter Goodyear wrote about this issue in March of last year.
I plan to write more about this medical turn of events in future but let me point out a few other mentions that have come up lately.
National Public Radio (NPR) “How did the meter get its length?” (June 26, 2014)
“Metric system switch is long overdue, as illustrated in Trexlertown” (June 26, 2014)
“Coming Soon: The Metric System, Global Cooling, And Soccer Domination” (June 14, 2014)
“At 44, metrification still a mess” (June 14, 201)
“Update: What If The Common Core Required The Metric System? In Alexander Russo’s This Week in Education” (June 6, 2014)
“UK Myth: The Metric System” (June 5, 2014) [Points out that the UK is not metric. When I asked the head of the UK Metric Association some time ago why not, he said “Because you don’t use it…]
“NFL Ditches Roman Numerals for Super Bowl 50, But Won’t Switch from Using Yards in Favor of Metric System” (June 4, 2014) [While the article doesn’t really talk about the metric system, just a mention in the headline is remarkable—this is the Slate!]
Also UK: “Give me a centimetre and I’m lost” (June 2, 2014)
Canada: “Metric mixup plays role in Lake Cowichan crash” (June 1, 2014)
Canada: “Parents can keep dignity under questioning” (May 30, 2014)
“It’s time for the US to use the metric system” (May 30)
“The Metric System, Traffic Circles, and Us” (No direct date but I got the notice on May 31)
The Vox.com story on something called “Real Clear Science.” May 30, 2014
The Vox.com story got picked up by Hacker News and someone expanded on the story’s content. (May 31, 2014)
“Australia uses the metric system, so this is what I have to think of when someone uses feet and inches” (No date and some of the comments are 11 months old but I was just notified.)
It included this image [Has gotten more than 344 comments so far]
UK: “Great miscalculations: The French railway error and 10 others” (May 22, 2014) [Includes a number (ha) of measurement errors.]
Having working on this project for two years, (anniversary of its conception was June 15 BTW), that’s quite a bit of media coverage in a short period of time. If my predictions are correct, it’s going to pick up from here.
We’ll have to see where it leads us.
Linda
[Note: I’m moving to a new phase of this project and will likely post to this blog less often, however, if you wants short snippets of what’s going on behind the scenes, send me your email (to [email protected]) as I’m now planning to employ a mailing list to keep people up to date. Do what works for you. I know I am since I have lots of other aspects to this work that need to move higher on my list to keep everything moving forward.]Photo
HONG KONG — Salvage experts and a tugboat crew struggled on Monday to save a large Chinese freighter that slammed into the Great Barrier Reef off Australia over the weekend, trying to prevent the vessel from breaking apart as some of the 1,075 tons of engine fuel in its tanks began oozing from the hull, threatening the world’s largest collection of coral.
The freighter, the Shen Neng 1, crashed into the reef at full speed late Saturday, a few hours after leaving the port of Gladstone, the Australian authorities said. The ship, which was nine miles outside its authorized shipping lane, was hauling 72,000 tons of coal.
Patrick Quirk, general manager of maritime safety for Queensland, the Australian state where the vessel ran aground, said in a statement Monday morning that a hole in the bottom of the ship allowed water into the main engine room. The main engine was damaged and the rudder was seriously damaged, he said. “One of the most worrying aspects is that the ship is still moving on the reef to the action of the seas, which is doing further damage,” he said.
Anna Bligh, Queensland’s premier, told Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio early Monday, “It’s possible that this could be one of the most complex and difficult salvage operations we’ve seen, certainly in Queensland’s maritime history and possibly Australia’s.”
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An Australian aircraft dropped chemical dispersants on Sunday on what the authorities described as a ribbon of oil two miles long and as wide as the length of a football field.My WordPress Development Workflow
Really old post – This post is from 4 years, 1 month and has not been updated, some if not all of the information maybe out of date. Proceed with caution.
I love reading about people’s workflows, and each time I read about someone else’s setup I take something away. I’m inspired by folks who spend half their day at standing tables (not inspired enough to actually give standing a go mind you) and who have built contraptions to aid their day. Yet workflow is about more than just hardware and posture. In this post I thought I would take you through the tools that I use day-to-day.
This post will be the first in a series of posts that are a sort of – How I do X? What stuff I use day in day out? Along with why I do.
WARNING it’s worth remembering I don’t do much full on development any more and when I do I tend to be working on either more complex systems or working with lots of unfamiliar legacy code. In addition to this I have my own sites and a few legacy clients who have unique and individual setups. Normally the remainder of my work with clients is based around AWS or a similar infrastructure.
Operating System & Apps
My main computer is a Macbook Pro 2010 and my day-to day OS is OSX Mavericks which I jokingly say is the prettiest terminal GUI going. I have MacPorts on, and a range of small tools and other bits more often found on a typical Unix box. I use MacPorts over HomeBrew for no reason other then that was the one I used first.
In terms of Apps it’s pretty light development wise:
Sublime Text 2
Chrome
Firefox Developer Edition
Compass.app
Sequel Pro & MySQLWorkbench
Sublime Text
My main text editor is Sublime Text 2, there is Sublime Text 3 but I have stuck with version 2 as all my plugins are compatible along with a few custom plugins. I don’t think there is much work in migrating plugins over but I haven’t investigated. In terms of other IDEs and text editors I have worked with or tried a range in the past including hip new offerings like Atom to mature products like PHPStorm. On the whole Sublime Text offers the right balance for me, but text editors are such personal choices. I still have a copy of Eclipse up to date and setup for occasional weird programming tasks, but prefer not to fire it up unless needed.
On the command line, I use Nano over VIM (I just heard the audible gasp, from 90% of readers) my first Unix experience (which was in the early 90s, coming from a BBC/Acorn background) made use of Pine (Email client) which had Pico built in which became Nano. So I just used Nano, while I am utterly convinced by the superiority of emacs and VIM, I have never had a need to learn to use them properly.
With that admission out, my sublime plugin list (or vaguely relevant/stuff I use) is:
Several people have suggested, that with most of these plugins built in what I really want is PHPStorm and they may be right, it’s certainly heading in an interesting direction but at the moment I’m happy with my Sublime setup.
Where possible each project I work on is given its own Sublime project as most of the plugins have config that is project dependent as well as VM dependent. Where a project doesn’t have a vagrant instance setup for debugging I make use of the OSX version of software, though normally I have updated via MacPorts for example I have 3 separate versions of PHP running locally. Two of these are pre-vagrant days, in fact a lot of legacy software on this machine could be stripped off.
Most of the Sublime plugins are related to either tidying code (or making it fit a certain coding style) or debugging and are all pretty standard I think with nothing too exotic. A couple of Hack specific plugins for working with HHVM perhaps would not be in a normal WordPress dev sublime install.
A few plugins/things I don’t use within Sublime:
Git – I use from the command line, while I understand and am a proponent of commit often I still don’t like the idea of committing via an IDE. Plus the few second’s break to type git commit gives me a little reset moment. There are however I believe a couple of good git plugins for Sublime. I do also make use of VCS Gutter which shows Git/SVN Diffs, which I find handy.
In a similar vein, I don’t have Grunt or any work tasks setup to work automatically from Sublime, again preferring to fire up the command line as needed.
I have several different projects which use different workflows for working with Grunt and similar. Nearly all now run grunt tasks as part of provisioning/deploying of code either on Vagrant or remote server. This means precompiled and minified code is not held in the Repository, the downside is that everything needs to go through a provisioning tool or have its own version of the grunt tasks. I do (out of laziness) also have a copy of Compass for quickly working with Less and SASS files, normally where the project isn’t something I’m working on and I just want to get it up and running.
Compass.app
I mentioned Compass.app, it’s not something constantly open, but while I use compass from grunt, having a pretty GUI to one hand is useful for example if I’ve downloaded something to play with or when I just need to make a quick change to something that I don’t have a project for. In such cases I use compass.app, I don’t make heavy use of it and barely touch any of its features. Still it was a good purchase for a few pounds.
Chrome and Firefox
Browser wise, my main browser is Chrome, with my second browser being Firefox Developer Edition (which is also the one Selenium fires for some acceptance testing with Codeception when not using Webdriver).
Within Chrome I use the following extensions (for Dev work)
While there are a fair few there, most are pretty self explanatory. The WordPress.org SVN button extension is surprisingly useful providing one click access to the SVN repo of plugins on w.org from their plugins page. Postman is the de facto REST client for Chrome, while Form Editor allows modification of form data being sent to server, along with bits in the Chrome toolbar replacing Firefox Tamper Data extension. Appspector provides a one click glance at what technology a site is using, though it does occasionally bring back false positives.
With Firefox, I really only have Firebug and TamperData plus the default install for the Developer Edition.
Sequel Pro & MySQL Workbench
For managing databases I use Sequel Pro for Mac for most day-to-day commands, or switch to command line if I think it’s going to be process intensive. I prefer Sequel Pro over PHPMyAdmin even though it’s running locally. When working with DB design I use MySQL Workbench for EER diagrams and working out relationships. Though when it comes to working with WordPress this is rarely needed, to be honest I can’t remember the last time I used MySQL Workbench in anger.
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Virtualisation
For development I use Vagrant to manage my virtualised instances, I run 4 separate vagrant setups at the moment:
VVV
Amazon AMI Mimic Build
Legacy Client Mimic
TimNash.co.uk Mimic
My various instances are setup for different tasks, for example VVV which has almost become the de facto setup for WordPress Development I primarily use for teaching on, so most of my screencasts are done using VVV. It’s also a good general environment to trash on a regular basis.
The Amazon AMI Mimic, represents a fairly standard EC2 instances designed for PHP, but with HHVM, Redis and Beanstalkd setup as well as some basic testing and development tools.
The Legacy Client is a fairly standard LAMP stack configured for Magento with some occasional tweaks and an Elastic Search on the machine, it represents a legacy client dedicated box.
TimNash.co.uk Mimic, well mimics this site which sits on Ubuntu Trusty with a slightly different setup to the Amazon AMI client as it’s running, Memcache, Gearman and HHVM. Like the Amazon AMI Mimic it has a few extra development tools as standard. While I call it the timnash.co.uk mimic I actually have probably half a dozen sites on a couple of servers with a similar configuration. Over time I’m porting them over to use AWS and switching which Vagrant instance I use.
If you’re getting into virtualisation, specifically Vagrant for WordPress development and are looking for a good intro, then I would suggest looking at VVV to get up and running, but don’t worry about having to use VVV pick what is comfortable for you to use. Installing and configuring a virtual machine, even using Vagrant can at times be a total pig, especially on Windows machines but once you start using virtualisation you won’t go back to using XAMP and similar.
It’s also worth remembering one of the big benefits of Vagrant is matching your production servers, or providing multiple testing environments while solutions like VVV get you going quickly you may want to build tailored images to match your existing setups.
One area where I tend to work differently to say how VVV is setup is I don’t make heavy use of shared folders. For example in VVV the /srv/www folder is accessible both within Vagrant and the host system. While I do use shared folders so I can make use of remote x-debug amongst other features and so I can put breakpoints into code without committing almost certainly broken code. When working with version controlled projects I maintain a copy of the provisioning tools grunt scripts so on a post commit hook locally, the grunt scripts are run on Vagrant’s side. I also can always manually run these scripts. What it does mean is that if I’m working on CSS styling, I either have to run Grunt manually or wait until I commit to see it processed. This isn’t an issue for me as I rarely work with CSS but I can imagine such workflows being problematic for front end devs. What it does mean is I have far more faithful Vagrant setups and I only have to maintain one set of scripts.
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Testing & Performance Monitoring
When it comes to testing, performance and monitoring I use a pretty common suite of programs:
xdebug/HHVM implementation
xhprof/xhgui
WP-CLI
Codeception
CodebaseHQ Exceptions/Airbrake
X-Debug
Like most PHP developers I swear by x-debug for debugging applications, if you don’t make use of x-debug in your workflow and work with PHP you should go and check it out. Not only does it provide full stack traces, but allows you to set break points so you can step through your code. With integration with Sublime Text this is a key component to my general workflow. With recent versions of HHVM certain parts of x-debug have been included in HHVM by default though with minimal documentation. Still this has allowed me to make heavy use of Hack in the last couple of projects even if x-debug doesn’t always work within HHVM as you would expect.
XHprof
XHprof is a passive profiler, created by Facebook and designed for production sites to monitor performance of PHP applications. It’s particularly useful when looking to track down stray processes causing mayhem on your server. Combined with XHGui it gives you a visual representation, it’s not pretty, but is functional which is all you actually need. I have played with a fork of XHprof called Uprofiler however haven’t switched over.
PHP Unit & Codeception
For testing I use a combination WP-CLI for accessing PHPUnit Tests within WordPress and Codeception for acceptance and some general functional tests. I make far more use of acceptance and regression testing then I do of unit tests. I also make use of Codeceptions acceptance tests beyond standard development, for example using them as part of the provisioning process and for testing backups.
Codebase Exceptions / Airbrake
For handling exceptions, mainly on live sites, I push them into CodeBaseHQ which is the service I use for git repos and ticketing once a site is live. CodeBase uses an Airbrake compatible solution for receiving exceptions. Basically this is a HTTP request with information and partial stack trace of any error I choose to send. I use the Airbrake WordPress plugin, but as they hard code the Airbrake URL in I have simply replaced with CodeBase credentials.
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Deployment/Provisioning & Code Management
Codebase
Github
DeployHQ – Legacy
Jenkins
PHPCI
Anisble/Grunt
Puppet
Codebase & Github
Most of my code is still held in CodebaseHQ which provides Git/SVN/Mercurial repos along with ticketing, wiki, exception monitoring and a pile of features I have never used. At Coding Futures we use to make heavy use of Codebase and it was at the core of all our development. With Coding Futures no more, I kept using Codebase but other than exception handling I’m barely using any features to justify continuing to pay for it and it’s on my to migrate list. Alternatives include bitbucket which would be free or using something like Gitlab on an EC2 instance pulling from S3, though this is one of those where it’s so much easier to use a hosted solution.
Codebase is however a useful system if you are looking for an all in one system, it’s a shame ATech the guys behind it seem to have left it to rot a bit as there really hasn’t been any noticeable development on it for a couple of years.
For public work related to the site I tend to use Github, I’m not a prolific githubber, and simply use it as a public repo for work that is normally worked on in a private repo on Codebase. Not for any other reason than that’s how I have always done it, so not something I would recommend to others. As I am planning a couple of open source, totally free plugins I do intend to make more heavy use of Github/Travis/ScrutinizerCI combination.
DeployHQ / Jenkins / PHPCI
For code deployment I use a mix of tools, I still have a couple of legacy sites making use of DeployHQ, another ATech product which I believe you can get for free through Codebase. DeployHQ does automatic and manual deployments and is a perfectly fine deployment tool. Most of my stuff works on a CI approach and is a combination of Jenkins and a few shell scripts, again nothing fancy, combined with Grunt run on the server rather then from Jenkins for precompiling and minification. If Ruby and Capistrano are more your thing then there is WordMove a Capistrano setup for WordPress deployments.
For Jenkins I make use of a few plugins including:
Build Pipeline View
Publish over SSH
Git or Github Plugin (or DVCS of your choice)
Codesniffer Plugin
The Publish over SSH is pretty much used for a couple of weird legacy cases, most deployment and provisioning is done with shell scripts.
I have experimented with PHPCI which is a deployment and continual integration server written in PHP and aimed at deploying PHP based applications. It’s an interesting project and well worth following, I fully intend to migrate at least one project (probably this site) to using PHPCI during the year.
For stuff on Amazon, deployment is slightly different, rather then pushing content to an existing EC2 instance, I tend to provision a new base image, update and pull from the repo. Run any Codeception tests against it to check everything is ok, and then kill off the server it’s replacing. The process is fairly seamless but does mean deployments can be 20/30 minutes plus, so it doesn’t lend itself to quick hot fixes or lots of little changes.
Puppet / Anisble / Grunt
For provisioning I use Puppet and Anisble along with good old Bash Scripts and WP-CLI, I have played with Chef and looked into Docker (which works slightly differently) again the choice of Puppet was based on the thing I looked at when I started doing provisioning.
For new projects I always now start with a base image, and setup provisioning and deployment for the live site at the start where possible as it gives me the flexibility of destroying and recreating projects with ease, it also makes migration from Vagrant to test to live easier. As most of my new projects are primarily AWS based these days this process is even more critical.
Puppet doesn’t have to just be for server management either, as I look to change hardware for my laptop and look at maintenance for the beast, I keep considering using Puppet to provision for local machines as well. Though it does seem a lot of effort, and
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when your training partners catch on to what you are doing you, it becomes much more challenging. They will become hyper-aware of their appendages and you will have to become more crafty with your armbar attemtps, setting them up different ways, looking for them in different positions. I am currently working on a similar goal, and I have been going for a cross-body ankle lock on every roll for the last 3 months.
Talking about goals in terms of years might sound like an unmanageably long stretch of time. In jiu-jitsu hours, it ends up going by quickly. At the same time, having a year-long goal does not mean that you stop learning everything else, but it does give your training a consistent direction that will drive your overall progress much more effectively than working on one concept for a month and leaving it behind.
What goals are you working on? How is it going?The University of Oregon (UO) put on a production about race in which one student repeatedly asked "I don't know why I'm white."
"I didn't choose to be white. As a matter of fact, I don't even know why I'm white," said Eric Braman during the Nov. 13 event.
"Why was I supposed to feel so bad about my whiteness when I didn't even have any connection to how I got it?"
The production was an an adaptation of National Public Radio host Michele Norris' "The Race Card Project," according to the school's official website.
"How would you distill your thoughts, experiences or observations about race into one sentence that only has six words?" asks the initiative's official website.
At the start of the production, students read some of these responses, which included everything from "So scared that Zimmerman is Jewish" to "I am fortunate to be Caucasian" to "Nobody asks me about hot sauce."
Others included "Not all Mexicans can do landscaping," "Loving my butt and hair? Impossible" and "Embarrassed that I'm afraid of black boys."
As the skit continued, students elaborated on their personal experiences with race.
Braman, who identified himself at the end as a gay white male, described his experience with white guilt after learning about slavery and civil rights in grade school and white privilege in high school.
"I remember being so frustrated and angry that I had privilege just because I was white, and now because of that I had to feel bad about it," he said. "I didn't choose to be white. As a matter of fact, I don't even know why I'm white," he said, explaining that neither of his parents had shared his specific family history with him.
"Why was I supposed to feel so bad about my whiteness when I didn't even have any connection to how I got it?"
He said those feelings caused him to exhibit what he called "some pretty ignorant racism."
"I said it all," he said. "Everything from 'No I don't see color!' to 'I got a black friend, I love black people!' and yes, I even said, 'Don't call me white, call me pink, I'm more pink than white!'"
Other students' stories included a Latin female who said she felt out-of-touch with her family due to her lighter skin, interest in school and small breasts, and a mixed race male who felt upset when asked to choose one race on a standardized test.
It was put on on by school theater troupe Rehearsals for Life, which aims to create "opportunities for students to use their creativity to further issues of diversity, equity and access on campus and enhancing their own conflict resolution skills," according to the group's description.
The production was cosponsored with UO Student Affairs and the Center on Diversity and Community. Norris also spoke at the end of the performance.
An option to download a video of the performance is on the UO website.
Follow the author of this article on Twitter @kctimpfDon't look now, but that tree may be watching you. Several lines of recent research suggest that plants are capable of vision—and may even possess something akin to an eye, albeit a very simple one.
The idea that plants may have “eyes” is, in a way, nothing new. In 1907 Francis Darwin, Charles's son, hypothesized that leaves have organs that are a combination of lens-like cells and light-sensitive cells. Experiments in the early 20th century seemed to confirm that such structures, now called ocelli, exist, but the concept of a “seeing plant” fell by the wayside—only to reemerge in the past few years.
In a recent issue of Trends in Plant Science, František Baluška, a plant cell biologist at the University of Bonn in Germany, and Stefano Mancuso, a plant physiologist at the University of Florence in Italy, lay out new evidence for visually aware vegetation. To make their case, the researchers first point to the 2016 discovery that Synechocystis cyanobacteria, single-celled organisms capable of photosynthesis, act like ocelli. “These cyanobacteria use the entire cell body as a lens to focus an image of the light source at the cell membrane, as in the retina of an animal eye,” says University of London microbiologist Conrad Mullineaux, who helped to make the discovery. Although researchers are not sure what the purpose of this mechanism is, its existence suggests that a similar one could have evolved in higher plants. “If something like this is already present at the lower level of evolution, it is most likely kept,” Baluška says.
Recent work also shows that some plants, such as the cabbage and mustard relative Arabidopsis, make proteins that are involved in the development and functioning of eyespots—the ultrabasic eyes found in some single-celled organisms such as green algae. These proteins specifically show up in structures called plastoglobuli, which are famed for giving autumn leaves their red and orange hues. “This discovery suggests that plastoglobuli in plants may act as eyespots,” Baluška says.
Other observational research reveals plants have visual capabilities we just do not understand yet. For instance, as reported in 2014 in Current Biology, the climbing wood vine Boquila trifoliolata can modify its leaves to mimic the colors and shapes of its host plant.
Although the evidence for eyelike structures in higher plants remains limited, it is growing. “I had never heard about plant vision, and I would have dismissed it as unlikely until my own discovery of cyanobacteria acting as a camera eye,” says biotechnologist Nils Schuergers, co-author of the 2016 study on Synechocystis. The next challenge is to confirm the early 20th-century experiments showing that plant cells themselves can act like lenses—and researchers still need to figure out all the ends to which plants put their rudimentary sight.This article is over 5 years old
Authorities are searching for two suspects in the shooting death of man and alleged escape in his silver 2012 Range Rover
New Jersey carjacking in Short Hills mall parking lot leaves one dead
Authorities are searching for two suspects wanted in the shooting death of a man who had just finished holiday shopping with his wife at an upscale mall in northern New Jersey.
Acting Essex county prosecutor Carolyn Murray says the shooting happened around 9pm Sunday at the Mall at Short Hills. She says two men confronted a couple returning to their vehicle on the third level of a parking deck.
Murray says the husband, a 30-year-old Hudson County resident, was shot in the head before the men took off in his silver 2012 Range Rover. His wife was not injured.
The man was pronounced dead at a hospital.
The Range Rover has New Jersey license plates U26 BVD.
The victim's name has not been released.API - OpenGL
Quality - ULTRA
Tessellation - EXTREME
Resolution - 1920x1080
Hey there folks!Today I present to you another comparison video, this time around running Unigine's Heaven benchmark. The Heaven benchmark is very demanding on even the latest hardware, so I was interested to see how Ubuntu, a Linux distro, would handle the stress in comparison to Windows 8.The quality of the video is certainly not the best, but the Nikon AW100 is all I have to use at the moment. If you are not interested in watching the entire video, then you should pause at 4:57 to see the results side-by-side.This test pushes both operating systems and their respective drivers, by running the benchmark at the following settings:While tessellation is not brand spanking new anymore, it is still rather new to being in actual games. Thus, I figured this test would enlighten us as to how (at least in Unigine's case) tessellation performs on Ubuntu. For good measure and something to compare to, Windows was tested as well.This test was also done on relatively some of the latest hardware available in the market, with the key components being:CPU - Intel i7-4770 3.4GHz HaswellGPU - Nvidia GTX680 GDDR5 2GBHopefully this time around I haven't made any glaring mistakes. No screen recorders were involved, and since this is a benchmark application the timing should be the same.AMD and Intel graphics users may experience dramatically different results. If I can figure out how to enable only the 4600 graphics on this i7 CPU (without physically removing the 680), then hopefully I'll do some comparisons with this iGPU as well in the future.As always, please help correct me if I made any mistakes and advice is always welcome.Noticing the successful efforts of both Lomography and The Impossible Project, inventor Bob Crowley has been inspired to take his own dive into the niche market of the re-creation of discontinued analog films. He and his team at New55 FILM have created a Kickstarter in hopes of funding the start up of 4×5 instant film production.
After hearing The Impossible Project wasn’t going to work on 4×5, Crowley figured he’d look into making it a reality himself. With his background as an inventor, he got to work, applying that knowledge towards making it happen.
Starting off with the basics, Crowley researched patents and papers on the creation of instant film, gathered up as many resources as he could, and contacted as many knowledgeable people in the field as he could, all in an effort to become as well-informed as possible before taking the next step.
Then came the more difficult aspect: gathering the pieces of the puzzle to create the film — industrial resources, vendors of the almost-extinct materials needed, and everything else. And while he and his team at New55 FILM have done much of the research needed to gather these components, it’s not yet complete, as the funding from the campaign would go towards supplying the needed capital to make these investments.
The manufacturing process will the final step towards re-creating this instant format. And although it’s a daunting task, New55 FILM is ready to take it head on with a solid plan that’s meticulously outlined over on the Kickstarter page.
The rewards start at the $25 pledge range, with a $75 pledge securing you a “First Edition” box consisting of five 4×5 sheets, assuming the Kickstarter gets successfully funded.
Eventually, their ambitions are to get the market price per sheet down to $6. But, that depends completely on whether or not their campaign is successful, as well as the need for economics of scale to help bring the cost of semi-mass-production down.
As of writing this, the New55 FILM Kickstarter campaign has raised just over $45k in funding, leaving $350k to go. It’s certainly one of the more ambitious Kickstarter projects we’ve seen, but as The Impossible Project went to prove with their endeavors, it’s not so impossible.
To read in more detail the project, from conception to where it’s currently at, you can head on over to New55 FILM’s blog. If you’d like to read more specifically about the Kickstarter or make your pledge, head on over to the Kickstarter campaign.Directions: Take this sex toy and Putin your butt.
Graphic designer Fernando Sosa is blowing up on Reddit with his newest 3D printed work of art: a figurine of Russian President Vladimir Putin that's not-quite-perfect for some self-loving, but it's a way to stick it to the country's anti-gay politics.
While these aren't the first political-related sexual devices, this might be one of the best.
Sosa explained his inspiration on his Imgur page:
"This is the second of my political oriented figurines. As many of you guys know, Russia is bringing an all-out war against the civil rights of gay people in Russia. Leading the charge is Mr. Putin and his homophobic leadership. I wanted to ridicule Mr. Putin so I wanted to make a voodo[o]-like doll of him so people could do whatever they wanted to Mr. Putin in the privacy of their own home. However, what a better way to attack Mr. Putin's shirtless bear wrestling reputation? Make him into the shape of a butt plug."
Putin's anti-gay policies also inspired the "Send A Sex Toy To Vladimir Putin" Facebook campaign.
Politics aside, it's pretty hilarious, and greatly detailed. And despite the aim of Sosa's joke, it should be noted that heterosexuals and homosexuals partake in anal sex.
However, we should give you a word of warning: Don't actually stick it up any orifices. Perhaps in the cruelest joke of all, the Putin butt plug is made entirely of sandstone.
"Emp[ha]sis on the sandstone," Sosa said in a Reddit comment.
That doesn't mean Sosa isn't trying to improve his product.
"I'm looking for a few people to help me buy raw materials like skin safe silicone or rubber," Sosa said on his website.
The artist is currently selling the novelty plugs for a modest $23.Pickles Pub, located across the street from Oriole Park at Camden Yards, has long been synonymous with opening day. Thousands of orange-drenched fans make it their first stop (usually of many) on one of Baltimore’s most lively days.
But at 10 a.m. on April 5, hours before the Orioles host the Minnesota Twins for the first home series of the season, the Deck at Camden Yards — a new, outdoor beer garden at the Hampton Inn — will open next to Pickles.
Deck partner Fritz Brogan says the latest addition to Washington Boulevard will open for Orioles home games, Ravens home games and special events such as the Grand Prix. He says the Deck, which has no affiliation with the Orioles, is not in direct competition with Pickles or Sliders, another bar that shares the street.
“We think we’re offering a service for the people that can’t get into Pickles or Sliders,” Brogan said. “I think there’s plenty of business for everybody.”
At first glance, the Hampton Inn looks like an odd choice for an outdoor bar. But Brogan says the patio, combined with a cleared-out parking lot and valet area, will make the Deck the largest outdoor space of any bar on the street. He says the staff, led by former Mex general manager Rob Napier, is expecting at least 1,000 people next Friday.
“No matter what way you’re walking to the stadium, you’re going to have to pass us,” Brogan said. “You’re going to smell good barbecue. You’re going to see a good atmosphere. I think we’ll get a lot of walk-by traffic.”
Brogan, who owns two bars in Washington (Mason Inn, a Ravens bar, and George in Georgetown), says there will be a DJ and 25 bartenders serving mixed drinks, shots and cans of beer (Miller Lite, Coors Light, Blue Moon, Leinenkugel and more standards) on opening day. The Deck has partnered with Carnivore BBQ, a D.C.-based food truck that recently opened a brick-and-mortar store in Hollins Market, to provide food.
But what about the hotel’s customers?
Brogan says the Deck will be “very sensitive” to Hampton Inn’s guests. Normally, the Deck will open three hours before game-time and close 90 minutes after a game ends. For night games (say a 7 p.m. Orioles game or a primetime Ravens game), the Deck will do most of its business before the games begin. He added that the bar likely wouldn’t stay open past 11 p.m. or midnight, but that no plans have been made definite.
“We don’t plan on being a late-night place. It will be a daytime bar,” Brogan said. “I don’t think people sleeping at the hotel at night will have any problems.”
The cars of Hampton Inn customers will be moved to a second, auxiliary parking lot three blocks away to accommodate the Deck, Brogan said.
The idea for the bar came from MCR Development, the New York/Dallas-based hotel investment firm and management company that also owns the downtown Hampton Inn.
Tyler Morse, MCR’s chief executive officer and a self-proclaimed “big Orioles fan,” says the recent successes of the Ravens and Orioles inspired the initial idea for the Deck.
“We wanted to be a part of Baltimore sports because they’ve really been on a tear these days,” Morse said. “We’ve seen what happens for Opening Day and opening weekend, Yankees games, Red Sox games. It’s a big part of the fabric downtown. We have a great space and wanted to participate with the community.”
Morse reiterated the Deck does not view Pickles as a competitor, adding Pickles’ management has been friendly and supportive of the Deck.
“Pickles has built an amazing franchise and has an amazing following, so we’re working off the great business they get,” Morse said. “There’s plenty of business to go around. Fifty-thousand people going into the ballpark — we can all happily co-exist.”To celebrate Walt Disney’s 114th birthday on Dec. 5, 2015, Disney is opening Photographs from the Walt Disney Archives, a chance to see (and own) pictures from deep in the company's vault.
The archival photographs include a young Walt circa 1932 surrounded by plush Mickey Mouse dolls, and a shot of Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland on opening day in 1955.
The images tell stories, including a rare photograph of musicians during the filming of the concert epic Fantasia (1940), as well as a picture of Walt and his staff with a multiplane camera during the 1951 filming of Alice in Wonderland.
A new print-on-demand photo service allows fans to own these rare images from Disney’s history.
All artwork comes from the photo library operated by the Walt Disney Archives.In the search for better data to inform the decision making of an NHL front office, nothing has more potential than SportVu's camera-tracking system.
SportVu, which has been adopted by the NBA already, has the potential to clean up the persistent errors in the league's play-by-play data and (notoriously biased) tracking of real-time statistics. It might also provide the public with a wealth of data that isn't currently accessible, like Colorado Avalanche forward Matt Duchene's top speed skating through the neutral zone, or Nashville Predators defender Shea Weber's average shot speed on one-timers.
The NHL is aware of the story telling potential of SportVu's data for fans, but at least one NHL executive is now on the record as supporting the full implementation of SportVu cameras as a way of improving decision making. That general manager is Dallas Stars executive Jim Nill, who has been enormously successful in his first year-and-change in North Texas.
From an excellent interview Nill granted to Travis Yost of The Sporting News:
I want to see SportVu implemented league-wide. It’s something we’ve talked about at the GM meetings and the Board of Governor meetings. They’re going to start playing with a little bit — it’s in a lot of the NBA arenas, and we were following it closely during the World Cup as well. The league’s working on it and it’s something that’s going to come in to play down the road. You know, our sport — it’s so unique from other sports. You talk about these other sports, no one else has the number of changes we have during our game. There are changes every 30 or 40-seconds. The important part is getting the technology right when we do it, we want to do it right. And I look forward to that being implemented moving forward.
There are currently nine shared NBA and NHL arenas, and there will be a 10th once the New York Islanders move to the Barclay's Center for the start of the 2015-16 season. One of those arenas is the American Airline Center in Dallas, which, wouldn't you know it, is the home arena of Nill's Stars.
The NHL is currently considering a number of options to improve their gathering of real-time statistical data, including a system developed by Sportsvision (who were the pioneers behind the FoxTrax glow puck of the late 90s). The plan is to experiment with a variety of potential systems this upcoming season with an eye towards rolling out a standardized league-wide tracking system for the start of the 2015-16 season.WASHINGTON — We interrupt this year’s slugfest between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton to bring you their understudies: two low-key, middle-aged guys.
Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate between Republican Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana and Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia pits a former radio host who’s described himself as ‘‘Rush Limbaugh on decaf’’ against a harmonica-playing former missionary whose aw-shucks style has spawned a thousand dad jokes.
Barring the unexpected, their 90-minute faceoff is unlikely to alter the trajectory of the presidential race.
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But don’t hit the snooze button just yet. Debate history suggests there still is the potential for some memorable moments.
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Some things to watch for in Tuesday’s debate at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia.
Say who?
Pence and Kaine have campaigned full tilt for more than two months now, but plenty of people still don’t have a feel for them. In a recent Associated Press-GfK poll, more than half of registered voters said they didn’t know enough about Kaine to venture an opinion about him, and about 44 percent said the same for Pence. This is their big moment to show they’re qualified to be next in line to the president.
Scout motto
Trump may disdain traditional debate prep, but Kaine and Pence both have embraced the Scout motto: Be prepared. Each must be ready to defend his own record, skewer his opponent and do the same for the top of the ticket.
The mission
Pence and Kaine have to decide whether to focus more on one another or on Trump and Clinton. Watch how they toggle between the two tasks. Look for Pence, who calls Clinton ‘‘the most dishonest person ever to seek the presidency,’’ to zero in on lines of attack that Trump hardly touched in the first debate, such as questions about whether Clinton played favorites as secretary of state with donors to the Clinton Foundation. Kaine will try to act as a character witness for Clinton and go after Trump, of whom the senator says his ‘‘only recognized passion in his life has been for himself.’’
Defending the indefensible
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Pence will have the added herculean task of explaining away the steady stream of insults, barbs and inflammatory comments delivered by his running mate, including the latest contretemps over a beauty queen whom Trump has shamed for gaining weight. Pence has had plenty of practice in recent weeks. Expect him to employ a strategy of praising Trump for his unscripted style as a ‘‘bold truth teller’’ without arguing the merits of the GOP nominee’s specific comments.
Threading the needle
Both candidates may need to navigate areas where they have policy differences with their running mates; Pence more so than Kaine. Pence, for example, says it’s clear that human activity is affecting the climate while Trump has called global warming a hoax. Kaine holds that U.S. military operations against the Islamic State group have not been properly approved by Congress, a point of disagreement with Clinton.
Amen corner
Expect both Pence, an evangelical, and Kaine, a former Catholic missionary, to showcase their religious backgrounds in an effort to appeal to different constituencies. Pence likes to say of himself: ‘‘I’m a Christian, a conservative and a Republican — in that order.’’ Kaine often brings up his time as a missionary in Honduras, working in a few lines of Spanish along the way to reach out to Hispanics.
Too clever?
Past vice presidential debates have provided some memorable lines. Republican Bob Dole’s cutting quip in 1976 about all the Americans killed in ‘‘Democrat wars’’ did him no good. Democrat Lloyd Bentsen’s 1988 putdown of Republican Dan Quayle with his ‘‘You’re no Jack Kennedy’’ line still singes. Third-party candidate James Stockdale’s rambling 1992 opening questions of ‘‘Who am I? Why am I here?’’ captured a candidate who was clearly out of his element. Four years ago, Vice President Joe Biden’s denunciations of Republican Paul Ryan’s budget math as ‘‘a bunch of malarkey’’ showed considerably more spark than did President Barack Obama’s leaden performance against rival Mitt Romney in the leadoff debate.
Moderation
CBS News’ Elaine Quijano will be under the microscope as moderator, especially since Trump has complained that NBC’s Lester Holt, the moderator of last week’s debate, was too tough on him.
Associated Press writers Kathleen Ronayne in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Alan Suderman in Richmond, Virginia, contributed to this report.What can the micro-sociology of violence contribute to understanding the mass killings in Aurora, Colorado, and similar incidents? In the immediate shock of public attention, there is an imperative to give policy answers. I could join the chorus advocating a ban on weapons in the USA. This is a hope; it is not a guarantee. Mass shootings are very rare events. There are about 15,000 homicides per year in the USA; the great majority are single-victim killings. Less than 1% are mass killings (4 or more victims in the same incident). Spectacular mass shootings, where many persons are killed or wounded, have been happening at a rate of about 1 or 2 per year, in the 30 years since 1980, for the most common type, school shootings; shootings in other venues, apparently imitating school shootings, are rarer but on the rise. It is their rarity that attracts so much attention, and their out-of-the-blue, seemingly random relationship between killer and victims, that makes them so dramatically alarming.
This rarity means that very distinctive circumstances are needed to explain mass killings, and that widely available conditions cannot be very accurate predictors. There are approximately 190 million firearms in the civilian population in America, in a population of 310 million. The vast majority of these guns are not used to kill people. Even if we focus on the total number of yearly homicides by gun (about 12,000), the percentage of guns that kill someone is about 12,000 / 190,000,000, or 1 in 16,000. Another way to put it: of approximately 44 million gun owners in the US, 99.97% of them do not murder anyone. It is not surprising that their owners resist being accused of abetting murder.
(H/T Geoff Nathan)A team of scientists led by University of Melbourne researcher Dr Matthew Le Feuvre has described twenty new species of freshwater fish from the rivers of the Kimberley region, Western Australia.
The new species fall within three groups: 16 species of Terapontidae (grunters); 3 species of Eleotridae (gudgeons); and one species of Atherinidae (hardy heads).
The species were discovered during nine months of fieldwork across 17 Kimberley rivers between 2012 and 2014.
Twelve of them were discovered within a three-week period in 2013 by Dr Le Feuvre and his colleague, James Shelley of the University of Melbourne, when they accessed some of the most remote rivers in Australia.
“Sampling was challenging, with Mr Shelley attacked by a freshwater crocodile while snorkeling in the Glenelg river on the Kimberley plateau,” the scientists said.
One of the new species – a 25-cm-long grunter found in the remote and spectacular Prince Regent River – is set to be named after writer and novelist Tim Winton.
“It’s in recognition of his contribution to Australia’s cultural life, his love of fish which shines through in many of his novels, and his staunch advocacy for conservation in the Kimberley,” Mr Shelley said.
Mr Winton said it was ‘surprisingly gratifying’ to have his name attached to a new species of fish.
“The Kimberley is a treasure that clearly requires more study and greater protection and groundbreaking discoveries like these underline just how much there is still to learn about this special region,” Mr Winton said.
All the remaining new species will receive a common name reflecting the aboriginal name for the area it was collected from or words describing its features, as well as a Latin scientific name.
Research describing the new species is published online in the journal Global Ecology and Biogeography.
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Matthew C. Le Feuvre et al. 2016. Macroecological relationships reveal conservation hotspots and extinction-prone species in Australia’s freshwater fishes. Global Ecology and Biogeography, vol. 25, no. 2, pp. 176 – 186; doi: 10.1111/geb.12397We are headed into The Land Pavilion in Walt Disney World’s Epcot today for one of our favorite character meals at Garden Grill Restaurant!
This spot may feel a little dated in a way…but we prefer to think of it as retro. 😉 Disney’s (Orlando’s!!) only rotating restaurant is still tops for the coolness factor of the, you know, rotation. I can remember going to this restaurant when I was a little kid — it was fancy-pants back then (with sculpted Mickey butter!), but the nostalgia factor is high here for Epcot babies. Add in some pretty delicious food, and you’re doing even better. AND then — characters! Even Mickey! So it’s probably sort of easy to see why we like it.
Recently, our Dining in Disneyland expert and friend of DFB Heather Sievers travelled to Walt Disney World for a visit. Among their many culinary adventures, her family opted to visit Garden Grill Restaurant for breakfast one morning.
Let’s tag along and see how it went!
Atmosphere
Garden Grill Restaurant is located within The Land Pavilion in Epcot’s Future World West.
This building is a serious multitasker. You’ll find three different attractions housed here: Soarin, Living with the Land, and The Circle of Life. All have different entrances, which are accessible as you travel down ramps circling either side of the round building’s perimeter.
In addition to the attractions, there are also two restaurants. While Sunshine Seasons occupies the ground floor (and offers up some of our favorite Disney World counter service eats), Garden Grill is located on the pavilion’s second floor.
Step back a bit and watch closely, and you can see the restaurant slowly rotating as diners enjoy their meals while interacting with characters.
You can get a feel for what the restaurant offers just by glancing at the sign. Chip ‘N Dale’s Harvest Feast is an all you care to enjoy meal that you can book for breakfast, lunch, or dinner.
We’ll take a closer look at the menu in a minute. In the meantime, let’s have a look around.
Tables are arranged in stadium seating on two rows around the restaurant, and one is slightly higher than the other. Tables on the top tier are your garden variety rectangular tables, like this one.
Lower tables are actually curved booths with a front row seat to the passing landscape.
You may also notice a familiar “face” when you are seated! Ah, those clever Cast Members. Always makin’ the magic.
So — back to that whole rotating thing. What exactly are guests looking at as they dine? An ever changing landscape, thanks to the Living with the Land attraction below.
As you rotate — a journey that takes about an hour — you’ll see a Farmhouse Scene as well as Desert and Rainforest habitats.
And that takes us to Garden Grill’s second claim to fame — Characters! The feast is hosted by mischevious (and completely adorable) chipmunks, Chip ‘n Dale.
But they’ve also brought a few other friends to the party! Guests can also catch a photo with Pluto.
And Mickey is on board as well! How much do we LOVE his farmer togs?!?
And that brings me to the third reason you go to Garden Grill: the Food. Let’s have a look.
Eats
Character Meal experiences vary at Walt Disney World. Some restaurants offer buffets, while others are plated, or all-you-care-to-enjoy meals. Garden Grill offers the latter. While this was a breakfast visit, you can also see an in-depth look at dinner (which is so SO good) in our review here. (Note that they’ve switched out the fish for sausage these days.)
Here’s a closer look at the offerings. It’s also interesting to note that, while non-alcoholic beverages are included with your meal, you can also add a Mimosa or Bloody Mary. And did you notice the menu note that Disney now offers cage-free eggs?
To punctuate that “Down on the Farm” feelin’, beverages come in Mason Jars.
And yay! POG Juice! This favorite drink — a combo of Passion Fruit, Orange, and Guava — goes by many names around Disney. So if you enjoy Jungle Juice at Animal Kingdom or Lilikoi Juice at the Polynesian, then get this. It’s the same thing.
Soon after the drinks arrived, the food started rolling in. Keep in mind the group was four strong, so that helps you to see what portions sizes looked like for a party of this size. But also remember that you can always get more of anything you’d like.
They started with a beautiful and healthy Fruit Salad, full of Melon, Grapes, and Berries.
Yay for healthy! Because then, you get to dig into THIS. Check out the glorious Chip’s Sticky Bun Bake. Yes. I said “Sticky Bun Bake.” Who doesn’t want to eat that?
The gooey pull-apart treat arrives warm to your table, and provides plenty of sweet carbs to fuel you for a full day of Disney fun.
And if you can’t wait to have your own, then check out our Sticky Bun Bake Recipe and make it at home!
But stand by, because more food is coming! In fact, get ready for the main event: the Breakfast Family Skillet!
This iron skillet contains all of the ingredients to make for a GREAT breakfast. Top of the list: Mickey Waffles! In this shot, you can also see hearty helpings of Bacon and Scrambled Eggs.
And oh, hey, that little ramekin? Warm Chocolate Hazelnut Sauce. Now, that’s supposed to be for your waffles. But you’re gonna see in a minute that there are LOTS of uses for it.
You’re gonna need more of that stuff. I promise.
To the right, you’ll see Tater Tots (!!!!!!!) and Link Sausage.
And here’s a look at Heather’s plate — complete with a side of requested-and-granted Salsa! 😀
So, back to the Warm Chocolate Hazelnut Sauce. Heather managed to leave it in the center of the skillet — you’re welcome, Heather’s family — but it came in handy for all kinds of dippin’ needs. Time to get our Sweet Salty craving out of the way.
Tater Tots + Nutella. Who knew?? (Can we just call it Nutella for a while, please?) That sounds awesome!!
But then — BACON + Nutella. YESSSSS.
They had their fill, and then some. And then they were off to enjoy a great day in Epcot.
Overall
Garden Grill remains a universal DFB Favorite. It’s such a great sum of its total parts. I mean, you have a Rotating Restaurant (big coolness points), EPCOT Center-level nostalgia, plus Characters, PLUS tasty food! I mean, they had us at the POG Juice and Chip’s Sticky Bun Bake. But that skillet tooo? Yes, please.
And actually, the price is decent. You know, we’re big believers in making breakfast your main meal to save time and money. And when you can do that, plus interact with characters, you’re crossing several things off your Disney bucket list at once.
If you haven’t before, go ahead and take a chance on Garden Grill Restaurant. I think you’ll enjoy it.
Now, we’d love to hear from you! Is Garden Grill Restaurant one of your favorite stops in Walt Disney World? Leave a comment and let us know!George Orwell’s estate is watching you—at least if you try and use the number ‘1984’. In an ironic turn of events, the Orwell estate has recently issued a copyright takedown to prevent the use of the four digits without permission, reports Torrent Freak.
While George Orwell died back in 1950, his dystopian masterpiece that is the novel 1984 lives on. The number has become iconic, a shorthand that connotes the surveillance state and strict authoritarian control.
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Some time back, Internet radio host Josh Hadley created a T-shirt design on CafePress that featured the number. Now, though, he’s received a message from CafePress telling him that the designs have been taken offline. The reason? The Orwell estate claims that they contain“George Orwell quotes”— though the only reference appears to be the numbers that make up the title, as you can see in the screenshot provided to Torrent Freak by Hadley, below.
The Orwell estate’s literary executor, Bill Hamilton, told Torrent Freak that “the estate has never licensed merchandising, nor have the licensees of the relevant film rights, under which merchandising usually comes. Some of the merchandising I asked to be taken down was in clear breach of copyright.” For what it’s worth, according to the U.S. Copyright Office website, copyright law “does not protect names, titles, slogans, or short phrases.”
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Hadley, for his part, plans to reissue the T-shirt through a store he’s since set up as part of his online radio show. Incidentally, first time round he never actually sold any of the T-shirts, according to Torrent Freak, though that’s not really the point. Perhaps more the point is that Orwell’s estate is doing a wonderful job of living up to the author’s worrisome future-gazing.
Image by Luca Cerabona under Creative Commons license.But where should I plug it in? (Rebecca Cook/Reuters)
A new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists provides an answer:
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MVC form ( TagHelper ):
<form method="post" enctype="multipart/form-data" asp-action="Create"> <div class="form-group"> <label asp-for="Name" class="control-label"></label> <input asp-for="Name" class="form-control" /> </div> <div class="form-group"> <label asp-for="Avatar" class="control-label"></label> <input asp-for="Avatar" type="file" class="form-control" /> </div> <div class="form-group"> <input type="submit" value="Create" class="btn btn-default" /> </div> </form>
If you are using razor pages and your page is bind to an instance of UserVm view model i.e. [BindProperty] public UserVm Vm { get; set; }. The form TagHelper should have the following markup,
<form method="post" enctype="multipart/form-data"> <div class="form-group"> <label asp-for="Vm.Name" class="control-label"></label> <input asp-for="Vm.Name" class="form-control" /> </div> <div class="form-group"> <label asp-for="Vm.Avatar" class="control-label"></label> <input asp-for="Vm.Avatar" type="file" class="form-control" /> </div> <div class="form-group"> <input type="submit" value="Create" class="btn btn-default" /> </div> </form>
Notice the enctype="multipart/form-data" attribute. Submitted form data are sent to the server side once they are encoded first. According to W3C specs, there are three encoding types available to use with form submission. They are the followings:
application/x-www-form-urlencoded multipart/form-data text/plain
For a form control, application/x-www-form-urlencoded is always the default encoding technique; used to encode form data. But if you have a file input control that resides in your form, you have to use the multipart/form-data encoding. It will let you submit forms that contain files, non-ASCII data, and binary data.
The form above can be used to create an user with his/her name and a selected avatar using the file input. Following is the view model ( DTO ) class representing properties that the individual form controls are attached to:
public class UserVM { public string Name { get; set; } public IFormFile Avatar { get; set; } }
Note: MVC/Razor Pages forms (TagHelper, HtmlHelper) are not real native html form elements. Instead they are forms on steroids. They give you the impression of a real form control but you can do something special with them. For example, if you want to fire a server side action (method) on form submission, use the asp-action attribute. Similarly to explicitly define the controller, the action method belongs to; use the asp-controller attribute.
In the form example above, action (method) fired on form submission is Create, hence the asp-action="Create". Following is the method body,
[HttpPost] public async Task<IActionResult> Create([FromForm] UserVM vm) { if (ModelState.IsValid) { var user = new User { Name = vm.Name }; using (var memoryStream = new MemoryStream()) { await vm.Avatar.CopyToAsync(memoryStream); user.Avatar = memoryStream.ToArray(); } _context.Add(user); await _context.SaveChangesAsync(); return RedirectToAction(nameof(Index)); } return View(vm); }
Here, User is nothing but a entity class that has the following structure,
public class User { public int Id { get; set; } public string Name { get; set; } public byte[] Avatar { get; set; } }
Notice that we are copying the content of the uploaded file into a memory stream and next we are storing it in the Avatar field of the entity class. Since, field Avatar is a byte[] type, we had to cast the memory stream to array, hence the memoryStream.ToArray().
Note: Don't get mixed up between view model (DTO) and entity class. Entity class are solely used to represent a database table in ORM (Object Relational Mapping) languages. Where as the view models are used as data transfer objects between the View and the Controller.
We are using entity framework as an ORM here. The _context is an instance of a class ( ApplicationDbContext ) which is inheriting the DbContext of entity framework.
public class ApplicationDbContext : DbContext { public ApplicationDbContext(DbContextOptions<ApplicationDbContext> options) : base(options) { } public DbSet<User> Users { get; set; } }
DBSet<User> Users represents a database table named Users.
The form submission will create a request payload that pretty much looks like the following:
Notice how the multipart/form-data encodes a form element name and its value. These are simple key-value pairs delimited by boundary value available in the Content-Type header. (We will talk about the boundary value later in the series)
Content-Type:multipart/form-data; boundary=----WebKitFormBoundaryj6v39iycf8i7NeBD
Ignore the _RequestVerificationToken for now. It's a hidden form element that automatically gets injected by the framework. We will talk about it later on the blog series.
We are storing the the file as a byte array in our database. But in real life that can cause a huge performance problem in the application. That's why it's better to save the uploaded file in a separate folder and save a reference (url, filename) of that file in the database. We will see how to do it in the next post. Before finishing, for those of you who are using the MVC's HtmlHelper element of the form control, here is how your form should look like,
@using (Html.BeginForm("Create", "UsersMvc", FormMethod.Post, new { enctype = "multipart/form-data" })) { <div class="form-group"> <label class="control-label">Name</label> @Html.TextBoxFor(model => model.Name, new { @class = "form-control" }) </div> <div class="form-group"> <label class="control-label">Avatar</label> @Html.TextBoxFor(model => model.Avatar, new { type = "file", @class="form-control" }) </div> <div class="form-group"> <input type="submit" value="Create" class="btn btn-default" /> </div> }
Last but not least, if you are working with Razor Pages. Code behind.cs file should have the following OnPostAsync() action method.
[BindProperty] public UserVm Vm { get; set; } public async Task<IActionResult> OnPostAsync() { if (!ModelState.IsValid) { return Page(); } var user = new User { Name = Vm.Name }; using (var memoryStream = new MemoryStream()) { await Vm.Avatar.CopyToAsync(memoryStream); user.Avatar = memoryStream.ToArray(); } _context.User.Add(user); await _context.SaveChangesAsync(); return RedirectToPage("./Index"); }
Notice that, in this case we have used the [BindProperty] attribute to bind an instance of UserVm to the razor page. That's why we don't need any binding parameter as the argument of the OnPostAsync() method.
Repository Link:
https://github.com/fiyazbinhasan/AspNetCore-AngularSpa-Playground.gitThe athletic directors at America’s major college football-playing universities are forming a political action committee. The group will be called LEAD1, and it’ll represent the ADs at 129 Football Bowl Subdivision schools. It was announced Thursday morning. The group was formerly the D1A Athletic Directors' Association. It wasn’t a PAC.
This PAC is being formed to lobby members of Congress in Washington. PACs can give limited donations to specific candidates and parties, and because of the Citizens United decision, they can independently spend as much money as they want to help a given candidate or party win an election. They’re a huge part of this country’s political ecosystem, both at the federal and state level. This one appears to be a federal PAC, though it’s not clear if its members might look for ways to lobby states, too.
“With the PAC now approved, it further ensures that the concerns of the LEAD1 members will be heard by members of Congress, and other key decision makers in Washington, D.C. and across the country,” announced Tom McMillen, a former three-term congressman and Maryland basketball player who will serve as the PAC’s president and CEO.
What’s interesting about this PAC is who comprises it, and how its members could use it. It’s pretty hard to get 129 strong-minded college athletic directors to agree on policy goals. But if the ADs saw fit to start a PAC to lobby politicians independent of the broader NCAA, it suggests they’re prepared to rally around at least one cause.
Let’s not overthink what “concerns” these ADs might have.
This PAC is going to try to keep college athletes from getting paid.
It could do that in lots of different ways. It could lobby against specific nominees for the National Labor Relations Board, whose members can ultimately decide things like who gets to unionize and who doesn’t. (This was a big deal in the case involving Northwestern football players in 2014.) It could lobby for or against congressional candidates, depending on how friendly they are to the cause.
It could lobby for or against specific legislation that deals with the issue. It could lobby for or against judicial nominees who might have to rule on amateurism issues at some point or another. The federal government has a lot of tools in its toolbox. So do states, to a lesser degree, if the ADs try to be active beyond Washington. (There are rules differentiating PACs between federal and state governments.)
There might be other causes the PAC comes to support. It says it will be “advocating for the future of college athletics, and providing various services to the members, ranging from professional development to pooled purchasing arrangements.”
The PAC might want to ward off some overreaching senator from interfering with the College Football Playoff, or work on other causes that pop up over time. But big schools already have some sort of lobbying presence to work on issues they care about, so this PAC has to offer something different.
Athletic directors come from all corners of the country. Colleges are more left-leaning than most places, of course, but the political dynamics for the athletic directors at, say, Wyoming and Maryland, are drastically different. They serve different alumni bases and work in states with different political majorities.
There aren’t many things all 129 athletic directors would want to do politically together. But preventing their athletes from getting paid is a sensible common cause, no matter what form that advocacy turns out to take.New Fundraising Goals!
Thank you to everyone who has helped us reach 100% of our fundraising goal! Because we have a few more days left, here's what we can do if we reach a few more benchmarks!
$6,500: We can interview prominent trans activists and experts around the country, including artist, sound engineer, activist, professor and all-around rockstar Sandy Stone in California!
$7,000: We can hire a soundtrack artist to create a custom music score for our media.
$7,500: We can hire a web developer to build a snazzy, interactive, and mind-blowing platform to show off these stories.
What we're all about
Some girls are called "tomboys" because they like to play sports and climb trees. Some boys are called "sissies" if they cry or like dolls. Every person relates to both masculine and feminine traits in some way or another.
In fact, by age 5, children have developed a gender identity, knowing if they are a boy, a girl or something else. For trans folks, this often means identifying as a different gender than the sex they were assigned at birth.
"The Cost of Gender" is a short documentary that will take a look at the hurdles, challenges and triumphs trans folks face as they transition their bodies to align with their gender.
Rev. Carla Robinson is a pastor at All Saint's Episcopal Church in Seattle, Wa. She is currently planning her gender reassignment surgery in Thailand, but the out-of-pocket cost is the only thing delaying her trip.
To have gender reassignment surgery in the U.S., a fully-insured trans person will still pay out of pocket upwards of $30,000 plus staggering pre- and post-surgery medical bills. This is why Americans are traveling in droves to places like Bangkok, Thailand where the same, high-quality surgery is offered for a few thousand dollars.
We (Dacia+Sara) are traveling to Thailand for 2 weeks in November to interview trans folks and their surgeons as they go through this life-changing transition. We will also explore the Thai culture that has openly embraced the trans community flooding their borders.
This project hits on the two most critical issues facing our American culture; health care reform and LGBTQ rights. Your support will directly fund independent journalism and help share the invaluable stories of the most underreported populations.
International reporting trips can be expensive. These funds will help us get to Thailand, hire translators for interviews, rent much needed gear like microphones and lenses, build a custom platform to publish the work on and buy other sexy things like harddrives and batteries.
"The Cost of Gender" will be published in February 2013 on The Common Language Project and The Seattle Globalist on a platform featuring video, motion graphics, interactive features, photos and written stories.
After the work is published, we will also create a DVD, hosts screenings/forums in Seattle, and submit the documentary to film festivals and journalism competitions.
Thank you again for your support in sharing these incredible stories!
Curious about previous series from The Common Language Project? Check out the audio slideshow on water walkers in East Africa or this video on Iraqi refugees in limbo.The conservative columnist tries to cultivate a reputation for telling brutal truths. As yet, she hasn't lived up to it.
Ann Coulter's defenders insist that she has a great sense of humor and a sharp analytic mind but that her politically correct critics can't handle her brutal honesty. To see why they're wrong, look at her latest. "The mainstream media keep pushing alternatives to Mitt Romney not only because they are terrified of running against him, but also because they want to keep Republicans fighting, allowing Democrats to get a four-month jump on us," she writes. "Meanwhile, everyone knows the nominee is going to be Romney. That's not so bad if you think the most important issues in this election are defeating Obama and repealing Obamacare."
There is in fact an element of telling hard truths here, and what passes as bravery in right-wing pundit land. "Instead of sitting on our thumbs, wishing Ronald Reagan were around, or chasing the latest mechanical rabbit flashed by the media, conservatives ought to start rallying around Romney as the only Republican who has a shot at beating Obama," she goes on to write. "It's fun to be a purist, but let's put that on hold until Obama and his abominable health care plan are gone, please." This is heresy among the extremist fan base she's cultivated.Still, she’d heard occasional and vague references to Denmark. Once or twice she heard her parents mention some connection to Finland. Her parents knew nothing about these nationalities, these cultures. They cooked no national dishes, they taught Josie no customs, and they had no relatives who cooked national dishes or had customs. They had no clothes, no flags, no banners, no sayings, no ancestral lands or villages or folktales. When she was thirty-two, and had wanted to visit some village, somewhere, where her people had come from, none of her relatives had any idea at all where to go. One uncle thought he could be helpful. Everyone in our family speaks English, he said. Maybe you should go to England?
She had been born a blank. Her parents were blanks. All her relatives were blanks, though many were addicts, and she had a cousin who identified as an anarchist. But otherwise Josie’s people were blanks. They were from nowhere. To be American is to be blank, and a true American is truly blank. So Josie was a truly great American.
But she had yet to see the Alaska of giants and gods. What she had seen so far did not feel like frontier. It felt like Kentucky, only colder and far more expensive. Where was the Alaska of magic and clarity and pure air? This place was choked with the haze of some far-off forest fire, and it was not majestic, no. It was cluttered and tough. And where were the heroes? Find me someone bold, she asked the dark trees before her. Find me someone of substance, she asked the mountains beyond.
The Lower Forty-eight was full of cowards and thieves and it was time for mountains and people of truth and courage. So Alaska. She had been a dentist and was no longer a dentist. She’d been sued by a desperate woman who claimed that Josie should have seen the tumor on her tongue during a routine cleaning. Unwilling to fight a dying woman, Josie surrendered. Take it all, she’d said, and the dying woman had done just that. And then the father of Josie’s children, her ex-husband, a spineless, loose-bowelled man, had, improbably, found a new, second woman to marry him. He wanted the kids there, but Josie, who’d got nothing from him for years, thought, Well, no. And what could better grant her invisibility than this, a rolling home, a white R.V. in a state with a million other white R.V.s? He could never find her.
She’d piled them into this rented R.V. and driven off, no plan in mind. The manufacturers had named the vehicle the Chateau, but that was thirty years ago, and now it was falling apart and dangerous to its passengers and to all who shared the highway with it. But after a day on the road her kids seemed fine with the crumbling machine, the close quarters, the chaos. Her kids were strange but good. There was Paul, seven years old, a gentle, slow-moving boy with the cold caring eyes of an ice priest. He was far more reasonable and kind and wise than his mother, but then there was Ana, only four, a constant threat to the social contract. She was a black-eyed animal with a burst of irrationally red hair and a knack for assessing the most breakable object in any room and then breaking it.
This was Josie’s situation. They’d landed in Anchorage yesterday, a gray day without promise or beauty, but the moment she’d stepped off the plane she’d found herself inspired. “O.K., guys,” she’d said to her exhausted, unhappy children. They had never expressed any interest in Alaska, and now here they were. “Here we are!” she’d said, and she’d done a celebratory little march. Neither child had smiled.
Then there is the happiness of one’s personal slum. The happiness of being alone, and tipsy on red wine, in the passenger seat of an ancient recreational vehicle parked in a campground outside Seward, Alaska, staring into a scribble of black trees, unable to go to sleep for fear that at any moment someone will get past the toy lock on the R.V. door and murder you and your two small children, sleeping in the alcove above.
There is proud happiness, happiness born of doing admirable things in the light of day, years of good work, and afterward being tired and content and surrounded by family and friends, enjoying a sumptuous meal, ready for a deserved rest—sleep or death, it would not matter.
There was an escalator, an escalator inside a ship. Charlie was ahead of them, and rode upward while looking back at them, smiling but nervous, as if worried they might flee.
“I think it starts in twenty minutes,” Charlie said, and then again looked lost. “Let me see if we need tickets.” He wandered off, and Josie knew she was a fool. Parenting was chiefly about keeping one’s children away from unnecessary dangers, avoidable traumas, and disappointments, and here she had dragged them to Alaska, and had driven them, and their feces—the R.V.’s bathroom meant convenience but also the transportation of human waste—around the worst parts of the state, and then to Seward, where no one had recommended they go, and now she had them following a lonely man onto a ship designed, it seemed, by the insane. All to see magic. Luxembourgian magic. Josie paged through the years of her life, trying to remember a decision she had made that she was proud of, and she found nothing.
The ship was garish and loud, and crowded, full of glass and screens—the décor was casino crossed with Red Lobster crossed with the court of Louis XIV. The kids were loving it. Ana was running everywhere, touching delicate things, bumping into people, making elderly women and men gasp and reach for walls.
So Josie stopped, and her kids peered down into the black water between the dock and the gleaming white ship. Josie watched as Charlie approached a man in a uniform. Charlie and the man swung around a few times to inspect Josie and her children. Finally Charlie turned back, waving to them, a relieved smile overtaking his face. He called them to come aboard. [cartoon id="a18570"]
“We’re allowed to have guests, I think,” the man said as they walked up the gangplank. The kids were astounded, stepping slowly, carefully, as if they were walking on the moon, holding the ropes on either side. But now their host, this man in his seventies or eighties, was suddenly unsure if he could have friends over. He stopped in the middle of the gangplank. A few dozen elderly passengers in windbreakers went around them, carrying their small bags of Seward souvenirs. “Let me talk to this man,” Charlie said, and motioned to them to hang a few yards back.
Josie didn’t want to disappoint this man and her daughter, who continued to talk about the show, and who were virtually floating upward with joy and inspiration. But was she really about to follow an old man onto a cruise ship in Seward, Alaska, to see a Luxembourgian magic show?
“I want to go!” Ana said. Josie didn’t think it mattered much that Ana wanted to go—she had no intention of following this man onto a magic-show ship—but when Ana said those words Charlie’s face took on a glow so powerful Josie thought he might ignite.
Josie came to understand that this stranger was inviting them, her and her two kids, all of them unknown to this man, onto the cruise ship docked in Seward, where, that evening, there would be an elaborate magic show featuring a half-dozen acts, including, the old man was thrilled to convey, a magician from Luxembourg. “Luxembourg,” he said, “can you imagine?”
“No, no. I’m just a passenger. I’m Charlie,” he said, and extended his hand, a pink and purple tangle of bones and veins. “Haven’t you seen the Princess docked here? It’s hard to miss.”
Now the old man was delighted. His face came alive, he lost twenty years, forgot all the funerals. “Well, I happen to know there’s a magic show tonight on our ship.”
“You kids like magic?” the man asked. He seemed to be leering. These lonely old men, Josie thought, with their wet lips and small eyes, their necks barely holding up their heavy heads full of their many mistakes and the funerals of friends.
The bay was full of otters, and Paul was worried the tug would run them over. But the animals moved themselves effortlessly out of the path of the tug and then reformed, six of them floating like furry detritus amid a mess of chartreuse seaweed. The otters were absurdly cute, stupidly cute, swimming on their backs, holding actual rocks on their bellies, using these rocks to break open shellfish and then enjoying their meals like mustachioed men. Such an animal could not be conceived by any self-respecting Creator. Only a God made in our image could go for that level of animal kitsch.
The next day was nothing, nothing at all, only the bright sun and the cold wind coming desperately over the obsidian water. They slept in and walked around. They discovered a train car set up by the shore which the kids wanted to explore but found was closed. They went into town, into Seward, a mix of actual fishermen and fish, and souvenir shops selling shirts bearing cartoons of moose. They meandered down the boardwalk, and for a time watched a happy little tugboat chugging to and fro across Resurrection Bay. Josie was drawn to it and wasn’t sure why.
The theatre seated at least five hundred and all within was burgundy—it was like being inside someone’s liver. They sat in a half-moon booth near the back, Paul next to Charlie. A waitress in bright red hurried by, but Charlie made no move to order anything. Josie asked for lemonades for the kids and a glass of Pinot Noir for herself. The drinks arrived and the lights went down. Josie relaxed, anticipating a few hours of not having to do anything but sit and watch in silence.
Charlie had a different plan. The show started, and Josie realized that Charlie intended to talk throughout. And the words he most wanted to say were “See that?” Charlie would see something that every member of the audience had seen, and then would ask Josie and her kids if they’d seen it, too. Ana would say, “See what?,” and Charlie would then explain what he had seen, talking through the next five minutes of the show. They made a beautiful pair.
The first magician, a pretty man in a tight silk shirt, had, it seemed, been told to make his act more personal, so his monologue returned again and again to the theme of how he had always welcomed magic into his life. He’d opened the door to magic, said hello to magic. He’d learned to appreciate magic in his life. Did he say he was married to magic? Maybe he did. It all made little sense, and the audience seemed lost. “Life is full of magic if you look for it,” the magician noted, breathlessly, because he was moving around the stage in a thousand tiny steps, as a woman in a sparkly one-piece bathing suit vamped behind him with long strides.
The pretty magician produced some kind of flower from behind a curtain, and Josie struggled to see this as magical. She and Charlie clapped, but few members of the audience joined them. Her children didn’t clap; they never clapped unless she told them to. Were they not taught clapping in school? The magician was not impressing this audience, though who could be easier to impress than five hundred elderly people in windbreakers? But they were waiting for something better than carnations produced from behind curtains.
Josie began to feel for this man. He’d been a magician in grade school, no doubt. He’d been pretty then, too, with lashes so long she could see them now, fifty feet away, and as an adolescent, apart from his peers but not concerned about this, he had driven with his mother forty miles to the nearest city, to get the right equipment for his shows, the right boxes—with wheels!—the velvet bags, the collapsing canes. He’d loved his mother then and had known how to say so, with conviction, perhaps with a flourish, and his unguarded love for her had made his friendlessness unimportant to him and to her, and now she was so proud that he had made it, was a professional magician, travelling the world making magic, welcoming magic into his life. And after all that, Josie thought, these elderly assholes won’t clap for him.
Josie downed half her Pinot and gave the pretty magician a whoop. If no one else appreciated him, she would. Every time he asked for applause, which was often, she yelled and whooped and clapped. She found the waitress, ordered again, and downed a second glass. She cheered louder and whooped again. Her children looked at her, unsure if she was being funny. Charlie turned to her and smiled nervously.
Now the long-legged woman was helping the pretty magician into a big red box. Now she was turning it around and around. It was on wheels! Everything in the act had to be on wheels, so it could be turned around. It was a rule of magic that all boxes must be turned around and around, to prove there were no strings, that no one was hiding just behind. But if something wasn’t turned around would the audience revolt? Did they ever ask, Excuse me, why hasn’t someone turned the box around? Turn the box around! My God, turn that box around!
Now the sparkly assistant opened the box. The pretty man was not in the box! Josie whooped again, clapping over her head. Where had he gone? The suspense was fantastic.
And now he was next to them! Suddenly a spotlight was on their table, or near it, because the pretty man was next to them. “Holy shit,” Josie said, loud enough that the pretty man, whose hands were outstretched, again asking for applause, heard her. He smiled. Josie clapped louder, but again the rest of the audience didn’t seem to care. He was up there, she wanted to yell to them, now he’s here! You fuckers.
Up close, she saw that the magician was wearing a tremendous amount of makeup. Eyeliner, blush, maybe even lipstick, all seemingly applied by a child. Then the spotlight went dark, and he stayed for a moment next to their table, hands up, while a second magician appeared onstage. Josie wanted to say something to the pretty man, to his heaving silken silhouette a few feet away, but by the time she arrived at the right words—“We loved you”—he was gone.
She turned to the stage. The new magician was less pretty.
“This is the one from Luxembourg,” Charlie whispered.
“Hello everyone!” the new magician roared, and explained he was from Michigan.
“Oh,” Charlie said, sighing.
The Michigan magician, in a white shirt and stretchy black pants, was soon in a straitjacket, hanging upside down twenty feet above the stage. With his breath labored and his arms crossed like a chrysalis, he told the audience that if he did not escape from the straitjacket in a certain amount of time something unfortunate would happen to him. Josie, trying to get the attention of the waitress, had not caught exactly what that consequence was. She ordered a third Pinot, and soon some part of the contraption holding the magician was on fire. Was that intentional? It seemed intentional. Then he was struggling in an inelegant way, ramming his shoulders against the canvas jacket, and then, aha, he was free, and was standing on the ground. An explosion flowered above him, but he was safe and not on fire.
Josie thought this trick pretty good, and clapped heartily, but again the crowd was not impressed. What were they waiting for? she wondered. Bastards! Then she knew: they were waiting for the magician from Luxembourg. They did not want domestic magic. They wanted magic from abroad.
The man from Michigan stood at the edge of the stage, bowing again and again as the applause dissipated until he was bowing in silence. Josie thought of his poor mother, and hoped she was not on this cruise. But she knew there was a very good chance that the Michigan magician’s mother was on this cruise. Like the pretty magician’s mother, she was proud, she was retired, she travelled the world clapping for her son. How could she not be on this cruise?
Now a new magician appeared. He had a high head of gleaming yellow hair and his pants were somehow tighter than the pants of his predecessors. Josie had not thought this possible.
“I hope this guy’s from Luxembourg,” Charlie said, too loudly. [cartoon id="a18633"]
“Hallo,” the magician said, and Josie was fairly sure he was from somewhere else. Perhaps Luxembourg? The magician explained that he spoke six languages and had been everywhere. He asked if anyone in the audience had been to Luxembourg, and a smattering of applause surprised him. Josie decided to clap, too, and did so loudly. “Yes!” she yelled. “I’ve been there!” Her children were horrified. “Yes!” she yelled again. “And it was great!”
“Lots of visitors to Luxembourg, I am pleased,” the magician said, though he didn’t seem to believe those who had applauded, least of all Josie. But by now, her spirit dancing in the glorious light of her third glass of wine, Josie believed she had been to Luxembourg. In her youth, she’d backpacked through Europe for three months, and wasn’t Luxembourg right there in the middle of the continent? Surely she’d been there. Did that one train, the main train, go to Luxembourg? Of course it did. She pictured a beer garden. In a castle. On a hill. By the sea. What sea? Some sea.
The magician from Luxembourg did his tricks, which seemed more sophisticated than those of his predecessors. Maybe because they involved roses? Before him there had been merely carnations. The roses, this was a step up. Women holding roses appeared in boxes, boxes on wheels, and the man from Luxembourg turned these boxes around and around. Then he opened the boxes, and the women were not there; they were somewhere else. Behind screens! In the audience!
Josie clapped and hollered. He was wonderful. The wine was wonderful. What a good world this was, with magic like this on ships like this. What an impressive species they were, humans, who could build a ship like this, who could do magic like this, who could clap listlessly even for the magician from Luxembourg. These fucking assholes, Josie thought, trying to single-handedly make up for their sickening lack of enthusiasm. Why come to a magic show if you don’t want to be entertained? Clap, you criminals! Even Charlie wasn’t clapping enough. She leaned over to him. “Not good enough for you?” she snarled, but he didn’t hear.
Now Luxembourg was gone and another man was making his way onto the stage. He was rumpled, his hair reaching upward in seven different directions, and he was easily twenty years older than the others. Another man. Where were the women? Were women not capable of magic? Josie tried to remember having seen or heard of any female magician and couldn’t. My God, she thought! How can that be? What about Lady Magic? Why do we accept all these men, all these silken heavy-breathing men? And now this one, this crumpled one—he made no effort at all to be pretty like the others. He had no lovely assistant, and, it soon became clear, he didn’t intend to do any magic. She looked for the waitress. Where was the waitress?
There was only the rumpled man standing at the edge of the stage. He was telling the audience that he’d worked for some time at a post office, and had memorized most Zip Codes.
He’ll get murdered, Josie thought. What kind of world is this, when a man from the post office follows Luxembourgian magic, and why were they, she and her kids, on this ship in the first place? With incredible clarity she knew, then, that the answer to her life was that at every opportunity she’d made precisely the wrong choice. She had been a dentist for a decade but for most of that time had not wanted to be a dentist. What could she do now?
Then it came to her. She was sure, at that moment, that she was meant to be a tugboat captain. My God, she thought, my God. At thirty-eight, she finally knew! She would lead the ships to safety. That was why she’d come to Seward! There had to be a tugboat school in town. It all made sense. She could do that, and her days would be varied but always heroic.
She looked at her children, and saw that Paul was now leaning against Charlie, asleep. Her son was asleep against this strange old man, and they were in Seward, Alaska. For the first time, she realized that Seward sounded like “sewer,” and thought this an unfortunate thing, given that Seward as a place was very dramatic, and very clean, and she thought it very beautiful, maybe the most beautiful place she’d ever been. It was here that she would stay, and train to become a tugboat captain at the school that she would find tomorrow. All was aligned, all was right. And now, looking at her son sleeping against this man, this old man who was leaning forward, listening to this other man talk about the post office, she felt her eyes welling up. She took a final sip from her third Pinot and wondered if she’d ever been happier. No, never. Impossible. This old man had found them, and it could not be coincidence. This town was now their home, the site of this ordained and holy reunion, and all the people around them were congregants, all of them exalted and now part of her life, her new life, the life she was meant for. Tugboat captain. Oh, yes, it had all been worth it. She sat back, knowing she’d arrived at her destiny.
Onstage, the post-office man was telling the audience that for any of them who gave him a postal code he could tell them what town they were from.
Josie assumed that this was some sort of a comedy bit, that he was kidding about the postal job, but immediately someone stood up and yelled, “59715!”
“Bozeman, Montana,” he said. “West side of town.”
The crowd erupted. The cheers were deafening. None of the magicians had elicited this kind of enthusiasm, nothing close. Now ten people were standing up, shouting out their Zip Codes.
Josie, despairing of the waitress’s return, downed half a glass of water, and that act, the dilution of the holy wine within her, took her away from the golden light of grace she’d felt moments before, and now she was sober or something like it. Tugboat captain? A voice was now speaking to her. What kind of imbecile are you? She didn’t like this new voice. This was the voice that had told her to become a dentist, that had told her to marry that man, the loose-bowelled man, the voice that every month told her to pay her water bill. She was being pulled back from the light, like an almost-angel now being led back to the mundanity of earthly existence. The light was shrinking to a pinhole and the world around her was darkening to an everywhere burgundy. She was back inside the liver-colored room, and a man was talking about Zip Codes.
“O.K., you now,”
|
to speak to my son with Stepford-like calm when he pitched the mother of all fits before bed tonight I wouldn't let him stay up and play, so he ripped off my necklace and started screaming like a wounded animal. I lost my temper, told him to stop his ridiculous behavior and "get it together" and made a hasty exit.
8) I chose the path of least resistance when it came to anything educational this afternoon - meaning, I let the boy have a bunch of pretzels without having him count them first.
9) I was that mother yelling her child's full name across the playground to get his attention - the one with the bulging vein in her forehead that all the other mothers stare at uncomfortably.
10) Succumbing to the cold I've been fighting all week, I made my husband do all the parenting this morning while I went back to sleep... until noon. The fact that I feel guilty about this is clearly a sign of greater psychological issues.
11) Even after getting a morning off, I was less than enthusiastic about getting out of bed to play fire trucks.
12) Chardonnay is my friend.
13) My son thinks it is charming to try to do whatever I've just told him not to do. And sometimes I think it is charming too. This means I overindulge him. This drives my husband crazy, which I also find occasionally charming.
14) I haven't signed my son up for swimming or soccer lessons for the fall. To be honest, I've never signed my son up for soccer lessons, and my son's success with swimming lessons has been dodgy at best (which is probably attributable to the lack of prenatal vitamins).
15) I envy other mothers who seem to do all of this more easily, with more grace and more calm than I do. Today, instead of seeing them as powerful sisters-in-arms in the marathon of motherhood, I hate them a little.
16) I'm impatient.
17) My parents don't live close enough to see their grandson on a regular basis. Or, even worse, to babysit every Friday and Saturday night.
18) We don't want to have any more kids, so my son, while lucky enough to have a spectacular older brother in my stepson, won't have a sibling close in age to play with or fight with. But, now that I think about it, I can't see any downside to the lack of fighting thing, so maybe I should take this off the list.
19) I'm spending time writing this blog that I could be spending playing with my son.Being away from New York and the news cycle for a few days gives you tremendous perspective and a bit of a mental health break, but the facts of our present situation become no less clear with distance from the cable news set. Donald Trump is no less a disaster this week than he was last week. And he will be no less a disaster next week than he is today.
Indeed Trump, lashing out at the media and whipping his audiences into a frenzy of xenophobia and Confederacy nostalgia, is in a sense not the president of the United States. True, he remains installed in office until by the grace of Bob Mueller he is compelled to resign or 2020 brings forward the better angels of American voters’ nature. But he no more leads this nation than a garden gnome grows your hydrangeas. He is an empty figurehead, mentally unraveling on live television and swinging wildly at the ghosts of his accidental victory and certain condemnation by history. To the extent he leads anyone, it’s little more than the same ragged cult of dead enders who’ve always been among us—who’ve swung back and forth between the parties for more than a century and who can’t bring themselves to regard the naked emperor in their midst or face the true meaning of their vote for him.
According to the latest Quinnipiac poll, Trump earns a lopsided disapproval rating of 59 percent, with just 35 percent of Americans applauding the job he is doing. At this stage it makes little sense to wonder what that 35 percent are thinking. Suffice it to say it may be down to pure tribal loyalty. Per Quinnipiac: “[e]very party, gender, education, age and racial group disapproves” of Trump’s performance, “except Republicans, who approve 77-14 percent; white voters with no college, approving 52-40 percent, and white men, who approve by a narrow 50-46 percent.”
In other words, Trump is the leader of approximately one half of one third of the adult population of the United States.
I’m often asked as I move around the country, what can be done to stop the nightmare that Trump represents to the other two-thirds of Americans. I think the answer is fairly simple. As you march for the resistance or just watch the Trump dumpster fire burn, begin preparing to kick out the pillar propping him up: namely, the Republican Congress that serves as his sword and shield. These men and a few women have perfected the art of complaining to reporters on background, yet they have made clear that they will do nothing to bring the Trump Hindenburg to the ground before it incinerates itself and everyone in it. Their love of tax cuts and gutting health care is too great, and their fear of the small, hardened core of Trump enthusiasts in their states and districts is too strong.
It therefore falls to the Democrats, the imperfect, often scattered opposition party, to right the ship. This is no time for intraparty perfectionism or partisan protectionism. All who wish to see the Trump circus brought to an end need to focus on doing whatever it takes to put the Democratic Party in charge of Congress on Jan. 1, 2019.
This is not a matter of mere partisanship. Republicans have made it clear that even the most heroic among them, John McCain, will do only enough to stop the worst aspects of Trump’s disaster agenda, but no more. And if the Senate, led by the privately stewing but publicly obedient Mitch McConnell, is bad, the House and its dead-eyed Speaker Paul Ryan, are worse, since Ryan’s zeal to tear up the social safety net predates and even supersedes Trump’s.
Whatever background disgust they feel about their boorish president, Republicans share much more in common with Trump than differences. All want to gut or repeal Obamacare. All want to slash taxes on the richest Americans at nearly any cost. All would willingly suppress voting rights to ensure perpetual Republican power even when demographic reality inevitably reduces it to minority rule. They may not be willing to shut down the government to build Trump’s Potemkin wall or institute an economically disastrous “border adjustment tax,” but that doesn’t mean they won’t do all they can to advance the legislative pillars of Trumpism; and more importantly, to leave their addled figurehead in place.
And don’t count on Trump voters to save the country. Whether the dug-in Trumpists fawned over continually by the obsessed anthropologists of the mainstream media, or the 12 percent of Bernie Sanders voters who pulled the lever for Trump to keep Her out of office, these Americans are what they are and they aren’t going to change. It’s time to let them go, let them live their lives free from our collective gaze and get on with the hard work of fixing what Trumpism is making rotten.
That rot extends beyond politics. Trumpism is seeping into this country’s pores—infecting the schools where the president’s surname is an epithet hurled by white students against brown and black ones; by boys against girls and sometimes by teachers against their own students. It is sullying the churches where this president’s amorality is not just tolerated, but venerated as placed before us by the hand of God. Trumpism is making the United States a laughingstock around the world; and particularly after his shameful response to the Charlottesville and the rise of white nationalists under his banner, it is replacing international aspiration toward America with mortification. As a Trumpist nation, we are an anathema to a striving planet.
That can and must be undone. Robert Mueller is doing his work quietly and methodically, but Americans needn’t wait for his investigations to reach fruition, or for a new Barack Obama to come along and save us in 2020, when the Congress can do it sooner.
And so, Democrats, it’s time to get serious and get your act together. Sideline the consultants and their TV ad buy fees, shut down the focus groups and make this very simple call to the American people: Give us the Congress; we’ll take care of Trump.
Give us the Congress; we’ll take care of Trump.
What does that mean? It means that without Republicans standing in the way, Democrats can pass legislation that prevents Trump from gutting Medicaid or tanking the individual insurance market simply to punish Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, and John McCain. It means vowing to put before him legislation that reasserts Congress’ power to send this nation to war and limits Trump’s ability to launch a nuclear strike. And it means passing legislation that protects Mueller’s investigation from interference by the White House or by Republican members of congress and daring him to veto it.
To turn those promises into reality, Democrats must get busy launching a massive voter registration effort today. Republicans will throw every roadblock in the way of voters of color in 2018, and Democrats—backed by an army of lawyers—must be prepared to fight back. Having more voters on the rolls and more legal assistance for them will be crucial, particularly since they’ll also be fighting the federal government.
For principled Republicans who see the threat that Trump represents, the message to you is simple: divided government is the only hope of salvaging your party too, since while Republicans remain in complete control of the federal government, there is no compelling the GOP to stop this president. Never-Trump Republicans made that hard choice in 2016, and they should make it again in 2018, for the good of the country. We can always go back to fighting the big ideological battles that continue to divide us in 2020.
For now, there is only one priority. Changing the leadership of congress is the only certain path to reining in Donald Trump and his kakistocratic administration. Take down his support system and the mad king sputters and falls. That means every state and congressional Republican who can be defeated in 2018 must be. Who knows—facing the prospect of an opposition Congress instead of a body full of footmen, he may even be compelled to go quietly back to Mar-a-Lago or Bedminster on his own.Alcohol abuse by patients is the primary cause of nurses and other hospital staff being punched, bashed and verbally abused, according to those who are forced to deal with it every day.
Documents obtained by the ABC this week under Right to Information show in the three years to June, there were 2,695 assaults reported at just four Queensland hospitals.
The Princess Alexandra (PA) Hospital recorded the highest number with 831 assaults in that period, 641 were reported at Cairns Hospital, 636 at Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital (RBWH) and 587 at Gold Coast University Hospital (GCUH).
Assaults by intoxicated patients: Nurse punched in the left side of face and nose as she tried to stop a patient falling out of bed
Doctor grabbed on the throat and arm by a patient who suddenly became aggressive
Nurses wrist grabbed and twisted by violent patient
Nurse pulled face-first into a trolley that a patient had urinated on
Nurses wrist and finger grabbed and bent backwards by patient being restrained by security officers
"Alcohol is by far our biggest ongoing problem," said Dr Carl Dux, emergency physician at the PA.
"We've had issues with people breaking out of the hospital being tackled and fighting with security guards in front of the entire waiting room patients and hurting security guards, and it's a very traumatic thing for members of the public to see when they're already sick coming here for our care," he said.
Dr Dux said sedating or chemically restraining patients happened every day, sometimes every hour.
Beth Mohle from the Queensland Nurses Union said alcohol abuse was a far greater factor in hospital assaults than ice.
"[Ice] pales into insignificance compared to the people that present themselves to emergency departments intoxicated and violent as a result of alcohol abuse," she said.
"Our members are regularly verbally and physically abused, spat at, punched and the like."
Violent hospital assaults 'opportunistic'
Professor Anthony Shakeshaft from the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre is preparing a study into the link between alcohol and presentations at hospital emergency departments.
He said most alcohol-related assaults in hospitals were opportunistic.
"It is true that people with a predilection for violence are more likely on an individual basis to get involved in alcohol-related assaults," he said.
"But the bulk of it probably is opportunistic violence, so people do get involved in things when they otherwise wouldn't be once they start drinking."
Ms Mohle said the issue of patient violence had fallen off the public radar.
"Over a decade ago, we had a zero tolerance for violence against nurses campaign which was successful in certainly stemming the tide, if you like, and we saw a lot of really great aggressive behaviour management training start up as a result," she said.
"But in recent years we've seen a lack of focus on this issue."
Alcohol abuse a societal issue
Dr Dux said the cycle of alcohol binging and associated violence would continue unless there were drastic changes at a societal level.
"Unless something changes we're just going to get the next generation doing exactly what this generation does now," he said.
"Personally, I think we've been manipulated to thinking that drinking is part of our culture by subversive advertising and we haven't done anything to stop that.
"People think it's un-Australian if you don't partake in binge drinking and get loose.
"We have a societal problem. I don't think we can address it with one change in emergency. We need to address this all through society."Oscar Ustari - 6
Little he could do about the goals which went against him and did his level best to keep us in things with a top-drawer penalty save in the first half. Mark of seven comes mainly for that save. About the only good thing we did all afternoon.
Phil Bardsley - 5
Much like many of his fellow players just didn't seem himself. Rarely got forward and perhaps the efforts of last week and a new formation didn't allow him to get forward as he would have liked.
John O'Shea - 4
Not the only one who was awful today. Gave away a soft free-kick which and then was out-jumped by Curtis Davies for the opening goal. Aside from that there were a few other occasions where he looked lost and could well have cost us further.
Santiago Vergini - 5
Slightly better than John O'Shea but not much. Could you put his performance down to still acclimatizing to the league? Maybe, but time is running out for him to get adjusted if he's going to be needed at any stage down the stretch.
Andrea Dossena - 4
Git himself advanced fairly often but didn't do anything really once in good crossing positions. Struggled to handle Ahmed Elmohamady in the first half but managed to do a little better with him in the second half. Overall though a relatively poor and ineffectual performance.
Jack Colback - 5
Quite a tidy performance from Colback. Kept the ball well, didn't really attack much. That's what he gives you really. Didn't have much of an impact from a wide position where he started, or once he'd cut inside.
Lee Cattermole - 2
I actually thought Cattermole did alright in the first half, but it was all down hill from then. The back-pass or whatever the hell it was in the second half was awful. Worryingly he's done it before and Liam Bridcutt will be relishing the chance he's sure to get on Saturday against Crystal Palace. Very poor today in the second half from Cattermole.
Seb Larsson - 3
I'd almost forgot he was playing to be honest. Sloppy penalty given away in the first half and pretty much disappeared from then onward.
Emanuele Giaccherini - 4
To coin a term used on our long-forgotten podcast -- all fart and no shite. Huffed, puffed, had the ball enough and did the sum total of nothing with it.
Steven Fletcher - 2
He played today apparently. Seemed to spend most the game looking at the round thing and wondering why people were kicking it.
Ignacio Scocco - 3
The one that wasn't Fletcher but had just about as much impact. Gets a slightly higher mark on account of he actually had a shot and I remember him doing a tackle, which is two more things than his strike partner offered.
Fabio Borini - 4
Came on and did nothing. The game seemed away from Sunderland from the second the first went in and we didn't really use him.
Adam Johnson - 4
See Borini. Not sure if he even touched the ball, which is an indictment on him and the team really.
Man Of The Match: Oscar Ustari
The only thing that happened today which was quite good for us was the penalty save. Ustari saved it. He gets man of the match. That's about the best we can offer. Nobody really stood out or deserved such an accolade mind.
More match reaction coming this week! I bet you can't wait, so bookmark and read out match stream HERE regularly!The 1985 JCPenney Christmas Catalog.
Oof. Christmas caught me by surprise this year, and I didn’t write nearly as often as I would’ve liked to. Can’t do anything about that now, so I’ll just try to make this an extra good one!
Today we’re gonna look at some highlights from the 1985 JCPenney catalog, which was basically another Sears Wish Book, serving as a veritable bible of that year’s hottest toys and games.
I actually covered this exact same catalog way back in 2007, but it seemed criminal to stop at a mere twelve items when the book had hundreds of things worth celebrating. 1985 was an absolute banner year for toys, as I think these seven selections will prove!
Gobots “Mobile Command Center” Playset!
($26.99)
Remember the AT-AT from Star Wars? This was like the its rad kid sister.
The Mobile Command Center was easily the crown jewel of Tonka’s Gobots collection. Starting off as a four-legged transport not unlike those behemoths from The Empire Strikes Back, the playset then transforms into a multi-level headquarters that doubles as a giant robot. TOO COOL, and not in the Brian Christopher way.
Oh, and speaking of Star Wars, one neat thing about Gobots playsets is how they worked just as nicely with those figures. (Same with G.I. Joe, or any of the other 3-4” lines.)
I’d like to say that I used the Mobile Command Center for that purpose, putting Darth Vader in charge of a futuristic apartment complex with a loft shaped like a robot head. The truth is, I never had one as a kid. A friend of mine did, and I was so jealous. He was one of those friends that I only had scattered after-school play-dates with, while our mothers forced awkward conversation over cups of bad coffee. That guy had everything. His bedroom looked like Toy Fair.
Through him, I saw enough of the Mobile Command Center to know that I was seriously deprived. This as close as we’ve ever come to the fictitious skyscraper robot from Big.
A Bucket of Popoids!
($19.99)
Popoids were kinda marketed as mutant LEGO sets, so it’s only fitting that this special batch came packaged in a very LEGO-like bucket. I totally had this bucket, and it was wonderful.
Sets included mix-and-match pieces of what I guess we’d term “robo-alien body parts,” along with oodles of collapsible “pipes” to bind them together. These pipes could be twisted into any reasonable position, serving as everything from necks to legs to arms to tails.
You could use Popoids to build straight-up vehicles, but it was way more fun to create creatures. Creatures that resembled Playskool army tanks, but creatures all the same. (The best sets came with giant eyeball pieces for that exact purpose.)
PS: If you only have the faintest memories of Popoids, it’s probably because you had the small giveaway versions from an ancient McDonald’s Happy Meal.
Voltron “Castle of Lions” Playset!
($59.99)
When the conversation turns to Voltron toys, the focus is usually on Voltron itself: The massive, diecast combiner composed of five bulky lions. (Or bulky vehicles, if you had the less popular version.)
Nowhere near as much love is showered on its “traditional scale” toys, which were awesome even if you didn’t care one bit about the franchise. (Hell, you could argue that those toys worked better if you knew nothing about Voltron, because whatever origin you devised for a blue goblin dressed like a cross between a king and a ship’s captain was assuredly better than the truth.)
The Castle of Lions playset was the priciest piece of that splinter group, worth every penny of its sixty dollar price. While certainly resembling the same-named headquarters from the animated series, the playset seemed more like an ice cream parlor expanded into a medieval castle.
Just looking at that one photo makes me remember how easy it was to completely lose myself in the right action figure playset. How I’d meticulously arrange my figures inside, and how I never knew which were my favorites until it was time to fill the best locations.
It’s too bad that I’m only halfway done with this article. All I wanna do now is lay on the floor with Castle Grayskull.
G.I. Joe Crimson Guard Commanders!
($6.99)
…better known as Tomax and Xamot, the slick Cobra brothers who finished each other’s sentences and gave millions of kids exaggerated ideas about twin bonds.
They were some of the coolest characters from the cartoon series, gleefully evil and yet somehow indifferent to their purported cause. It seemed to me that Tomax and Xamot were only bad guys because things were more fun that way, and were aligned with Cobra not so much for its tenets as its fashion.
The twins were sold together in a special two-pack, with only Xamot’s facial scar to help differentiate them. They’re affordable enough loose, but don’t bother looking for a packaged set, which can cost as much as a thousand bucks today.
(Another sad reminder that if I never played with my toys and kept them all buried in the shed, I’d never have to work again.)
Wheeled Warriors Toys!
($9.49 – $39.99)
For all the many topics I’ve mined too many times, it’s criminal that I’ve written so little about Wheeled Warriors, one of the most unique of all ‘80s toy lines.
Seems like people remember the cartoon series more than the toys it existed to promote. This was a series of futuristic cars (if I can call them cars) that we built from oodles of interlocking pieces. (Of course, since we built them ourselves, we were also able to build mutant off-brand versions of everything!)
The heroic Lightning League vehicles came with little plastic people to drive them, while the evil Monster Minds came with small, squishy green “brains” to act as their techno-organic souls.
Moving up a size were two battery-operated beasts, Trail Blazer and Beast Walker, which were as cumbersome as they look in the photo. If you had cash to spare, you could also pick up the $40 Battle Base, which was roomy enough to fit four vehicles.
Simpler was better with this series. The cheaper, smaller sets packed more playtime opportunities than the bigger, pricier offerings. Honestly, I probably got the most mileage out of the Monster Minds Attack Pack, which Toys “R” Us stubbornly kept on its pegs for a clearance price of 8 cents. (Not a typo. They seriously sold them for eight cents. Nothing beat walking into TRU with a dollar and leaving with 12 toys.)
Sectaurs Toys!
($9.99 – $59.99)
…and speaking of lines that I haven’t given nearly enough Dino Drac love to, heeeere’s Sectaurs! In summary, these were armies of heroic and villainous “bug men,” who rode enormous insects into a never-ending battle for control of their alien world.
I’ve already written 40 trillion words about The Hyve, the most badass action figure playset this side of the U.S.S. Flagg. The reality is that every toy in the Sectaurs line was nearly that good.
The “standard” action figures were anything but, towering over He-Man while having more articulation. Their battery-operated bugs-of-burden are some of the coolest toys I’ve ever had, essentially acting as souped-up hand puppets with whirring, flapping wings.
(In fact, one of my favorite Christmas memories is of receiving Dargon and his Dragonflyer, and immediately tormenting everyone at our Christmas Eve party with my giant new bug.)
Everything about the Sectaurs line was perfect, right down to its unforgettably episodic TV commercials. It’s almost never true when collectors say that they don’t make toys like they used to, but when you’re talking about a seven inch action figure riding an electronic dragonfly towards a three foot plastic castle… yeah, they really don’t make toys like they used to.
Sleeping Bags!
($19.99 each)
I’m guessing that many of you had at least one of these. Sadly, my old Gobots sleeping bag isn’t pictured here. That sleeping bag is responsible for one of my earliest and saddest grade school memories.
In kindergarten, we had a predesignated naptime. All of the students would gather in a separate classroom to sleep on the floor for an hour, in our own sleeping bags. One afternoon, I slept so heavily that the teacher couldn’t wake me without a level of shaking unsuitable for my tax-paid caretaker. So she called my mother in to handle that. Revived, I was so weirdly embarrassed by the incident that I refused to go back to class, and cried my way into getting the rest of the day off.
To this day, I have no idea why I was so embarassed, or how I possibly slept so soundly that a teacher four times my size couldn’t wake me up. To this day, I have no idea why I had a Gobots sleeping bag instead of a Transformers one. The hell?
Thanks for reading about old junk. I’m hoping to get one more post up before Christmas arrives, but since many of you won’t have time for me this week, I’ll say it early: Merry Christmas! Or, if you don’t celebrate it, Happy Few Days Off!
Want to read another article like this? Come check out the highlights from the 1982 Sears Wish Book!The producers of Broadway’s “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” were negotiating on Monday with their director, Julie Taymor, for her to work with a newly expanded creative team to fix the critically derided $65 million musical or possibly leave the show, according to people who work on “ Spider-Man ” or have been briefed on the negotiations.
The artistic direction ahead for “Spider-Man” — twice as expensive as any show in Broadway history — involves more decisions than just Ms. Taymor’s future, according to these people, who spoke anonymously because the producers have insisted that no information be disclosed about the talks.
The producers and Ms. Taymor and her co-creators, Bono and the Edge of U2, are also discussing how extensively to overhaul the script and music ; how many outside consultants should be hired, and who; and when to open the show, which set a record at its Sunday matinee for the most preview performances ever, its 98th. (The previous record was set in 1969 by Jackie Mason ’s “A Teaspoon Every Four Hours.”)
Ken Sunshine, one of the spokesmen for the production, said in response to several questions on Monday night: “We are not commenting on speculation.”
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The opening night for “Spider-Man” has already been delayed five times; the current opening date, March 15, seems all but certain to fall, since by Monday night theater critics had not been invited to review it (normally invitations are sent about two weeks before). All of the people who spoke about the negotiations said that the producers now viewed a March 15 opening as unlikely. Many critics, in fact, issued reviews after the previously scheduled opening night of Feb. 7. Ben Brantley, the chief theater critic of The New York Times, wrote that “Spider-Man” may “rank among the worst” musicals in history.
PhotoIn political theory and particularly Marxism, class consciousness is the set of beliefs that a person holds regarding their social class or economic rank in society, the structure of their class, and their class interests.[1][2] According to Karl Marx, it is an awareness that is key to sparking a revolution that would "create a dictatorship of the proletariat, transforming it from a wage-earning, property-less mass into the ruling class".[3]
Marxist theory [ edit ]
While German theorist Karl Marx rarely used the term "class consciousness", he did make the distinction between "class in itself", which is defined as a category of people having a common relation to the means of production; and a "class for itself", which is defined as a stratum organized in active pursuit of its own interests.[2]
Defining a person's social class can be a determinant for their awareness of it. Marxists define classes on the basis of their relation to the means of production, especially on whether they own capital. Non-Marxist social scientists distinguish various social strata on the basis of income, occupation, or status.[4]
Early in the 19th century, the labels "working classes" and "middle classes" were already coming into common usage: "The old hereditary aristocracy, reinforced by the new gentry who owed their success to commerce, industry, and the professions, evolved into an "upper class". Its consciousness was formed in part by public schools (in the British sense where it refers to a form of private school) and Universities. The upper class tenaciously maintained control over the political system, depriving not only the working classes but the middle classes of a voice in the political process".[5]
Georg Lukács' History and Class Consciousness (1923) [ edit ]
Class consciousness, as described by Georg Lukács's famous History and Class Consciousness (1923), is opposed to any psychological conception of consciousness, which forms the basis of individual or mass psychology (see Freud or, before him, Gustave Le Bon). According to Lukács, each social class has a determined class consciousness which it can achieve. In effect, as opposed to the liberal conception of consciousness as the basis of individual freedom and of the social contract, Marxist class consciousness is not an origin, but an achievement (i.e. it must be "earned" or won). Hence, it is never assured: the proletariat's class consciousness is the result of a permanent struggle to understand the "concrete totality" of the historical process.
According to Lukács, the proletariat was the first class in history that may achieve true class consciousness because of its specific position highlighted in The Communist Manifesto as the "living negation" of capitalism. All others classes, including the bourgeoisie, are limited to a "false consciousness" which impedes them from understanding the totality of history: instead of understanding each specific moment as a portion of a supposedly deterministic historical process, they universalize it and believe it is everlasting. Hence, capitalism is not thought as a specific phase of history, but is naturalized and thought of as an eternal solidified part of history. Says Lukács, this "false consciousness", which forms ideology itself, is not a simple error as in classical philosophy, but an illusion which cannot be dispelled.
Marx described it in his theory of commodity fetishism, which Lukács completed with his concept of reification in which alienation is what follows the worker's estrangement to the world following the new life acquired by the product of his work. The dominant bourgeois ideology thus leads the individual to see the achievement of his labour take a life of its own. Furthermore, specialization is also seen as a characteristic of the ideology of modern rationalism, which creates specific and independent domains (art, politics, science and the ike). Only a global perspective can point out how all these different domains interact, argues Lukács. He also points out how Immanuel Kant brought to its limit the classical opposition between the abstract form and the concrete, historical content, which is abstractly conceived as irrational and contingent. Thus, with Kant's rational system history becomes totally contingent and is thus ignored. Only with Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's dialectic can a mediation be found between the abstract form and the abstract notion of a concrete content.[6]
Even if the bourgeois loses his individual point of view in an attempt to grasp the reality of the totality of society and of the historical process, he is condemned to a form of false consciousness. As an individual, he will always see the collective result of individual actions as a form of "objective law" to which he must submit himself (liberalism has gone so far as seeing an invisible hand in this collective results, making capitalism the best of all possible worlds). By contrast, the proletariat would be, according to Lukács, the first class in history with the possibility to achieve a true form of class consciousness, granting it knowledge of the totality of the historical process.
The proletariat takes the place of Hegel's Weltgeist ("World Spirit"), which achieves history through Volksgeist ("the spirit of the people"): the idealist conception of an abstract Spirit making history, which ends in the realm of Reason, is replaced by a materialist conception based not on mythical Spirits, but on a concrete "identical subject-object of history": the proletariat. The proletariat is both the "object" of history, created by the capitalist social formation; but it is also the "subject" of history, as it is its labour that shapes the world, and thus, knowledge of itself is also, necessarily, knowledge of the reality and of the totality of the historical process. The proletariat's class consciousness is not immediate; class consciousness must not be mistaken either with the consciousness of one's future and collective interests, opposed to personal immediate interests.
The possibility of class consciousness is given by the objective process of history, which transforms the proletariat into a commodity, hence objectifying it. Class consciousness is thus not a simple subjective act: "as consciousness here is not the consciousness of an object opposed to itself, but the object's consciousness, the act of being conscious of oneself disrupts the objectivity form of its object" (in "Reification and the Proletariat's Consciousness" §3, III "The proletariat's point of view"). In other words, instead of the bourgeois subject and its corresponding ideological concept of individual free will, the proletariat has been transformed into an object (a commodity) which, when it takes consciousness of itself, transforms the very structure of objectivity, that is of reality.
This specific role of the proletariat is a consequence of its specific position; thus, for the first time, consciousness of itself (class consciousness) is also consciousness of the totality (knowledge of the entire social and historical process). Through dialectical materialism, the proletariat understands that what the individual bourgeois conceived as "laws" akin to the laws of nature, which may be only manipulated as in René Descartes's dream, but not changed, is in fact the result of a social and historical process, which can be controlled. Furthermore, only dialectical materialism links together all specialized domains, which modern rationalism can only think as separate instead of as forming a totality.
Only the proletariat can understand that the so-called "eternal laws of economics" are in fact nothing more than the historical form taken by the social and economical process in a capitalist society. Since these "laws" are the result of the collective actions of individuals, and are thus created by society, Marx and Lukács reasoned that this necessarily meant that they could be changed. Any attempt in transforming the so-called "laws" governing capitalism into universal principles, valid in all times and places, are criticized by Lukács as a form of false consciousness.
As the "expression of the revolutionary process itself", dialectical materialism, which is the only theory with an understanding of the totality of the historical process, is the theory which may help the proletariat in its "struggle for class consciousness". Although Lukács does not contest the Marxist primacy of the economic base on the ideological superstructure (not to be mistaken with vulgar economic determinism), he considers that there is a place for autonomous struggle for class consciousness.
In order to achieve a unity of theory and praxis, theory must not only tend toward reality in an attempt to change it; reality must also tend towards theory. Otherwise, the historical process leads a life of its own, while theorists make their own little theories, desperately waiting for some kind of possible influence over the historical process. Henceforth, reality itself must tend toward the theory, making it the "expression of the revolutionary process itself". In turn, a theory which has as its goal helping the proletariat achieve class consciousness must first be an "objective theory of class consciousness". However, theory in itself is insufficient, and ultimately relies on the struggle of humankind and of the proletariat for consciousness: the "objective theory of class consciousness is only the theory of its objective possibility".
Criticism [ edit ]
Economist Ludwig Von Mises[7] argued that "Marx confus[ed] the notions of caste and class". Mises allowed that class consciousness and the associated class struggle were valid concepts in some circumstances where rigid social castes exist, e.g. when slavery is legal and slaves thus share a common motive for ending their disadvantaged status relative to other castes, but according to Mises "no such conflicts are present in a society in which all citizens are equal before the law. [...] No logical objection can be advanced against distinguishing various classes among the members of such a society. Any classification is logically permissible, however arbitrarily the mark of distinction may be chosen. But it is nonsensical to classify the members of a capitalistic society according to their position in the framework of the social division of labor and then to identify these classes with the castes of a status society". Murray Rothbard argued that Marx's efforts to portray the workers and capitalists as two monolithic groups was false as workers and capitalists would routinely compete within themselves, such as capitalists entrepreneurs competing amongst themselves or native workers competing with immigrant workers. Rothbard argues that if there is constant conflict between different members of the same class, then it is absurd to argue that these members have objective interests with one another against another
|
5.25 inches
Length (muzzle to back of frame): 7.75 inches
Weight: 15.2 ounces unloaded, no magazine
Capacity: Accepts all Ruger 10/22 magazines. Functions [mostly] with BX-1’s.
MSRP: $199 with no magazine. $219 with a BX-1 included.
RATINGS (Out of Five Stars):
Style * * * * *
Like it or hate it, you’ve never seen anything like it. Its style is its own, and it gets five stars for that.
Ergonomics (firing) *
Form comes before function here. While it actually fits in the hand okay, it isn’t what you’d call comfortable. The grip angle is vertical and the placement of the charging rods is downright dangerous. The trigger is heavy enough that it causes some discomfort, removing 10-round mags is difficult, and clearing jams is a bear.
Reliability
No, I did not forget to rate this category. Maybe it will “break in” and improve.
Customize This * * * * *
Well deserving of five stars here, the ZiP can be customized with all sorts of upper rail attachments, threaded barrels, SBR stocks and other doo-dads on the way that I am not at liberty to mention (suffice it to say that only the right side of the frame’s “clamshell” is serialized, and ZiPFactory has future plans for things you can do by swapping out the left side).
OVERALL *
As is, it just doesn’t run reliably enough to be fun; too much time’s spent dealing with difficult-to-clear jams and it only sort of runs with Ruger factory BX-1 magazines. Safety and ergo nightmare, really.Mario Chalmers is a human with a cell phone so I sent him some text messages.
Me: Hey, man.
Mario: Hi.
Me: what’s up? How are you?
Mario: good
Me: I saw the game the other night
Mario: which one?
Me: come on
Mario: I’m in the NBA. I play a lot of games.
Me: you know the one
Mario: against the Celtics?
Me: dude
Mario: against the bucks?
Me: the who?
Me: don’t run from this
Me: it’s fine
Me: we can talk about it
Me: the Indiana game
Mario: oh
Me: it wasn’t that cool for LeBron to yell at you
Mario: well
Me: were you scared?
Mario: what?
Me: because he’s big
Mario: so
Me: I mean, he’s BIG. He’s like if a stegosaurus was yelling at you.
Me: OH MAN IMAGINE A STEGOSAURUS IN A HEADBAND SHOOTING A 3-POINTER THAT’S THE BEST THING
Me: what kind of defense would you play against a stegosaurus???
Mario: wtf are you even talking about?
Me: I remember I was playing basketball in middle school at a game or whatever and the coach started yelling at me and I for real just started crying and went and sat down
Mario: dude
Me: do you know what I did when I got home?
Mario: cried more
Me: bingo
Me: did you cry? Afterward, I mean. After LeBron yelled at you?
Mario: no
Me: did it hurt your feelings?
Mario: dude
Me: did you talk to him about it? You should’ve just gone up to him like, “hey, man. I didn’t think it was that cool for you to yell at me like that in front of everyone and also all of America.”
Mario: right
Me: Then he’d have been like, “RRRRAAARRRRRGGGHHHHHHH”
Me: BECAUSE HE’S A STEGOSAURUS
Me: GET IT? HAHAAHAHAAHAHAHAA THAT’S A LITTLE THING CALLED A CALLBACK
[No response.]
Me: Hello?
[No response.]
Me: :( man, that was probably the best stegosaurus joke I ever told
Mario: it wasn’t very good
[No response.]
Mario: yo
[No response.]
Mario: hello?
[No response.]
Mario: jesus christ are you crying again?
Me: MAYBE I AM, MARIO, AND MAYBE I’M NOT, MARIO, IT’S NOT YOUR PROBLEM
Mario: you gotta chill, man
Me: I HAVE A LITTLE THING CALLED FEELINGS, MARIO. MAYBE YOU HEARD OF THEM? I KNOW YOU HAVE BECAUSE I WAS JUST TALKING TO YOU ABOUT THEM, MARIO. THAT’S A LITTLE THING CALLED BEING CAUGHT IN A SNARE TRAP.
Mario: the joke was fine
[No response.]
Mario: it was good
[No response.]
Mario: it was funny. Real funny.
Me: you really think so?
Mario: … yes
Me: that’s nice of you to say, Mario
Me: you’re a nice guy
Me: I feel kind of bad for all the bad stuff I said about you after your rap video came out
Mario: :/
Me: what a weird thing that was
Me: it was funny that you were like, “you know what would really be dope? You know what would really set this video off? If I was dribbling a ball while wearing slacks! BOOM! SOMEBODY CALL THE GOVERNMENT AND LET THEM KNOW THAT I JUST CRASHED THE STOCK MARKET BECAUSE I AM SO MONEY!!!!”
Mario: I didn’t say any of that
Me: I mean, but you basically did
[No response.]
Me: OK, I have to go, man
Mario: bye
Me: stay easy. Tell LeBron I said what’s up
Mario: I’m not gonna do that
Me: OK. Well at least tell Wade then
Mario: no
Me: Ray?
Mario: nope
Me: Joel Anthony?
Mario: … all right.Rebel commanders and fighters describe a litany of tactical mistakes, logistical confusion and destructive infighting that contributed to the loss of Sheikh Miskeen in Deraa province. One commander summed up the rebels' performance as a “major failure”.
AMMAN // The capture of Sheikh Miskeen by president Bashar Al Assad’s forces last month was their most significant victory in years on Syria’s southern front, but for the rebels, the manner of their defeat was more alarming than the loss itself.
Rebel commanders and fighters described a litany of tactical mistakes, logistical confusion and destructive infighting that contributed to the loss of the town in Deraa province. One commander summed up the performance of the rebel alliance as a “major failure”.
The inability of the rebels and their international backers to come up with an answer to Russian air power was a significant factor in the battle, and is likely to prove critical over the coming weeks and months, as the fight for Syria’s south continues.
Regime officials have said they intend to keep up their offensive until they regain control of border crossing points with Jordan. Rebels currently hold the frontier posts on the Syria-Jordan border, and expect Russian air strikes to target them soon.
Interviews with rebel commanders involved in the fight for Sheikh Miskeen have revealed they were comprehensively outmanoeuvred on the ground, in the air and in the diplomatic arena.
Efforts to keep Russian air power at bay were made solely through diplomatic channels. Jordan, which entered into an intelligence-sharing agreement with Russia in October, believed it had struck a deal whereby Moscow would not to target western-backed factions and would, instead, coordinate with Amman in hitting hardline Islamic factions.
In late December the regime began increasing its military activity in the south and it quickly became clear that the deal was not holding. Russian air strikes intensified throughout January, as the assault increasingly focused on Sheikh Miskeen.
As the fighting raged, rebels said their international backers in Amman’s Military Operations Command (MOC) repeatedly exhorted them to hold on to the town. The inner workings of the MOC remain highly secretive, but rebels familiar with its operations said it seemed to be in a state of disarray as regime forces advanced.
“The MOC was telling us how important it was for us to keep Sheikh Miskeen, they kept telling us ‘hold on, don’t give up’,” said a leading rebel commander, describing an increasingly desperate battle for the town.
Whoever controls Sheikh Miskeen controls the main highway and, therefore, controls a main path for weapons and troops in the southern region. The rebels had hoped to use the town as a means of choking off the regime units still holding on in Deraa, and to link up with rebels on the outskirts of Damascus. Now, rebel positions across the south will be more exposed to attack.
Russian air strikes were monitored in detail by the MOC and, when it became clear that they were turning the tide in the regime’s favour, Jordan’s top military officer was dispatched to Moscow.
Gen Mashal Mohammad Al Zabin, chairman of joint chiefs of staff, flew to Russia on January 27, the day after regime forces made a rapid advance in Sheikh Miskeen, seizing hold of 95 per cent of the town in a two-day blitz.
Jordan has been at pains to try to prevent extremist factions tied to ISIL from gaining ground in the south, and fears any weakening of moderate rebels will open space for more radical groups.
The campaign of air strikes has also displaced thousands of civilians, with 70,000 people on the move by early February, according to the United Nations. Jordan is already struggling to cope with an influx of refugees and is ill equipped to deal with more.
The content of the Russian-Jordanian talks has not been made public but the air strikes did not stop. By the time Gen Al Zabin returned to Amman on January 29, Sheikh Miskeen had fallen.
Weapons supplies were also a key factor working against the rebels. While munitions supplies from the MOC continued they did not always reach the rebel units most in need on the Sheikh Miskeen front lines. Many units received nothing, while others were fairly well supplied, according to accounts from several rebel commanders.
“Some groups got a lot of weapons, others didn’t, there was not an equal distribution,” said a rebel field commander. He said those who sold them instead of getting them to the front line had betrayed the rebel cause.
Another rebel commander blamed Washington, saying the US had blocked efforts by the MOC to dramatically increase the flow of weapons. “The Americans are letting us down, if they wanted to supply us with the right weapons on time, they could, nothing would be late,” he said. “US calculations on Syria seem to have changed.”
Rebels said they were not offered anti-aircraft missiles to counter the Russian attacks.
But more critical than the availability of weaponry was a renewed disorganisation in rebel ranks. Aided by MOC planners, rebels made strong advances in the south in 2014, largely because of joint operations rooms, which unified rebel efforts and enabled them to better manage their resources on the battlefield.
At Sheikh Miskeen that coordination network was never put in place, rebels said, and no well-researched plan for defending the town was ever drawn up. Instead of a unified operations room coordinating the fight, there were four different rebel command centres which did not work together. It remains unclear why a united, organised defence plan was not followed.
The result was chaos. Rebels described units being pulled off the line at critical moments, reinforcements failing to arrive on time and, in one case, more than 100 fighters being sent away in the midst of battle to attend a military training course behind the lines. This burgeoning disarray sapped the morale of the remaining fighters, undermined the confidence they had in their leaders, and sowed discord between factions who already mistrusted one another.
One senior rebel said units retreated too soon from the town because of a successful propaganda operation by the regime. A small regime force sneaked through rebel lines and hoisted a government flag, triggering the collapse of rebel lines that were, in fact, holding. “Rumours circulated that the regime had broken through, so some units pulled back,” he said.
Another commander complained that high-ranking rebels spent too much time in Amman, lobbying the MOC and “back-stabbing” other rebel units in a competition to get weapons and gain influence with countries bankrolling the MOC.
“All of those commanders should have been on the ground organising the defence. They should now be kicked out and replaced by their second-in-commands,” he said.
Rebel forces also became embroiled in an internecine fight just as the struggle for Sheikh Miskeen was reaching a decisive stage. Moderate groups clashed with Harakat Al Muthanna, a more radical faction involved in the kidnapping of Yaqoub Al Ammar, the opposition’s provisional governor for Deraa, weeks earlier.
Rebels said the MOC had supplied them with weapons to fight factions allied with ISIL but, with regime forces closing on Sheikh Miskeen, the rebels’ international backers had urged them to focus on the defence of the town.
Instead of focusing on Sheikh Miskeen however, some MOC-backed rebels pushed ahead with a raid on a Harakat Al Muthanna compound, accusing them of supporting ISIL. In response, when moderates tried to reinforce Sheikh Miskeen, Harakat Al Muthanna blocked their path.
In the wake of the defeat, morale in rebel ranks has been low. Nonetheless, the opposition to president Al Assad has vowed to keep on fighting
“The rebels are still there present, they are part of the map and the regime cannot end the resistance in Deraa,” said Muti Al Batin, a member of the opposition Syrian National Coalition from Deraa.
“The rebels are still capable of facing the regime, but they do need something to change the equation... [they need] weapons that would enable them to face the regime’s air power,” he said.
[email protected]
* Phil Sands contributed to this story from Boston, USAOver the weekend, the Democratic Unity Reform Commission issued recommendations aimed at giving power back to the party’s “grass-roots.” The recommendations would cut back the number of so-called superdelegates by 60 percent, in an effort to loosen elite control over the presidential nomination process and make the party more democratic.
These recommendations illustrate the types of reforms we often see connected to democracy within parties. But these reforms are actually difficult to define and implement across many states. Part of the reason it’s difficult to make a party internally democratic is that this is the wrong way to think about parties.
The concept of democracy within a political party is tricky. As with many other institutions, parties have become more democratically run over time. Important decisions like nominations and platform stances used to be made by bosses and convention delegates; now they’re largely determined by rank-and-file voters in primaries and caucuses. The logic of running things more democratically is that people tend to have more faith in the resulting decisions — those choices are more legitimate.
Like just about any other institution, a party requires legitimacy to operate. It makes many decisions on behalf of its members and operates the complex caucuses, primaries, conventions and other machinery that boil down dozens of candidates into just one nominee. Similarly, it tries to weigh the many wide-ranging views of its members into a coherent platform. For it to do these things and still get roughly half the votes of the American electorate, people have to have some faith that its actions are done in good faith.THE BROCHURE FOR the Bahamas cruise couldn't be more inviting. It promises four days at sea, including a visit to a private island paradise where guests can "soak up the sun on a white sand beach" and thrill seek on a "powerboat adventure."
Matt Sanderson sees this pamphlet as more than an invitation. He sees it as a symbol of everything that is wrong with the college football postseason because the June 2010 cruise was run by the Orange Bowl.
Reading down the guest list for the "Summer Splash," Sanderson stabs his forefinger beside the names of the 40 Football Bowl Subdivision athletic directors and six conference executives who attended the complimentary cruise for two. (ESPN, which owns seven non-BCS bowl games and the BCS broadcast rights through 2014, declined an invitation to the trip.)Anti-abortion groups fuming over the Republican failure to defund Planned Parenthood as part of ObamaCare repeal are eyeing tax reform as the next vehicle for their cause.
The groups want Republicans to defund Planned Parenthood in a tax reform package that the GOP plans to move through the Senate under special budgetary rules that protect it from a Democratic filibuster.
“The failures to pass repeal and replace, including redirecting those dollars to other providers that don’t do abortions, has been incredibly disappointing to us,” said Marilyn Musgrave, vice president of government affairs at the Susan B. Anthony List, a D.C.-based group that works to elect anti-abortion members of Congress.
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“It didn’t happen under health care, so now we’re asking that under the 2018 reconciliation bill Congress redirect these dollars.”
Some Republicans don’t want to include the Planned Parenthood language in the new package, however, for fear it could hurt their chances of passing the tax bill.
“I don’t think we should do anything that compromises passing tax reform,” said Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn John CornynHillicon Valley: Senators urge Trump to bar Huawei products from electric grid | Ex-security officials condemn Trump emergency declaration | New malicious cyber tool found | Facebook faces questions on treatment of moderators Key senators say administration should ban Huawei tech in US electric grid Senate plots to avoid fall shutdown brawl MORE (R-Texas). He suggested that Planned Parenthood could be addressed later, when Republicans move back to health care.
Even die-hard conservatives aren’t endorsing the idea of pairing the Planned Parenthood issue with tax reform.
“I don’t see that happening,” said Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, a group that has led the charge on defunding Planned Parenthood.
“I mean, I’m a big one on defunding Planned Parenthood and pro-life measures, but I don’t see it being included in reconciliation instructions.”
Like Cornyn, he said Republicans could return to the issue when they get back to ObamaCare repeal.
But such promises are of little value to anti-abortion groups.
That’s “not acceptable,” Musgrave said.
“It’s a reasonable ask from the pro-life community, and this is what we’re saying to the most pro-life Congress ever. It didn’t get done on health-care reform, so we expect it in this reconciliation bill.”
Musgrave said SBA List President Marjorie Dannenfelser has met with Speaker Paul Ryan Paul Davis RyanBrexit and exit: A transatlantic comparison Five takeaways from McCabe’s allegations against Trump The Hill's 12:30 Report: Sanders set to shake up 2020 race MORE (R-Wis.) over the matter.
While promoting tax reform this week, however, GOP leaders have not indicated that language defunding Planned Parenthood would be a part of the bill.
Ryan’s office did not respond to request for comment.
It's also unclear if such language would meet the Senate's strict rules for reconciliation. The Senate parliamentarian ruled earlier this year that defunding language included in the GOP's health-care bill didn't meet the rules and would need 60 votes for passage. It's possible that a similar issue could arise if the language were added to the tax-reform bill.
Other anti-abortion groups, including Students for Life and March for Life, which organizes a march on D.C. every year to protest abortion, are pushing for Republicans to defund Planned Parenthood through tax reform.
“We call upon this Congress and Administration to be true to their promises to fix abortion aspects of the healthcare law and work to redirect funding for Planned Parenthood through tax reform,” March for Life President Jeanne Mancini said in a statement to The Hill.
Students for Life President Kristan Hawkins indicated the anti-abortion movement is getting frustrated with Congress's failures to defund Planned Parenthood.
“It’s been incredibly frustrating. If this was a priority for leadership, they would have found a way to get this done. This is something we’ve been talking about for many years,” Hawkins said.
“Now we’re hopeful … about trying to add a defunding Planned Parenthood measure into the new tax reform plan.”
Even some of the loudest voices on Capitol Hill against Planned Parenthood, however, will not commit to including a defunding measure with tax reform — perhaps underlining the importance of the tax measure to the GOP.
“Well, obviously, the defunding provision is critically important to many of us and to a lot of unborn children, so we’re hoping to see it placed in a vehicle that will come to fruition,” said Rep. Trent Franks Harold (Trent) Trent FranksArizona New Members 2019 Cook shifts 8 House races toward Dems Freedom Caucus members see openings in leadership MORE (R-Ariz.), chairman of the House Pro-Life Caucus.
Asked if that could be tax reform, he replied: “I know that’s certainly something I would support, but I’m obviously also strongly supportive of the tax bill at this point.”
Other Republicans sounded a bit more open to the possibility of adding Planned Parenthood defunding to the tax package.
“I would actually support that anywhere I could get it," said Sen. James Lankford James Paul LankfordHarris on election security: 'Russia can't hack a piece of paper' GOP advances rules change to speed up confirmation of Trump nominees GOP senator calls Omar's apology 'entirely appropriate' MORE (R-Okla.), a leader on anti-abortion issues in the Senate, when asked if defunding Planned Parenthood should be included in tax reform.
Sen. Ted Cruz Rafael (Ted) Edward CruzTrump unleashing digital juggernaut ahead of 2020 Inviting Kim Jong Un to Washington Trump endorses Cornyn for reelection as O'Rourke mulls challenge MORE (R-Texas) said: “I have long led the efforts in the Senate to defund Planned Parenthood, and I think we should use every available means to do so.”
Jacqueline Ayers, director of legislative affairs for the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, said it’s a risk whenever Republicans use reconciliation that they’ll try to attach defunding language.
“We are always monitoring for the possibility that the next reconciliation bill, while it should stay focused on taxes, could attempt to also go after health care and defunding Planned Parenthood,” Ayers said.
“If there is a goal to have a successful agenda around taxes and reforming and overhauling the tax system, putting in poison pills and unpopular provisions like defunding Planned Parenthood would stop them in their tracks once again. I think that would do more to create tension and make it more likely they would have another failed agenda item.”We recently collaborated with Arizona Wilderness Brewing Company to brew Transmission, a Citrus Saison. The beer was packaged in 750mL bottles and will be released September 29th in our brewery Tasting Room.
After meeting the amazing people from Arizona Wilderness, we quickly came to find that our two breweries both value local community and frequently source ingredients from local farms whenever possible. Transmission was brewed with honey from Booger Hill Bee Company in Danielsville, GA, as well as Lisbon Lemons and Arizona Sweet Oranges from The Farm at Agritopia in Gilbert, AZ. The beer contains both zest and juice from the fruit.
“We both really aligned on our philosophies and values in making beer and working with our local communities,” says Blake Tyers, our Wood Cellar and Specialty Brand Manager. “Front to back we figured out how we could express citrus in a Saison using local ingredients.”
Transmission was bottle conditioned for four months with our house‐mixed culture of yeast and bacteria and comes in at 5.6% abv. The tart and funky beer was brewed with Mandarina Bavaria and Lemondrop hops in order to complement the citrus flavor and aroma.
“Transmission is the result of two breweries who have the same vision in mind: to represent craft beer on a local level, using artists’ passion and to be completely dedicated to the craft,” said Arizona Wilderness Founder Jon Buford. “Oh, and to have a ton of fun while doing it.”
Athens illustrator and Creature Comforts tour staff member, Melissa Merrill, designed the label artwork. Merrill derived the watercolor medium from the fruit used in brewing the beer for the original artwork. The name of the beer is a nod to a bus with a broken transmission the two breweries shared on the way to a beer dinner while Arizona Wilderness was visiting us here in Athens, GA, which made for a very fun and memorable evening!Welcome to Mt. Pulaski
The City of Mt. Pulaski is a quaint town situated on a slight hill in Central Illinois, overlooking the surrounding acres of productive farmland. Mt. Pulaski is at the forefront of renewable energy with their newly constructed Hilltop Wind Farm which consists of approximately 70 turbines. Mt. Pulaski is a community of progressive thinking and has many amenities for its residents and visitors to enjoy. The town square is the center for government, commerce, and civic events.
Mount Pulaski has its special place in American history and is named after Casimir Pulaski, a Brigadier General in the Revolutionary War. During the prohibition, Mt. Pulaski earned its’ well-known nickname,” Vinegar Hill” and has a vast array of history. It is home to one of only two original courthouses where Abraham Lincoln practiced law on the 8th Judicial Circuit. Mt. Pulaski is also home to famous people such as Vaughn De Leath (first female to sing on the radio) and John Schlitt (lead singer of Head East and Petra).
Mt. Pulaski, a Purple Heart Community, is a few miles west of the Geographic Center of Illinois and is in southern Logan County. Main highways such as Illinois Route 54 and State Highway 121 along with County Highways 1 and 10 passes through the outskirts of town. These highways give residents and visitors the ease of traveling to and from surrounding cities such as Lincoln, Bloomington, Decatur, Springfield, Clinton, and villages such as Elkhart and Illiopolis. Mt. Pulaski is a short distance from major interstates such as I-55, 155, I-72, and U.S. Route 51.
Mt. Pulaski is home to the Mt. Pulaski Grade School (Bruins & Honeybears), Mt. Pulaski High School (Hilltoppers) and parochial school, Zion Lutheran (The Crusaders). Mt. Pulaski School District #23 is ranked in the top 100 schools in Illinois. The 2018 U.S. News Scorecard ranked Mt. Pulaski at 64% in Mathematics Proficiency and 83% in Reading Proficiency which is considerably higher than the state average. District #23 focuses on academics first and foremost but has also built a strong foundation for extracurricular activities.
Mt. Pulaski has sustained itself, due to the hard-working residents that volunteer in the array of community organizations. These organizations strive to preserve the historical and social culture of Mt. Pulaski and keep the towns’ traditions vibrant.
Mt. Pulaski’s vast majority of its 1500 residents share common Midwestern values, have an immense sense of community pride, are supportive of their neighbors, friends, and family, and are welcoming to visitors and new residents.
Mt. Pulaski provides residents and visitors alike the opportunity to discover new things, new friends, and live a great quality of life.Port Blair: Acknowledging the strategic importance of the Andaman and Nicobar islands, the central government plans to invest Rs150 billion for various developmental projects on the islands, it was announced on Saturday.
Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari announced that out of the total outlay, projects worth Rs100 billion have already commenced.
The announcement came after Gadkari and Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Friday laid the foundation stones for a series of projects on the islands, a statement from the Shipping Ministry said.
During the event, Rajnath Singh said the government was developing the islands while acknowledging their “strategic importance”.
He added that India was emerging as a powerful nation in terms of economy and security, and that no nation could destabilise it “as the government was strengthening the security on all fronts”.
The Home Minister added that, out of the 1,382 islands in the country, 10 have been selected for infrastructure development, out of which five were located in the Andamans.
Singh added that an Island Development Agency (IDA) has been created for taking care of the development and security of these islands.
“A&N islands may be far from New Delhi geographically, but are close to New Delhi emotionally,” the statement quoted him as saying.
Gadkari added that tourism sector had good prospects in the islands and that better roads, round-the-clock power and good hotels were needed to boost tourism, which will also generate employment for the youth.
Among the projects for which the foundation stones were laid included rehabilitation and upgradation of NH-4 to two-lanes from Austin Creek to Kalara at Diglipur, and Beodnabad-Ferrargunj section of the NH-4 at Baratang.
The ministers also laid the foundation stone of major bridges over Humphrey Strait Creek and Middle Strait Creek at Baratang, the statement added.(Newser) – The largest solar energy plant in the world could bring a surprising array of dangers to the Mojave Desert when constructed is completed, reports the LA Times. First off, it's huge: 170,000 large mirrors will be installed at the Ivanpah plant, heating water in three 45-story towers to 1,000 degrees. Critics say no one can specify the dangers because no solar plant has been bulit on this scale—but it might vaporize birds, blind drivers miles away, flip small airplanes, or even attract Air Force heat-seeking missiles.
With a new airport for Las Vegas proposed just six miles away, heat plume interference from the solar plant could be a deadly threat. "If you hit a plume dead center, you have one wing in and one wing out of it. It would flip an airplane in a heartbeat," says the operator of the nearby Blythe airport, who adds that his complaints have been ignored. "It was a joke." Even if Ivanpah is safe, there are applications pending for 100 other solar plants in the Mojave. "It's an experiment on a grand scale," says one scientist. (Read more Mojave Desert stories.)The idea of coming together in common cause is woven into Washington’s social fabric, especially into its union history. But labor has suffered reversals before, and it suffered a large one on Jan. 3, when the Machinists union voted by a narrow margin to abandon the Boeing pension plan. At stake was a key production line.
Now union members and leaders are asking themselves – how can the labor movement recover when one of the strongest unions in the country buckled under the pressure? Among them was Billy Cox, who went to the Machinists’ Hall in South Seattle to find answers for himself and his colleagues.
“I want to not only be looking at short term – what’s happening now – but I want to know what we are going to be doing and what we’re going to look like as a union ten years from now,” he said in an interview.
Cox said he and his colleagues are concerned about the future. “We’re looking for information to see how we can come back together as a complete, whole union. Because the union was split.”
Seattle’s roots in the labor movement are deep. This was the site of the nation’s first city-wide general strike in 1919. The old Labor Temple in Belltown, with its mid-century features and famous neon sign, is still the central place where the labor movement comes together.'I've had enough' - Canterbury caravan mum
JOHN KIRK-ANDERSON/The Press Trina Nesbitt is living in a caravan with her two children.
A tiny stray kitten hides under Trina Nesbitt's borrowed caravan.
It has wide eyes, fearful of coming out.
Nesbitt decided to adopt it.
"I know how it feels," she said.
READ MORE:
* Housing recovery neglects the poor
* Squatting in abandoned quake buildings
* Pensioner living in his car
* 15 Filipino rebuild workers living in one house
Nesbitt has lived at a north Canterbury caravan park with her two children for four months, unable to find an affordable home to rent.
It is in stark contrast to her once settled life. She rented a home for 10 years and had a steady job as a receptionist.
The change has broken her.
John Kirk-Anderson Trina Nesbitt and her two children
In front of her children she is bright and bubbly, but today, the magnitude of where she is living, from where she has been, overwhelms her. Tears course down her face. She tries to apologise for them.
She never thought she would be living in a "trailer park". It costs $300 a week.
"I've just had enough. I get just so sad and that's not me," she said.
John Kirk-Anderson Inside Trina Nesbitt's home for three months - reading is her only escape route.
Nesbitt cannot find a rental.
"I never dreamed it would be so hard to get a home.
"A mum with children? You don't get a look in. It's the prices of housing. It's just so expensive."
After the 2011 earthquake Nesbitt was forced to move from her rental home because the landlord tripled the rent after renovations.
She found a series of short-term homes and then a permanent one, but had to move out when the owners needed it for their own daughter, who was homeless.
Nesbitt lost her job. A crash claimed the family car.
The caravan is cold, which eats at Nesbitt's arthritis.
She and her children share beds.
Her daughter has anxiety. It was getting better until they moved into the caravan.
Nesbitt gets up five times during the night to walk her children to the communal showers and toilets.
"I know I'm probably being an over protective mum, but I just can't let them go by themselves," she said.
On school days, Nesbitt buses with her children to their schools. She chats to the teachers to make sure her children are doing OK. From there, she walks to the Kaiapoi library to house and job hunt until it is time to pick up them up.
She does not like going back to the caravan - a reminder of her "failure as a mum".
"It breaks my heart because I feel like I've let them down. Every day they say to me 'Have we found a house?'" she said.
She misses her "old life".
"It's the small things like having people over for a barbecue. Or, this sounds silly I know, cleaning the house.
"My sister, every time she leaves here she cries. She hates coming here and hates seeing us like this."
Nesbitt reads to distract her from her surroundings.
At least for those few hundred pages, she can pretend her children do not live in a caravan.
It is nearing 3pm. Nesbitt wipes away her tears to get ready to go meet her children.
She must remain upbeat for them.
It is what mothers do, she said.
A month later, Nesbitt is still at the caravan park. She is no closer to finding a home.
This week, Canterbury's post-earthquake housing problems will be illustrated through a number of articles and videos showing people living in desperate circumstances. Social and health agencies say there is no bigger crisis facing the region than the security and affordability of housing. This is Home Truths.
- StuffThere’s nothing wrong with killing a few trout every now and then.
They’re delicious — and taking out a few smaller trout might actually help the stream.
As of Saturday, April 16, keeping trout is legal in Minnesota trout streams; Wisconsin’s inland harvest season starts May 7. (Lake trout remain closed in Minnesota until May 14.)
Anglers already have been fishing stream trout in both states for months during lengthy catch-and-release seasons. From my own time on the water to posts on message boards to reports from biologists, anglers in both southeast Minnesota and southwest Wisconsin will enjoy trickles, streams and rivers with ample fish populations this year.
In many, if not most, designated trout streams, the populations are healthy enough to handle some harvest. That’s why regulations allow it.
In fact, trout populations in some streams might be more balanced with some human predatory influence. In streams with high densities of trout under 12 inches, those growing throngs can limit the food needed for a trout to grow large. And many of the small trout will die anyway.
Rule of thumb: About half of each generation of young fish die each year from natural causes.
“If somebody’s thinking about harvesting fish from these high-density streams, harvest,” said Brian Nerbonne, stream habitat consultant for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. “We can have them taken home by anglers, or a portion of the fish will die anyway from natural mortality on the highest density streams.”
Two things need to be said here:
First, catch-and-release must remain the default. That ethic, along with conservation land-use programs, are to thank for the streams and fish we have.
Second, some will regard this whole topic as blasphemy. “I could never kill a trout,” a friend of mine once told me once after releasing a rainbow trout from a western stream. Regulations actually demanded the rainbow be killed because they threaten native cutthroat populations. The catch-and-release mindset can be taken too far. I know plenty of conservation-minded anglers who occasionally take a few trout home for dinner, although they know it can be touchy to talk about in some circles.
Whether to kill a driftless-area stream trout is a personal decision, Here’s how I make mine. Related Articles 4 missing after blizzard conditions strand dozens of anglers on Lake of the Woods
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Trout I keep are generally:
Small. 6 to 10 inches. They have small bones, supple flesh and are a beauty to serve skin-on, especially poached.
Only when they’re abundant. I know this either from DNR data or because I’ve already caught a bunch.
Generally from larger streams, or at least big holes. I want to leave plenty for the next angler.
Generally browns or stocked rainbows. Brook trout are usually less common.
Trout I throw back are generally:
Most trout I catch. Two to three is plenty. These are fresh delicacies, not for the freezer or a big fish fry.
|
him or any other candidate we have ever worked with.”
Kesari then complains that another Iowa state candidate, Jane Jech “is not doing most of our mail program. What happened?” He asks Fusaro for a full list of which pieces of mass mail the organization will be preparing for which candidates. The email signature at the bottom lists Kesari as “Director of Government Affairs, National Right to Work Committee.”
In the exchange, Mix responds to Fusaro by forwarding an email he sent to Stafford in which he tells Stafford to have Kesari “stand down” against Fusaro.
Klein and Jech, the candidates, were contacted by OpenSecrets.org but did not respond. A review of Iowans for Right to Work’s 2010 campaign finance filings shows no donations — monetary or in-kind — to them. Similarly, there were no disclosed donations to candidates whose names appear in connection with what appear to be mailers prepared by NRTWC, in an attachment to Fusaro’s letter to the board.
Iowa law doesn’t prohibit corporations — including nonprofits — from intervening in a race, but their expenditures cannot be coordinated with candidates. If a candidate is involved, his or her campaign must repay the corporation for its work. Iowa campaign records don’t show any independent expenditures made by Iowa Right to Work, or any reimbursements by candidates in 2010.
Fusaro’s final complaint is that NRTWC failed to disclose any of this political activity on the 990 tax forms it provided to the IRS.
Line 3 of the form asks: “Did the organization engage in any direct or indirect political campaign activities on behalf of or in opposition to candidates for public office?” In 2010, both NRTWC and Mid-America Right to Work, which operated the Iowa incarnation of the organization, checked “no”.
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According to experts consulted by OpenSecrets.org, if Fusaro’s descriptions are correct and the emails he provided are legitimate, the question should have been answered differently. “That’s clearly political intervention under IRS rules,” said Donald Tobin, a professor at Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law. Tobin said the consequences for incorrectly reporting political activity vary widely depending on what the intent was. “If it’s an honest mistake, the IRS usually contacts you and says, ‘What’s going on?'” he said. “But if it’s a purposeful attempt to defraud there could be serious ramifications. You could have everything from, ‘Please fix your form,’ to losing your tax-exempt status, or in really egregious cases having real criminal penalties.” Frances R. Hill, a law professor at the University of Miami who specializes in tax and finance law, agreed with Tobin’s assessment. The key deciding factor, she said, could be whether the organizations’ activity could be classified as “lobbying,” which 501(c)(4) groups are permitted to do and which doesn’t have to be reported as political work. “Based on what the allegations are, it looks like politics, and even if it’s a state race it has to be reported to the IRS,” she said. Follow Russ on Twitter: @russchoma Images: Kent Sorenson, via Flickr user Gage Skidmore
For permission to reprint for commercial uses, such as textbooks, contact the Center: Feel free to distribute or cite this material, but please credit the Center for Responsive Politics.For permission to reprint for commercial uses, such as textbooks, contact the Center: [email protected]Sprint and HTC on Friday will release what I consider to be the world’s best smartphone. They should enjoy that status while it lasts, because three days later Apple is likely to announce its next-generation iPhone.
I can only speculate about what Apple will unveil. But after carrying around Sprint’s HTC Evo 4G for the past week, I can say with certainty that it’s the best phone I’ve used to date — and that includes the current iPhone 3G.
The Evo 4G, which runs the Google Android operating system (version 2.1), features not one but two cameras — an 8-megapixel back-side camera for taking regular pictures and a front-side camera for video chat. The picture quality of that back-side camera is quite good and, as with other smartphones, once you take a picture, you can easily e-mail it to someone or post it on Facebook or other sites. I had the phone with me at the Maker Faire in San Mateo and had fun using the camera to update my Facebook page with photos throughout the day.
I’m writing this column from a hotel that charges $15 a night for Internet access, so I appreciate the phone’s ability to create its own wireless hot spot. When you configure that optional feature, you can use it to provide Internet service for up to eight devices.
At the moment, I’m using it with my laptop and iPad — both of which are getting online at about 900 kilobits per second. That’s pretty good, but the phone is capable of speeds up to 6 megabits, nearly seven times faster, when using Sprint’s fast 4G network.
Sprint currently offers 4G in Las Vegas, Baltimore, Portland, Ore., and several other markets. The company plans to roll it out in other areas, including the Bay Area, later this year. Wall Street Journal tech columnist Walter Mossberg tested his Evo 4G phone in Baltimore, where he experienced “the highest consistent downstream data speeds” he had ever seen on a cellular network. Sprint plans to charge an extra $30 for the service above whatever voice and data plan you already have. That’s about half the monthly cost that Sprint and other carriers charge to use stand-alone wireless adapters.
Like other Android phones, the Evo 4G has Google maps and GPS, which provides excellent turn-by-turn directions and traffic information. I have a dedicated Magellan GPS in my car and found that the Evo works in places where the Magellan doesn’t. And because the Evo is connected to the Internet, it is able to receive traffic information.
Also typical of Android phones, the Evo is tightly integrated with Gmail and other Google services. That includes, of course, the ability to easily search data stored on the phone or on the Web, or search on Google maps. For example, when I wanted to find a restaurant in San Francisco, I just typed in the name of the restaurant in Google maps and the software searched the Web for the restaurant’s address and plotted a course. All GPS systems have points of interest. But because Google is searching the Web, it’s not limited to the ones programmed in by the device maker.
HTC has added its own Sense user interface to Android, which adds additional features, including a “friend stream” that aggregates your social networking experiences into a single stream. In many ways, Sense makes the phone a bit easier to use. But I was already accustomed to the standard Android user interface, so having to learn Sense slowed me down a bit. I wish they would make Sense optional.
Like all Android phones, the Evo 4G is not without flaws. Android apps have a way of crashing now and then. I don’t recall the phone ever freezing up, but I have found some annoying idiosyncrasies I haven’t experienced with iPhones.
One of Android’s best feature is also one of its flaws — the multi-tasking operating system that allows several programs to run at the same time. The problem is that apps run long after you stop using them. And while they run, they use energy, potentially slowing down foreground apps. That’s why the app I use the most is the free Advanced Task Killer, which is a convenient (albeit manual) way to clear out the memory.
Apple’s soon-to-be-released iPhone operating system 4.0 will also allow several apps to run at the same time, but Apple says it has a way of limiting the resources they use while they are in the background.
Contact Larry Magid at [email protected]. Listen for his technology chats on KCBS-AM (740) weekdays at 3:50 p.m.From Day One, Mitt Romney's bid for the presidency has rested on the belief that his ability to turn around faltering businesses would translate into turning around the country. But before he has that chance, it appears the former Massachusetts governor first must turn around his own campaign.
From Day One, Mitt Romney's bid for the presidency has rested on the belief that his ability to turn around faltering businesses would translate into turning around the country.
But before he has that chance, it appears the former Massachusetts governor first must turn around his own campaign.
A new Dispatch Poll shows him trailing President Barack Obama in bellwether Ohio by 9 points, 51 percent to 42 percent.
A surge of Democratic support for Obama has transformed the race since the first Dispatch Poll had the two dead-even at 45 percent just before the Republican National Convention in late August.
The survey is the fifth major poll - from The Washington Post to Fox News - of Ohio voters in a week to show the president ahead by 5 to 10 points. He also leads in surveys of most of the remaining swing states.
Obama's rise comes at an especially fortuitous time for the Democrat: Ohioans begin casting early ballots in two days.
Thus, while Romney is counting on strong performances in a trio of presidential debates that begin Wednesday night in Denver to transform the campaign, every day that Obama leads allows the incumbent to lock in supporters - much the way he did with great success in the 2008 election.
Ohio is among some 30 states with early voting, leading many political strategists to talk about "election month" rather than Election Day. Experts say as many as 40 percent of Ohio voters will cast an absentee ballot before Nov. 6.
For the first time in state history, most of the state's 7.8 million registered voters have been mailed an absentee-ballot application, and they'll get another in early October. As of last week, more than 723,000 already asked for an absentee ballot.
However, the GOP-dominated legislature pared early in-person voting hours that were preferred in past elections by African-Americans and Democrats, leading to a legal tussle in federal court that remains unresolved.
The president is ahead among independent voters by 3 points and is attracting slightly more GOP support than Romney is getting from Democrats.
That shows up in voters such as poll participant Wayne Butterfass, 70, a retired store owner from Cincinnati who said he has voted Republican for most of his life.
But not this year.
"Obama was handed an economy on the skids, after eight years of Bush," Butterfass said in an email. "All he ever did was think about war. I'm afraid Romney will do the same, especially the trickle-down theory.
"I don't know why any woman or gay would ever vote for Romney. All you have to do is look at the Republican platform. I've never seen such HATE this year in the Republican Party, national or state."
Five percent of Ohio voters said they remain undecided, while the other five candidates on the ballot (who were not included in the first Dispatch Poll) are dividing 3percent.
Obama is strongly benefitting from Democrats who have come home since the political conventions and the revelation of Romney's secretly recorded remarks dismissing 47 percent of Americans.
In August, almost exactly the same number of Democrats and Republicans responded to the Dispatch Poll. But after the mail-poll ballots went out this time to registered Ohio voters chosen exactly the same way - at random by a computer - more Democrats returned the poll forms than did Republicans. The breakdown: 43 percent Democrat, 35percent Republican, 20 percent no party affiliation, about 2percent Libertarian and less than 1 percent combined for the other parties officially recognized in Ohio: Constitution, Green and Socialist.
Republicans have complained that, in recent Ohio history, Democrats have seldom if ever enjoyed such an advantage at the ballot box indicated by recent polls. They are correct.
If the 2010 Ohio governor's race had seen the same partisan breakdown, Democrat Ted Strickland would have been narrowly re-elected instead of losing by 2 points to John Kasich, the new poll indicates.
In the final 2008 Dispatch Poll, a Democratic edge of just 4.5 percentage points among poll-takers helped Obama to a survey lead of 5.4 points; the actual result was Obama by 4.6 points.
But whether there's a serious, across-the-board breakdown among several independent state and national polling organizations, or that simply more Democrats are planning to vote than Republicans, there's no way to interpret the results as good for Romney.
"September is turning out to be one of Obama's best months in over a year," observed the Gallup Poll, which has the president up by 6 points nationwide.
Of course, the race is hardly over, with October featuring four debates, key economic reports and unpredictable international events - plus the almost-inevitable candidate gaffes. The two sides' get-out-the vote efforts will be critical as well.
By 8 points - 54 percent to 46 percent - Ohioans say that, regardless of their choice for president, Vice President Joe Biden is more qualified for the No. 2 job than Romney's running mate, Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan.
But most Ohio voters don't know which candidate to support in the three state Supreme Court races up for grabs this year. Although the races are partisan, the candidates do not have party labels on the ballot.
As in the first Dispatch Poll, former appeals court Judge William M. O'Neil is ahead of incumbent Republican Robert R. Cupp, 27percent to 16 percent, with 57percent undecided.
In a separate race for another six-year term, Justice Terrence O'Donnell has the most of any of the six high court hopefuls, 32 percent, easily topping Democratic state Sen. Michael Skindell's 11 percent.
For an unexpired two-year term ending in 2014, Justice Yvette McGee Brown is leading GOP challenger Sharon Kennedy 26 percent to 20percent, with the rest undecided.
A yawning gender gap shows up in the presidential race: Obama leads by 2 points among men but by 17 points with women.
Poll respondent Carol Prinz, a 52-year-old Lebanon homemaker, is a Democrat "enthusiastically" backing Obama.
"I feel the president has done a great job with foreign affairs, done the best anyone could do with the economy and is one really smart man," she said.
Marge Ciranni of Columbus has a more-personal reason for supporting the president's re-election.
"His health-care plan has helped our family. I agree with his support of education, use of facts in determining national policy, and his support of the social safety net," said the 61-year-old, who is unemployed but volunteering for the Obama campaign.
The presidential race also has a personal aspect for Rachael Reed, 26, of Ashville south of Columbus, who is voting for Romney because she believes he will decrease government spending.
"I am enthusiastically supporting Mitt Romney now," said the business class account executive for a cable TV company. "At first, I was skeptical and actually voted for a different candidate in the primary.
"However, after attending multiple rallies and actually meeting Mitt Romney, his son, Tagg, and Paul Ryan as well as closely watching the conventions, I feel like the Romney/Ryan ticket is the right choice to lead this country. After meeting Romney, I feel he is not the stoic, out-of-touch candidate he is portrayed to be. I feel he is a modest, honest and hardworking man who cares about our country's future."
Cleveland real-estate appraiser Paul Higgins, 49, is buying Romney's central campaign theme.
"Mitt Romney's business acumen is what our country needs to turn the economy around. I look at the fact that he made so much in his business ($40 million-plus a year?) as a BIG positive. Wish I could do that.
"If we continue to grow government programs at their current rate, there will be too many dependent U.S. citizens and not enough taxpaying citizens to carry the load. This imbalance will eventually bankrupt the country or lead us to socialism."
Higgins also chided Obama because he "skips meetings with the U.N. and world leaders in favor of David Letterman and The View. His inability to determine priorities is embarrassing to all U.S. citizens."
James F. Kee, 74-year-old retiree from Elyria, goes even further, calling Romney "the best man for the job, in my entire voting life."
The mail poll of 1,662 randomly selected likely Ohio voters Sept. 19 through yesterday has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.2 percentage points.
[email protected] read more on Stranger Things 2, pick up the new issue of Entertainment Weekly on stands Friday. You can buy the whole set now, or purchase the individual covers of Eleven, the boys, or the grown-ups. Don’t forget to subscribe for more exclusive interviews and photos, only in EW.
When Stranger Things 2 premieres Oct. 27 on Netflix, fans are in for a bit of a shock for the first minutes.
The opening of the “sequel” takes place in a completely different city than the main location of Hawkins, Indiana… and that’s all we can say.
“I liked opening the show in a place not in Hawkins, in an urban environment,” teases Matt Duffer. “I want people thinking maybe they’ve clicked on the show and then, boom, you realize ‘Oh now we’re still in it.’ But it’s all about broadening, and expanding our world.”
Adds his co-creator and brother Ross, “We have all these different threads and you don’t see how possibly all these things could come together and then slowly but surely they all play an integral role in the story this season.”
Dan Winters for EW
This week’s Entertainment Weekly features exclusive new details on the return of Stranger Things, including why the Duffer brothers want to consider it a sequel to the widely popular first season (instead of simply season 2). “When we started describing it as a sequel, Netflix was like, ‘Don’t do that, because sequels are known to be bad,'” says Matt. “I was like, ‘Yes, but what about T2 and Aliens and Toy Story 2 and Godfather II?'”
He adds, “The good news is that a lot of what we wanted to see or what we responded to, that seems to be what the audience responded to. Like we fell in love with Gaten [Matarazzo], and there were aspects, like Barb [played in season 1 by Shannon Purser], we were already planning to deal with. It felt like there was a nice alignment between what we wanted to see and what other people wanted to see.”
Stranger Things 2 is back on Oct. 27.Wooooh! i didn't expect the gift from the magnet exchange to arrive so UBERFAST to me! it was marked as sent on the 6th and only today the postman knocked on my door to hand me the brown envelope! the canadian post must rock!
in the envelope i found: - two magnets, one from ontario parks where my santa camps alot, the other one from huntsville where my santa was born - a sticker with the canadian maple leave, from huntsville - a thing that i thought was a postcard with a note from my match, while IN FACT it was a postcard with a note from my match AND canadian (i'd presume) wildflowers' seeds!!! do i really have to wait for the springtime to put them in the garden!??! i can't wait to do it!
THANK YOU MontyD! You officialy MADE MY DAY!Ed Sheeran knows you have questions about Taylor Swift’s plans to release a new album — but you’ll likely have to listen to “a full year of just all Ed” before you get to hear it.
During an interview with BBC, the “Shape of You” singer discussed his upcoming album, Divide, and his plans for the year. When speaking about his career, Sheeran asserted that 2017 would be his high point, mainly because most of his competition released their projects last year.
“I have a feeling about it,” he said. “Seventeen is my lucky number, and everyone I was scared of releasing of albums around me released them all last year — people like Beyoncé and the Weekend and Bruno Mars.”
He went on to tease a potential release date for Taylor Swift’s next album.
“Taylor [Swift] isn’t going to be releasing until probably the end of this year — Christmas is the smartest time to release because that’s when everyone buys records,” he said.
Swift hasn’t released an album since 2014’s 1989, which helped her snag the Album of the Year award at last year’s Grammys.
Read Sheeran’s full interview with BBC here.Labor has accused Mr Robert - who owns shares in some of Mr Marks' other companies - of a conflict of interest and misuse of public office. The scandal deepened on Tuesday when it was revealed Mr Robert had a meeting with a Chinese government minister during the trip, which Labor says weakens his claim he was travelling on a personal basis. Labor ramped up its attack on Stuart Robert during question time on Tuesday. Credit:Andrew Meares Now a translation of a Chinese government webpage suggests people from Nimrod were at Mr Robert's meeting with Wang Min, China's vice-minister of land and resources, the day after the signing ceremony. "Stuart Roberts (sic) said the Australian government welcomes Chinese company investment in mining exploration and development in Australia," the translated document says. "He said that China Minmetals Corporation and Nimrod Resources have set up a joint technical committee, the sign of a new beginning.
"He is glad that the Ministry and Geological Survey Bureau officials, people from the China Minmetals Corporation and Australia Nimrod Resources attended the meeting today." Mr Robert, pictured with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, was asked several questions during question time. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen Mr Robert declined to comment on the revelation, which will raise fresh questions about the lengths he went to for Nimrod and Mr Marks. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has ordered the nation's top public servant - Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet boss Martin Parkinson - to investigate the affair. Mr Robert arriving to question time with Treasurer Scott Morrison. Credit:Andrew Meares
Labor ramped up its question time attack on Tuesday but Mr Robert stood by his claim the trip was personal, with Sky News also reporting he travelled to China on a tourist visa. "I am confident I have not acted inappropriately and as the PM said yesterday, this matter has been referred to the highest public servant in the land, Dr Martin Parkinson, for review. I will fully assist the secretary in his review," Mr Robert told Parliament. But asked further questions - such as whether his outgoing passenger card or Chinese visa application reflected that he was travelling on a personal basis - Mr Robert refused to answer. Mr Turnbull stands by his process. "The government can't be criticised for being slow in reacting," the Prime Minister told Parliament.
"We have set in train the appropriate process, immediately [when] the matter came to light. The secretary will diligently look into the matter and he will provide me with advice and then I will make a decision." Shadow attorney-general Mark Dreyfus said Mr Robert must explain himself. "He's got to now make a full statement as to what it was he was doing in Beijing. It can't be both a trip for private purposes and a trip on which he met with a vice-minister in the Chinese government," Mr Dreyfus told reporters. He also called on Mr Turnbull to show leadership on the issue: "Running for cover behind a departmental inquiry is simply not good enough." But Defence Minister Marise Payne backed Mr Robert on Tuesday.
"I have complete confidence in the minister," she said. Mr Robert describes himself a "close personal friend" of Mr Marks, who has donated $2 million to the Liberal Party in recent years.
The scandal comes only weeks after Mr Turnbull lost two ministers - Jamie Briggs and Mal Brough - to scandal. Follow us on TwitterWomen Stood Their Ground in Tahrir
CAIRO — Only one woman sat among the 14 people who flanked General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Egyptian state television as he announced Egypt’s new constitutional order. In President Mohamed Morsy’s cabinet, there were two — out of 24 people. Over the last few days, in other words, Egyptian women have been asked to take sides between two organizations in which women are almost entirely marginalized: the Muslim Brotherhood and the Egyptian army.
And yet, whenever there are protests, there are women in Tahrir Square — lots of them. They know the drill. They have seen the videos on YouTube. They know the risks they take when they go down there. During the day, there are usually families in the square — little girls on their mothers’ shoulders, grandmothers.
But at night, when the families leave, the harassment begins.
Harassment is actually a gentle, almost euphemistic way to describe it. At least 80 women were assaulted last night in the square as the crowd celebrated Morsy’s ouster and the army’s takeover. And yet, this morning they were still there.
A week ago, before the June 30 protests, everyone hoped, as they do before any large demonstration in Tahrir since the revolution, that this time would be different-that the men who surround women, cut off their clothes, and attack them in groups and from every angle, many while pretending to recue them, would stay home. But if they ventured the hope, they also prepared for the worst.
In the week leading up to June 30, Operation Anti-Sexual Harassment (OpAntiSH), Tahrir Bodyguard, and other organizations held trainings in their central Cairo offices on how to intervene in instances of mob sexual assaults. These groups document cases ranging from sexual harassment to assault to rape. Men and women would show up, volunteers still in their work clothes, and stay long into the night to undergo training for the day itself.
By the Friday before the planned uprisings, there had already been 12 assaults in Tahrir. Last night saw the largest number of reported assaults since these organizations began documenting them.
Although there are many volunteers, and more at every demonstration than at the last, the scope of the problem is overwhelming and diffused across a wide and densely crowded area. "The problem is that the cases are all over the place," said Mariam Kirollos, a core team member of OpAntiSH. Because of the large number of volunteers of both genders, they are often able to intervene at a very early stage. But there are so many attacks, and the square so large, and the crush of people so dense, that they are far more often unable to reach people who need them.
Both OpAntiSH and Tahrir Bodyguard maintain an active presence on Twitter and Facebook, advising women and men which parts of the square and which metro exits to avoid. Meanwhile a group called Harassmap maintains a map of where the assaults take place. When Tahrir is full, it is impossible to move without coming into contact with other bodies and impossible to see what is happening only feet away. As a result, it is often difficult to access women who are being assaulted to bring them to safety. It becomes a crowd-sourced effort. Activists pass out flyers in Tahrir explaining to bystanders what to do if they witness assaults and, more broadly, the need to change the culture that allows them to happen. Last night, they even called on those who had access to apartments overlooking the square to try to identify instances of assault from above. Because the attacks can involve many assailants, it is actually possible to spot them aerially. One volunteer reported an assault in which as many as 400 people were involved, some participating while others looked on. "Maybe they’re organized," said Kirollos, "but definitely there are people who join in."
Activist groups sometimes have to step in even when it seems that the survivor should be in safe hands: OpAntiSH tweeted that its activists had intervened in a case where a survivor was about to undergo a "virginity test" by a female doctor in a police booth inside the Tahrir metro station. Military officers used these so-called tests against female protesters under the SCAF’s previous tenure as rulers of Egypt.
As far as activists are aware, no one has been arrested or even charged in connection with these gang assaults.
In recent days, Muslim Brotherhood members have contrasted the lack of sexual harassment at their pro-Morsy protests with the assaults in Tahrir. They have a point. But at the Brotherhood protests, there were far fewer women present overall. And activists respond that there were many mob assaults documented during the jubilation in Tahrir Square when Morsy took office a year ago.
Moreover, on the question of women’s rights, the relative absence of sexual assault at Brotherhood protests is about the only thing one can say for the Brotherhood just now. Former President Morsy’s government fumbled at every turn. As recently as June 30, the Ministry of Health shared a survivor’s name, hospital, and details of the assault with the newspaper of the Freedom and Justice Party (the Muslim Brotherhood’s political party) while also citing instances of sexual assault in the square in an attempt to delegitimize the protesters there. In March, they opposed a document on violence against women issued by the United Nations, and they consistently refer to female genital mutilation, a widespread practice in Egypt, as a sanctioned cultural practice.
General Adel Afifi, a member of a Salafi party allied with the Brotherhood who serves on the Shura Council’s human rights committee, in a statement that has now become legend among the activist community, declared: "Girls who join [the protests] do so knowing they are in the middle of thugs and street types. She must protect herself before asking the Ministry of Interior to do so. Sometimes a girl contributes 100 percent to her rape because she puts herself in those circumstances."
Given comments like this and, more broadly, the risks each woman takes consciously when she enters the square, it says something about the strength of women’s conviction of their right to participate fully in public discourse and political life that they keep showing up.
The women at the protests are of all religious and political persuasions. On June 30, I met Amani Sayed, 43, who wore a full face veil. Her gripe with the Brotherhood? That they had divided Egyptians from one another — Muslim from Christian, liberal from conservative.
Huwaida Ibrahim, a 34-year-old international football referee who does not wear a hijab, emphasized the role of women in the economy, saying, "If women don’t go to work, half of the country will stop." That was why she was there — to protest the horrendous economic conditions under the Brotherhood.
Fatima Mustapha, a 35-year-old Cairene housewife said she had supported Morsy until he made such a mess and "spilled the blood of our youth." She said that when it came to women’s participation in politics, "lack of knowledge" was the problem, "I want women in the People’s Assembly, on the Shura Council, in the cabinet, in the judiciary" she said. "But it won’t be people like me. It will be particular people [of a particular social class or educational background], … but we all want to be able to try."
This morning, there was a military air show over Tahrir, a last hurrah of the protests and a message to the masses: Show’s over, go home. At Tahrir around midday there was a small stage set up on one side of the square with music and a crowd of a few hundred people. There was a women’s section in the middle cordoned off from the men with a large space around them, patrolled by women in yellow vests. A cruel joke given the violence of the night before.A 16-year-old student says she was forced to withdraw from her prestigious Catholic prep school after texting a topless photo to two of the school's star athletes, who shared it with the entire lacrosse team but received no punishment. Instead of using the incident as a teachable moment for both male and female students about trust and social media, the administration sent a clear message: girls are ungodly creatures who tempt boys into sin.
Last month, 16-year-old Alexis texted a topless photo of herself to her good friend Jason.* Jason and Alexis had known each other since middle school, and had recently become even closer since Alexis was the manager of Jason's lacrosse team at Paul VI Catholic High School, a Fairfax, Virginia school well-known for its stellar athletics.
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"Basically everyone" at Paul VI sexts, Alexis said, but she didn't e-flash Jason because she had a crush on him; it was a dare. "We were texting about this girl that used to be in love with him and how she sends him photos, and he said I would never do that," Alexis recalled. "He kept saying I wouldn't, so I said, 'watch me.' It was just a joke." The duo group-texted the photo to Peter, another close friend on the lacrosse team, but Alexis trusted that it wouldn't go any further. She was wrong.
Soon, Alexis heard rumors that one of the boys had sent her photo to the entire team in a group message. Her friends denied everything, so she didn't worry about it too much. But then, about a week later, her mother, Carol, received an email from a parent of a kid on the lacrosse team confirming the stories; apparently, the boys had been giggling over the photo together in gym class. The next day, Patrick McGroarty, the Dean of Students, called Alexis into his office.
According to Carol and Alexis, McGroarty told Alexis her behavior was "outrageous," especially because she wasn't dating either of the boys. Alexis was suspended for the day and told she would have a school counsel the next week to determine her future. While Alexis sat there being berated, she heard Jason and Peter called into the Athletic Director's office. "That's what my school does," she said. "They only care about sports."
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"What upsets me is that Alexis was worried about covering for these boys, since they're star athletes," Carol said. "She knew if they got in trouble people would get mad at her."
The next week, Alexis, her parents, a handful of teachers, McGroarty and the principal, Virginia Colwell, had a meeting in which Alexis was asked if she knew what pornography was and whether she felt she had "harassed" Jason and Peter. Alexis said she found the questions complicated and was criticized for not answering them correctly, including one about "what justice" she felt the boys should receive; Alexis and her parents assumed the administration was referring to Jason and Peter's punishment, but they actually "wanted to know what I should do to make them feel better if they were distraught," Alexis said.
At the end of the meeting, the board unanimously decided that Alexis should withdraw from Paul VI. Jason and Peter — who, Alexis says, have already verbally committed to D-1 universities for lacrosse — were not punished in the slightest. "Their minds were clearly already made up," Carol said. "When I said this reaction was outrageous, the principal said, 'No, what's outrageous is that your daughter sent an unsolicited photo to these two boys.'"
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McGroarty told Jezebel that the school was unable to comment on any incidents involving current or former Paul VI students.
Alexis said she's seen Jason since then, at a mutual friend's party — he avoided her and said "I don't have time for this" when she cornered him. "It sucks you got expelled," he said, "but what happened to you was your fault. you did this to yourself."
In a letter to superintendent Sr. Bernadette McManigal, Carol asked the district to reconsider their decision:
Perhaps the biggest problem I have is that there was no compassion shown to my daughter. She was never counseled by Father Kelly, or even asked her side of the story. Why weren’t the children brought in all together and asked what happened? Why were the boys called to the AD’s office with their coach while my daughter was in with the Dean of Students? Why did the AD tell the boys that Alexis wouldn’t be in trouble? Why didn’t the Dean of Students believe Alexis when she said that the boys were the ones who sent the photo to everyone?
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"...in a Catholic school where we should be embracing our children and helping through situations like this, we choose to get rid of the problem instead," she wrote.
Teenage girls are systematically shamed for sexting, even though studies show that boys are just as likely to share x-rated photos. However, young men are almost twice as likely to share those photos, as well as more likely to receive forwarded sexts. Instead of harshly punishing girls who feel pressure to send sexy photos of themselves — or even instead of punishing the recipients — why don't schools teach both sexters and sextees why it's poor judgement to send and share private information? It's similar to the abstinence vs. safe sex debate: kids are definitely going to do it, so we need to teach them how to be safe.
Today is the first day back from spring break for Paul VI students. Alexis is at home, waiting for her local public school to allow her to enroll; since she abruptly withdrew midyear, the school wants to learn more from Paul VI about what happened. Jason and Peter, of course, are on campus, hanging out with their buddies.
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"If they hadn't shared the photo, I would be at school with my friends right now," Alexis said. "But I'm not. I'm sitting at home while they're there."
*Some names have been changed.
Update: responses from administration and alumni.It’s no secret that witch attacks are becoming far too frequent in this day and age. Protect yourself, your farm, your family, and your loved ones with a brand-new state of the art security system!
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While most rational intruders will flee when faced by an opponent that outclasses them, some may need a little extra persuasion. For cases like this, the Strawman is capable of increasing its illusory output to provide the extra impetus needed to deter your intruder. Choose from any number of pre-programmed illusions, or create your own with the Strawman’s easy-to-use Fear Generator.*
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the room. A cordon of enraged students holding signs and yelling “Genocide is not a joke” greeted us.
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There were probably 50 students inside the building, and another 100 on the sidewalk outside. Panero grabbed footage of that scene, too:
The scene at Linsly-Chit for @BuckleyProgram on "The Future of Free Speech: Threats in Higher Ed" pic.twitter.com/426P8utlgv — James Panero (@JamesPanero) November 6, 2015
After basking in oppression during the afternoon conference, several of us walked over to the Omni Hotel for an evening of privilege. There, a Yale professor who had been an attendee at the afternoon’s festivities regaled us with the following tale: Following the last panel, he approached one of the sidewalk protesters to inquire about the source of her discontent. She announced: “Apparently, someone in there said that we should burn down an Indian village!” The professor attempted to disillusion her. Meanwhile, on the steps outside the building a student demonstrator waxed rhetorical about the evils of free speech. As the professor and the student talked (“debated” would be a stretch), several protesters turned to the pair: “Excuse us! Could you keep it down? We’re trying to hear the speaker!”
The mind staggers under the weight of so much irony.Search Press Release Archive
Press Release - August 5, 2016
Action Comics #1 sells faster than a speeding bullet for nearly $1 million at Heritage Auctions
DALLAS — A rare copy of Action Comics #1 — featuring the first appearance of Superman and considered a cornerstone of pop culture — quickly surpassed its $750,000 estimate to sell for nearly $1 million at a public auction of vintage comic books and comic art Thursday, Aug. 4, 2016, at Heritage Auctions. The 1938 comic book sold for $956,000 to set a new record for a copy of#1 at the world's largest vintage comics auctioneer."As the bidding went higher and higher we were grateful bidders recognized this copy as the gem it truly is," said Lon Allen, Managing Director of Comics & Comic Art at Heritage. "Few copies of this comic survive, let alone come to auction with such a bright cover. It displays beautifully."The copy is graded 5.5 by Certified Guaranty Company (CGC) out of a possible 10.#1 originally cost just 10 cents when it revolutionized pop culture and superheroes when it debuted on comic racks in June of 1938. About 100 copies of the comic book are known to exist 78 years later.The edition sold Thursday came from the collection of a serious comic book fan from the east coast of who purchased it from a dealer in the 1990s for $26,000. Allen said the copy likely spurred intense bidding because it is very attractive for the grade.Hi-Res images available:Eric Bradley, Public Relations Associate214-409-1871; [email protected] the wild-card round through the World Series, ESPN has you covered.
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World Series
The Kansas City Royals celebrate their first World Series championship since 1985. Robert Beck for ESPN
New York Mets vs. Kansas City Royals
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• Matz: Adaptable Piscotty powers Cardinals to win in NLDS opener
• Rogers: Cubs' offense stalls as wide strike zone hampers approach
• John Lackey, Stephen Piscotty give Cardinals opening lift
• Cubs' offense asleep against Cardinals in Game 1
• Kurkjian: Five key questions for Cubs-Cardinals NLDS
New York Mets' Daniel Murphy reacts after hitting a home run during the sixth inning in Game 5 of baseball's National League Division Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers. Alex Gallardo/AP Photo
New York Mets vs. Los Angeles Dodgers
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• Rubin: Mets ace Harvey gets Game 1 matchup against Cubs
• O'Connor: Can Don Mattingly catch a break in October?
• Saxon: Kershaw saves Dodgers, bullpen saves Mattingly
• Rubin: Mets turn to Jacob deGrom in Game 5
• O'Connor: Mets' Game 3 win shows they can win it all
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• Saxon: Kershaw still has a chance to save Dodgers' season
• Utley suspended for takeout slide, will appeal
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• O'Connor: If Utley plays, Harvey should heed Tommy John
• Schoenfield: The slide that ruined everybody's night
• Saxon: Utley sets a tough but winning tone
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• Mets offer pointed comments about Utley's slide
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AL Championship Series
The Royals celebrate Lorenzo Cain scoring the tie-breaking run in the eighth inning of Game 6 to beat the Blue Jays. AP Photo/Paul Sancya
Toronto Blue Jays vs. Kansas City Royals
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• Crasnick: Estrada comes up big as Blue Jays extend ALCS
• Caple: Estrada pitches Jays back to K.C., where spotlight shifts to Price
• Padilla: Edinson Volquez steps up, then runs out of gas as Royals lose
• Caple: Marco Estrada extends Toronto's season with Game 5 gem
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• Stats & Info: Stroman grinds out a win for Toronto
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NL Championship Series
Robert Deutsch/USA TODAY Sports
Chicago Cubs vs. New York Mets
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• Greenberg: Cubs are self-aware, self-assured and self-motivatedIf you’ve been paying any frequent attention to charts and not just prices, you can easily identify that most alternative coins have been fluctuating almost exactly like Bitcoin. Bitcoin goes up, they go up, Bitcoin goes down, they go down. However, many people don’t actually know why this happens, however, the answer is actually pretty simple.
If you’ve used an exchange like Binance you probably already understood why this phenomenon happens. You see, currently, many smaller coins can only be bought through another crypto coin pair, by which I mean, you can’t buy them with Euros or US Dollars, you have to trade in a crypto coin in order to obtain another coin.
Most smaller coins can only be bought by trading Bitcoin in exchange for the specific coin you want to buy. This is the reason the market is currently heavily tied to Bitcoin.
The step towards an “independent” price fluctuation for each coin relies on the freeness of exchange pairs. Most coins can only be bought through Bitcoin, but, in the future, when more trading pairs are added and you can buy any other coin by using another coin, then the different cryptocurrencies will each distinguish themselves in their own prices.
Ethereum is already the second largest trading pair out there, allowing you to buy several coins by trading this in, but it’s still in no way compared to the number of coins you can buy using Bitcoin.
All we can do is request more trading pairs and hope the exchanges add them.
AdvertisementsNew legislation streamlines the more than two dozen requirements previously needed to launch facilities, which offer supervision and sterile equipment
Canada’s government has made it easier to open supervised drug injection sites across the country, offering communities a lifeline as they battle an opioid crisis that has claimed thousands of lives in recent years.
New legislation passed this week streamlines the more than two dozen requirements previously needed to launch these facilities, which offer a medically supervised space and sterile equipment for people who use drugs intravenously.
War on prescription drugs: what if you depend on opioids to live a decent life? Read more
“Solid evidence shows that, when properly set up and maintained, supervised consumption sites save lives, and they do it without increasing drug use or crime in the neighbourhood,” Jane Philpott, Canada’s health minister, told parliament this week.
The law builds on Canada’s previous success in this field. In 2003, health authorities in Vancouver launched Insite – the first supervised injection facility in North America – to address an epidemic of HIV and hepatitis C in the city’s Downtown Eastside neighbourhood.
By 2015, Insite had logged more than 3m visits and had safely treated nearly 5,000 overdoses – without one death. It had earned accolades around the world for the critical role it plays in saving lives and preventing the transmission of HIV and hepatitis C, while research suggested those who visited the clinic were more likely to pursue detox programs.
But the program clashed with the then Conservative federal government and its tough-on-crime approach. After losing a bid at the supreme court to close Insite, the Conservatives hit back with legislation – described by one health authority as “unduly onerous” – aimed at muddying the process of opening safe injection sites.
Communities were now required to brandish multiple letters of support, compile reports detailing statistics on crime and HIV rates and carry out background checks for staff members, among other demands. The daunting requirements stalled plans by several communities and left others carrying out feasibility studies for more than a decade.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Canada’s health minister: ‘We know that at minimum in Canada, there were 2,300 Canadians that died last year of an opioid overdose.’ Photograph: Dominick Reuter/AFP/Getty Images
Since taking power in late 2015, the Liberals – fuelled by a surging number of overdose deaths across the country – have taken a different approach. Last year the party gave the green light to the country’s second supervised intravenous drug use site and have paved the way for three new safe injection services to open in Montreal within the coming weeks. Another 18 applications from 10 cities will be expedited, the government said this week.
The success of Insite has sparked interest across North America; groups in Seattle, San Francisco and New York City, among others, are currently exploring the creation of similar facilities.
The Canadian government’s emphasis on safe injection sites comes amid criticism that it has done little to address the devastation being wrought by fentanyl – a drug that is 50 times stronger than heroin – and other opioids across the country. “We know that at minimum in Canada, there were 2,300 Canadians that died last year of an opioid overdose,” Philpott told a conference in Montreal this week. “The death toll is worse than any other infectious epidemic in Canada, including the peak of Aids deaths, since the Spanish flu that took the lives of 50,000 people a century ago.”
Her keynote address was interrupted by protesters, who unfurled a banner reading: “They talk, we die.”
Canada First Nations reserve bars outsiders amid opioid crisis Read more
On Friday, the Canadian Nurses Association described the new law as a good start. “We do think it’s a definite significant improvement over the previous government’s legislation,” said Barb Shellian, the organisation’s president.
The new legislation sets out five categories of requirements, including a letter of support from a provincial or territorial minister and evidence of the site’s intended public health benefit. Amendments added in by the country’s senate also require a minimum 45-day period for public consultations and encouraging staff to offer pharmaceutical therapies before a client can use illicit drugs. “In a perfect world we would have preferred to see some of those five not be there, specifically ones about offering access to rehab on every single visit,” Shellian said. “But we recognise the victory when we see it.”
The organisation will continue to carefully monitor the law to ensure the requirements do not hinder the creation of these much-needed facilities, she added. “These people are someone’s brother, someone’s sister, someone’s mom. And we need to pay attention to this absolutely desperate epidemic that is happening in our country right now.It’s now possible to use a USB stick to measure the levels of HIV in a patient’s blood. The device has a 95 percent accuracy rate and takes less than 30 minutes, which is a big improvement over current tests.
Patients usually need to send fluids to a lab to test their HIV levels. Depending on the specific test, it can take days or weeks to get results. In a study published this week in Scientific Reports, researchers from both Imperial College London and tech company DNA Electronics created a tiny device that does the same thing.
It works like this: you put a drop of blood on the USB stick. This changes the acidity levels of the metal in the USB. A chip inside the USB notes the change in acidity and turns this into an electrical signal. It can then be connected to a computer or other hand-held device, where the researcher can read out the result. The scientists tested 991 blood samples. They received the results in an average of 21 minutes.
This technology probably won’t make it to market soon, but it could lead to a big improvements when it does. The USB is easy-to-use and disposable, which means that it can be used to administer HIV tests in more rural or inaccessible areas. And because the process is pretty simple, patients can learn to monitor their own levels of HIV to make sure their medication is working.This post is about declaration scopes and shadowing in Go.
package main import "fmt" func f(x int) { for x := 0; x < 10; x++ { fmt.Println(x) } } var x int func main() { var x = 200 f(x) }
This program declares x four times. All four are different variables because they exist in different scopes.
package main import "fmt" func f() { x := 200 fmt.Println("inside f: x =", x) } func main() { x := 100 fmt.Println("inside main: x =", x) f() fmt.Println("inside main: x =", x) }
In Go the scope of a declaration is bound to the closest pair of curly braces, { and }. In this example, we declare x to be 100 inside main, and 200 inside f.
What do you expect this program will print?
package main import "fmt" func main() { x := 100 for i := 0; i < 5; i++ { x := i fmt.Println(x) } fmt.Println(x) }
There are several scopes in a Go program; block scope, function scope, file scope, package scope, and universe scope. Each scope encompasses the previous. What you are seeing is called shadowing.
var x = 100 func main() { var x = 200 fmt.Println(x) }
Most developers are comfortable with a function scoped variable shadowing a package scoped variable.
func f() { var x = 99 if x > 90 { x := 60 fmt.Println(x) } }
But a block scoped variable shadowing a function scoped variable may be surprising.
The justification for a declaration in one scope shadowing another is consistency, prohibiting just block scoped declarations from shadowing another scope, would be inconsistent.0 SHARES Facebook Twitter Google Whatsapp Pinterest Print Mail Flipboard
Paul Krugman of The New York Times pointed out why the increasing ACA numbers are snowballing into a disaster for the Republican Party.
Krugman wrote on his blog:
The benefits of Obamacare, for all its imperfections, are immense. Millions of people who lived extremely anxious lives now have far more security than before. Compared with those benefits, the complaints of some already insured people that they have less choice of doctors than before, or that they’re no longer allowed to retain minimalist plans, look like whining. (And of course not one of the more serious-sounding stories about soaring premiums and all that has held up under scrutiny.) And speaking of whining, the GOP response seems to be to make every possible insinuation to the effect that the numbers are somehow fraudulent. I actually don’t think there’s a game plan here; their whole position was premised on the inevitable collapse of health reform, and they have no plan B.
In a couple of paragraphs, Krugman hit on three keys point as to why the GOP’s ACA position is killing them:
1). This law is benefitting millions of people.
2). Republicans can’t mount a rational opposition to the law, so they have been reduced to looking like whiners.
3). The GOP put all of their eggs in the repeal Obamacare basket, and they have no backup plan.
It is amazing that there isn’t a single Republican leader who stopped to ask what do we do if we are wrong and the law works? Republicans had convinced themselves that the law would never ever work despite the fact that the major components of the law were already working in Massachuettes.
There is nothing worse in politics than the perception of being a whiner. The Republican position has weakened to such a degree that they are now arguing against the validity of the sign up numbers. The success of the ACA means that Republicans will find a less receptive electorate willing to hear their message that Obamacare is evil and must be destroyed at all costs.
The infighting within their party has left Republicans unable to agree on an alternative to Obamacare. The reason why House Republicans keep holding votes to repeal the ACA is because getting rid of the law is one of the few things that they all agree on.
The ACA isn’t failing, but the Republican Party is. What looked like a strength heading into November is turning into the anchor that could sink GOP hopes on a Senate takeover in 2014.
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:Michelle Livings of Bloodstock Radio recently conducted an interview with vocalist James LaBrie and guitarist John Petrucci of progressive metal giants DREAM THEATER. You can now watch the chat below.
DREAM THEATER will release its new, self-titled album — the band's 12th studio release overall, and fourth with Roadrunner Records — on September 24.
Speaking to Ultimate-Guitar.com, Petrucci stated about "Dream Theater": "I think it's building on [what we did on the "A Dramatic Turn of Events" album], but taking it to the next level. One of the things I really wanted to do on 'A Dramatic Turn of Events' was to create something that was sonically very rich and high-def and powerful and I think we accomplished that. But on this album, I wanted to take that even further…. [I wanted to] get more cinematic with it and more earthy and aggressive and bigger. I wanted a bigger, more forward in-your-face kind of sound. I think that kind of dictated the sounds we went for while we were writing and recording and then ultimately how it was mixed. So yeah, it was kind of building on that, but taking it to the next level. You always need to progress and to try and do something different and kind of have a little bit different take on it and a different perspective. But hopefully make it better as you go."
The nine-track disc was recorded at Cove City Studio in Glen Cove, Long Island, with Petrucci producing and Richard Chycki engineering and mixing. It's the band's second album with drummer Mike Mangini, and the first one on which he was a part of the writing process from Day One.
In January, Petrucci said of Mangini's work: "When people hear the drumming on this album, they're gonna be pretty freaked out. On the last album, he did a great job, but he wasn't there for the writing process and he was interpreting drum parts that I had programmed. Even though he used his creativity, of course, to change them up
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you have the disease or illness of addiction or alcoholism, the best way to tackle it is to not use drugs in any form — whether it’s state-sponsored opiates like methodone or illegal street drugs or a legal substance like alcohol. We see no distinction between these substances. What we believe in is that abstinence-based recovery is the best solution for recovery for people suffering from this condition.”
[From YouTube]
Russell further addressed the death of Amy Winehouse and urged Parliament that her death not stand “in vain” and should, instead, inspire new drug policies in the UK as a “force for change and good policy.” He further stated that “addicts will always be able to get drugs whether they are illegal or not.” Russell also added that putting addicts on methadone via social programs does not help but them but “leave[s] them on the sidelines” because “just to park people on methadone for four to seven years is criminal.” When pressed about the social responsibility of celebrities, Brand responded, “Who cares about bloody celebrities?” Of course, Russell agrees that not everyone will respond to abstinence-based recovery without the aid of methadone, but he adds that “I’m not a legal expert. I’m saying that, to a drug addict, the legal aspect is irrelevant. If you need to get drugs, you will. The criminal and legal status, I think, sends the wrong message. Being arrested isn’t a lesson, it’s just an administrative blip.” So what is the ultimate answer on how to deal with drug addicts in the UK (or elsewhere)? Nobody really knows, but at least Russell Brand is willing to speak out about his experiences and open up the dialogue for further discussion.
As to Russell’s dubious fashion sense? There’s no hope for recovery in that regard, mates. Especially since he showed up to Parliament wearing this outfit.Bethesda-by-the-Sea’s rector, the Rev. James Harlan, began his sermon Sunday night with an appraisal of the power of God’s words, as well as our own. “We know the power of speech, of words,” he said. According to the White House pool report, Trump was seated in the third row.
Harlan quoted Nelson Mandela, who said: “It is never my custom to use words lightly. If 27 years in prison have done anything to us, it was to use the silence of solitude to make us understand how precious words are and how real speech is in its impact on the way people live and die.”
“Words matter,” Harlan continued. “Proverbs 18, for example, says death and life are in the power of the tongue. Words can build up or tear down. Words can speak truth or obfuscate truth. Words convey information, emotion, motivation.” Harlan spoke about the healing power of God’s words, which, according to biblical teaching, were used to create the universe. And Harlan said, “your words and mine can have as much destructive and divisive potential as creative and healing potential.”
Harlan ended his sermon on a note of instruction for the worshipers, saying, “Let that light shine in our words and our actions in our love for every human being.”
During his presidency, Trump has aligned himself politically with white evangelical Christians; he has an influential informal committee of evangelical advisers who have encouraged decisions such as the nomination of Neil M. Gorsuch to the Supreme Court and Trump’s declaration of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
The Episcopal Church is generally considered to be a more progressive institution. The Trumps were married at Bethesda-by-the-Sea in 2005, and he attended the church’s Christmas Eve services in 2016 after his election.
The Trumps are spending Christmas at Mar-a-Lago, the president’s resort in Palm Beach.
You can read a transcript of Harlan’s sermon below, or watch it here beginning at roughly the 55-minute mark.
In the beginning, in the beginning before and beyond you and me before and beyond this country, and this culture, before and beyond even this planet: in the beginning, the Gospel According to John tells us, was the Word. The Evangelist takes us all the way back, all the way back, to the beginning to put this evening’s celebration in the right context. Back to the beginning where God spoke and there was light. God need only say the word and the world comes into being. That is the power of God’s creativity and love. Our words are perhaps not so awe inspiring, but we know don’t we? We know the power of speech, of words. Nelson Mandela the great champion of racial equality in South Africa, who was imprisoned for almost three decades for standing up to a government that was repressing and racist and all of that. Nelson Mandela knew the power of words. He said: “It is never my custom to use words lightly. If 27 years in prison have done anything to us it was to use the silence of solitude to make us understand how precious words are and how real speech is in its impact on the way people live and die. Words matter. The book of Proverbs talks often about the power of words. Proverbs 18, for example says death and life are in the power of the tongue. Words can build up or tear down. Words can speak truth or obfuscate truth. Words convey information, emotion, motivation. When God created the universe, the book of Genesis tells us God did so by the Word, speaking saying, “Let there be light.” And there was. That word of God, that word through which God loved and lovingly brought this whole world into being, that word became flesh to live among us to live within us, in Jesus Christ. The word of God is more powerful and more transforming than any word you or I could possibly utter. And the gospel according to John tells us that that Word brings light, pure light, light that casts away the darkness of fear and pain. Light that offers the only real possibility of reconciling with enemies, of welcoming strangers, of truly loving one another, of truly knowing ourselves. Your words and mine too often give voice to and empower the darkness that sometimes seems to loom so large. Your words and mine can have as much destructive and divisive potential as creative and healing potential. But God’s Word, made flesh in Jesus, whose incarnation we celebrate on this holy night, that word is perfect and pure light. That word is light that casts out darkness and fear. That word creates within and around us love and peace. That word enlightens us to see who we truly are: beloved children of God. And herein lies, I think, the greatest miracle about this light, this light of God’s love. This light that became flesh in Jesus is also within you and me. The light of God’s love and Jesus is at the core of who we truly are. That creative healing light of God’s love is longing to shine forth from within you and from within me to bring light to our lives and to the world. That light of the love of God in Christ wants to shine through to enlighten our minds to bring peace to our hearts to heal our deepest hurts. I wonder tonight where is that light of God’s love shining most brightly for you? Don’t get consumed or distracted by the darkness, even though I know that sometimes it seems difficult to ignore. Tonight and tomorrow and on from there, let’s testify, let’s bear witness like John did to the light of God’s love that we know in Jesus Christ. Let’s testify in word and action that no one need feel confined to the darkness. Not you, not me, not any person is beyond the light-filled touch of the word of God and Jesus Christ. Let’s let that light shine in our words and our actions in our love for every human being. Let’s let that light shining through us be our gifts to ourselves, to our families and friends, and to the world this Christmas.
Kayla Epstein is the social media editor for National at The Washington Post. She specializes in blending traditional reporting and social media to tell stories and engage readers. She previously worked for the Guardian US, where she worked in support of the Pulitzer Prize-winning team that broke the National Security Agency stories.
Post RecommendsPearson's Candy Company is an American chocolate and confectionery manufacturer headquartered in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Founded as a confectionery distribution firm in 1909, the company began to manufacture its own products in 1912. Originally a family-owned company, Pearson's experienced changes in ownership, acquisitions and product alterations in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, before its most recent sale in November of 2018 to Spell Capital, a Minneapolis private equity firm.[3]
Pearson's products are produced on five production lines in the company’s Saint Paul plant. The company sells its Mint Patties, Salted Nut Roll, and Bit-O-Honey nationally and its Nut Goodie and Bun Bars products in several Midwestern states. As of 2018, Pearson's was estimated to be the 42nd largest confectionery company in North America by revenue.[2]
History [ edit ]
Pearson family [ edit ]
[4] The Salted Nut Roll is Pearson's flagship product.
Pearson's Candy Company was founded as a confectionery distribution firm in 1909 by P. Edward Pearson and his brothers, John and Oscar. Two more brothers, Waldemar and C. Fritz, joined the company several years later.[5] By 1935, W. G. Pearson was president of the firm.[6] The five brothers determined manufacturing would be more profitable than distribution and, in 1912, introduced their first confection, the Nut Goodie.[7]
Pearson's grew and began manufacturing for other companies, including Whitmans and Planters. Pearson's introduced the Salted Nut Roll in 1933, at the height of The Great Depression.[7] The success of the Salted Nut Roll prompted other manufacturers to mimic the confection. Pearson's subsequently changed the roll's name to the Choo Choo Bar, to distinguish the product. The Choo Choo name, however, was not as successful, and the original name was restored with the Pearson's logo more prominently displayed.[5]
By the end of World War II, the Pearson brothers had dropped the distribution aspect of the business. The youngest brother, William Pearson, joined the family business in 1944, as did George Pearson, son of founder P. Edward Pearson. In 1951, Pearson's acquired the Trudeau Candy Company, which brought Mint Patties and the Seven Up bar to Pearson's product line. The company moved to a new manufacturing plant at its current address in 1959.[7] In 1962, Pearson’s acquired Milwaukee-based Sperry Candy Company, a company known for its Chicken Dinner Bar. Pearson's, however, sold Sperry Candy to the Schuler Chocolate Factory of Winona, Minnesota five years later.[8]
Ownership changes [ edit ]
The Pearson family sold the company in 1968 to ITT/Continental Baking, a New York firm. ITT/Continental Baking sold the company to an out-of-state confectionery partnership in 1979. During this time, sales declined due to problems with availability and product changes, such as a wrapper redesign and recipe change of the Nut Goodie.[5]
In 1985, the company was purchased by Larry Hassler and Judith Johnston. The company’s previous owners had split up, causing the bank to offer the company in the leveraged buyout. The Nut Goodie's original wrapper and recipe were restored and, despite the loss of a label contract with General Mills to produce Nature Valley granola bars, which accounted for 1.4 million bars daily and 85 percent of the company's total tonnage, Pearson's became profitable again in December 1992.[9] In early 1998, Pearson's acquired the Bun Bar trademark from Clark Bar America. Pearson's introduced Flurries in 2004.[5]
In August 2011, Pearson's was acquired by Brynwood Partners IV, who sold their interest in Pearson's Candy to Spell Capital of Minneapolis, in November of 2018.[3]
Products [ edit ]
Current products [ edit ]
A Pearson's Nut Goodie
Salted Nut Rolls are the company's best selling product,[10] and together with Mint Patties account for approximately 80 percent of the company’s sales.[9] Mint Patties are sold nationally and Salted Nut Rolls are available in approximately 60 percent of the company's outlets. In late 2013, Pearson's acquired the Bit-O-Honey brand from Nestle USA, Inc.[11] Although the company sells its products primarily in the United States, it has ranked among the largest confectionery companies in the world,[12] and as of 2018, was estimated to be the 42nd largest confectionery company in North America by revenue.[2]
Pearson's utilizes 200 tons of peanuts, 400 tons of sugar, 100 tons of chocolate and 350 tons of corn syrup per month. Products are produced in the company’s 120,000 sq ft (11,000 m2) plant on five production lines.[13] Current products include:
Product Introduced Description Bit-O-Honey 1924 Almond bits embedded in a honey-flavored taffy Bun Bars 1998 Maple, vanilla or caramel center covered with chocolate and peanuts Mint Patties 1951 Mint-flavored patty covered with dark chocolate Nut Goodie 1912[6] Cluster with a maple-flavored center covered with chocolate and peanuts Salted Nut Roll 1933[6] Roll of nougat covered with caramel and salted peanuts
Discontinued products [ edit ]
Seven Up Bar [ edit ]
The Seven Up Bar was a candy bar comprising seven different chocolate "pillows", each filled with a different flavor. Flavors changed with the availability and popularity of ingredients, which included, among others, brazil nut, buttercream, butterscotch, caramel, cherry, coconut, fudge, mint, nougat and orange.[7] The high manufacturing costs and trademark issues with a soda manufacturer (The American Bottling Company, today Cadbury Schweppes), caused the bar to be retired in 1979.[14]
Chicken Dinner Bar [ edit ]
The Chicken Dinner Bar had been a product of the Sperry Candy Company, which was acquired by Pearson’s in 1962. The bar, introduced during The Great Depression, was so called in reference to President Herbert Hoover’s promise of “a chicken in every pot”.[15] The bar did not contain chicken or other poultry products, but was, rather, a chocolate-covered nut roll. Pearson’s discontinued the bar’s production after the acquisition.[14] Early TV commercials sang "Chick - Chick - Chick - Chick - Chicken Dinner" similar to, and in the cadence of a rooster crowing.
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
Bibliography [ edit ]
Hale, James (2006). The Wonderful Wacky World of Marketingmobiles. Veloce Publishing Ltd. ISBN 1-84584-003-8.
Kimmerle, Beth (2003). Candy: The Sweet History. Collectors Press, Inc. ISBN 1-888054-83-2.
Lewis, Matt (2004). Chocolate Bar. Running Press. ISBN 0-7624-1921-0.
Coordinates:SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – In a shallow arm of the bay, where Pacific tides cause hardly a ripple, hundreds of harbor seals lounge, mate and bear young. With placid expressions on bewhiskered faces and bulky bodies reclining on shorelines, the seals belie a disturbing burden they carry.
Living on the edge of a metropolitan hub, these seals are under scrutiny by scientists. There’s a mystery afoot in San Francisco Bay: A manmade chemical, pulled from production 12 years ago, is still turning up at high levels in the seals.
Once the prime ingredient in Scotchgard, a chemical known as PFOS has remained elevated in these harbor seals even though it has declined in sea birds that share their fish diet.
San Francisco Bay’s harbor seals have some of the highest PFOS levels in the world, and the chemical isn't following the pattern of slow decline of other persistent pollutants.
“It’s a real conundrum. What are the sources of these compounds? How are they getting into the food web? ” said Margaret Sedlak, a program manager at the San Francisco Estuary Institute, which tracks chemicals in the bay.
PFOS, perfluorooctanesulfonic acid, is toxic, mobile and virtually indestructible. And it accumulates in the tissues of people and wildlife around the world, including whales, polar bears, sea turtles, bald eagles and pelicans.
The chemical’s persistence in the bay’s seals foreshadows potential effects for generations to come. And because the seals are top predators that feed on fish, they take up many contaminants and serve as barometers of the health of other marine life along the West Coast.
Yet, despite the high levels of PFOS, virtually nothing is known about whether the chemical is harming the bay’s seals and other creatures. Some scientists cite evidence in other animals – sea turtles, dolphins and sea otters – to suggest that it may be impairing their immune systems.
“We can’t get rid of it. It builds up in the environment. It’s like filling a bathtub, turning on the water, and walking away,” said Oregon State environmental chemist Jennifer Field.
“Nature can’t degrade it, and it ends up in biota. Until we cut off the supply, you just keep adding it to the total burden on the global environment.”
A stubbornly persistent chemical
What makes perfluorinated chemicals (PFCs) so stubbornly persistent is that they contain fluorine bonds, which are the shortest and strongest of chemical bonds. These same characteristics make them popular with manufacturers as coatings because they repel oil and water, stabilize heat and act as leveling agents to ingredients in cookware, textiles, carpeting, paper and other products.
3M Company began selling Scotchgard made with PFOS in 1956. Nearly half a century later, after studies showed it was accumulating in human tissues, the company agreed to stop producing the chemical by 2002.
The halt seems to have been a boon to San Francisco Bay birds. Eggs laid by double-crested cormorants on south bay islands contained average PFOS levels of 1,250 parts per billion in 2006, among the highest found in wildlife worldwide. Three years later, they remained high, at 1,240 ppb. But by 2012, the level had plummeted by 70 percent to 385 parts per billion.
No one knows why the decline in birds was so steep and so sudden.
In harbor seals, the story was different. The average level of 1,040 parts per billion in the blood of south bay seals in 2004 was also among the highest in the world for marine mammals. But unlike the birds, the levels from 2010 and 2011 have remained high.
“We don’t know how they’re picking up the PFOS. Is it the food they’re eating, the water they’re swimming in, the mud they’re resting on, the air they’re breathing?' said Denise Greig, a marine mammal biologist with the California Academy of Sciences and Sausalito's Marine Mammal Center who took the seals' blood samples.
PFOS has been found in topsmelt and silverside, two fish eaten by seals and cormorants.
Duke University chemist Craig Butt said chemical levels can rise and fall in species depending how they’re metabolized, concentrated, degraded and eliminated in animal tissues and the broader food web.
Contaminants can build up in the southern tip of the bay where the seal colony congregates because it doesn't get a vigorous flush of fresh and tidal waters.
“Contamination could be patchy,” Greig said. But the south bay’s harbor seals consistently show elevated levels. “It does imply there is a PFOS source in the south bay.”
Butt agreed, saying that the continuing high levels are a strong sign that local sources remain.
“We can say that the sources of PFCs are still continuing in San Francisco Bay,” he said.
In the rest of the world, PFOS levels in wildlife do not show a consistent trend, at least not yet. The chemical decreased in Arctic ringed seals, leading scientists to credit the phase-out. At the same time, Northwest Atlantic harbor seals showed no decrease. In humans, PFOS levels have dropped, according to nationwide monitoring.
Immune-suppressing effects?
Biologists have long puzzled over why the harbor seal colony congregating in the bay’s Mowry Slough has remained stable since the 1970s while other California populations are burgeoning.
But no one has evaluated whether PFOS, or other contaminants in the bay, could be to blame. Studying marine animals is difficult and costly, and there are no plans to test them for health effects.
There have been no die-offs, disease outbreaks or reproductive failures among the bay’s seals. But even without dramatic signs of damage, their health could be compromised by PFOS in a serious yet subtle way, said Margie Peden-Adams, a research professor at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas who has studied effects of PFOS on turtles and bottlenose dolphins.
“We don't have a population where there is clearly something wrong,” she said. “We're dealing with something that's ubiquitous but not a spill. The data that we do have suggest it is possible that the bay seals' health may be impaired.”
One of the rare studies that linked elevated PFCs to immune suppression leading to infectious disease in marine mammals was a case of female otter deaths on the California coast.
“We're trying to understand how PFCs affect the immune system,” said Kurunthachalam Kannan, a researcher on environmental pollutants at Wadsworth Center, New York State Department of Health, and professor at SUNY at Albany.
Even a few hundred parts per billion in a marine mammal can cause immune suppression, Kannan said.
Atlantic bottlenose dolphins from South Carolina and Florida that carried high concentrations of PFOS showed evidence of altered immune response. And loggerhead turtles along the southeast U.S. coast contaminated with PFOS contained markers in their blood indicative of liver damage and impaired immunity, researchers found.
“It's hard to measure altered immune responses in wildlife. We only have correlations and not evidence of causation,” Peden-Adams said.
So, Peden-Adams and others backed up the loggerhead turtle field work with lab study of a surrogate animal, in this case the western fence lizard. They saw the same thing: PFOS suppressed immunity.
However, “the seal's immune system might respond differently than the dolphin's. And marine mammals have more complex systems than reptiles,” she said.
In an odd twist, studies of people may offer clues to other, hormone-related health effects in animals. It's usually the other way around. An investigation of about 47,000 people with drinking water contaminated by a DuPont plant in West Virginia linked PFOS to changes in liver function, pregnancy hypertension, hormonal effects in women and high cholesterol. Other studies have linked it to thyroid disease, preterm births and lower birth weight.
Routes to the bay
There are many ways perfluorinated compounds enter the bay. Clues compiled from the seals and birds – and research elsewhere – point to local sources from sewage, military bases and airports, Sedlak said.
Thirty-nine sewage treatment plants discharge effluent into the bay that likely contains perfluorinated compounds, which leach out of old consumer products or newer products imported from developing countries.
“Because the compound coats fabrics, when clothing gets washed, the chemicals enter the sewage treatment plant,” Field said. “We still have treated articles in our homes, schools and automobiles. I suspect the rinse-off from treated articles is going to last as long as the articles last. They can be in our homes for 20 years and then go to landfills.”
Scientists looking for clues to PFOS sources found high concentrations of PFHxS, an ingredient in carpet treatment, in the bay’s harbor seals and cormorant eggs.
“Just because you stop manufacturing doesn’t mean the perfluorinated compounds immediately disappear. If companies had stockpiles, they just used them,” Field said.
In addition, some fluorinated compounds widely used in industry may be transformed in the environment to PFOS.
The compounds also are caught in sewage sludge. PFOS is so persistent that in one case 30 years after sludge was spread on cropland, it could still be detected. Tests have found it in every sludge sample and nearly every sediment sample from San Francisco Bay.
Christopher Higgins, an assistant professor at the Colorado School of Mines, suspects ongoing industrial sources in the Bay Area are still contaminating the bay. He found higher PFOS levels near the sewage treatment plants serving high-technology industries.
The lower south bay where the contaminated seals live receives runoff from San Francisco International Airport and effluent from three sewage treatment plants serving Silicon Valley. Three former military installations are there, too.
But pinning down the sources is difficult. Regulators don't require businesses to monitor and report perfluorinated compounds, and sewage plants aren't required to measure them in effluent, according to Thomas Mumley, assistant executive officer of the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board.
“We're scratching our heads trying to figure out where the perfluorinated compounds are coming from and how to stop them,” said Karin North, manager of environmental controls for Palo Alto.
“It's a great lesson for people who manufacture a chemical. Years after it's been phased out, it's still causing a problem.”
Confirmed elsewhere are discharges from airports, military installations and refineries that have used PFOS-rich firefighting foam during fires and routine practice.
The U.S. Department of Defense is now purchasing formulations of foam that don’t contain PFOS, said Mark Wright, a DOD spokesman at the Pentagon. But the DOD is stuck with nearly 600 contaminated sites nationwide where PFOS-tainted foam was used in fire pits for training exercises, according to a federal database.
In addition, an array of products from overseas also may still contain PFOS. Although banned in the United States, Canada and the European Union, PFOS production began in China in 2003, the year after 3M stopped. PFOS was in widespread use in China in dozens of manufacturing sectors, according to a document submitted to the Secretariat of the Stockholm Convention.
“Perfluorinated compounds are unique in that they combine some of the negative aspects of chemicals such as TCE with the negative aspects of chemicals such as PCBs,” Higgins said. “They don’t just fit into the ‘mobile’ and ‘toxic’ category of TCE, or the ‘bioaccumulative’ and ‘persistent’ category of PCBs. They fit into both.”
Living legacies
Answers to why San Francisco Bay’s seals remain highly contaminated with this banned chemical, and how it may be affecting them, remain locked in their bulky bodies.
Perhaps these urban creatures are destined to serve as living repositories that sound alarms about toxic legacies.
A dozen years ago, studies of this same colony revealed that polybrominated flame retardants had increased 100-fold in 10 years. Based on that information, as well as skyrocketing levels in human breast milk, California in 2003 banned two flame retardants. The levels in these seals, and in wildlife around the world, have now plummeted.
“It's essential we keep monitoring the population. That's the only way we'll see changes in seal health or survival,” Greig said. “Even if we don't get the complete answer [about PFOS], we can start to understand what the risks are to the seals that live in the bay.”
This article originally ran at Environmental Health News, a news source published by Environmental Health Sciences, a nonprofit media company.THE emergence of curry as Scotland’s “other national dish” is usually thought of as a contemporary phenomenon.
But new evidence unveiled in the Capital shows it was being eaten and sold as far back as two centuries ago – as a luxury dish for the elite.
Clootie Dumpling. Picture: Michael Gillen
A free exhibition opening today at the National Library of Scotland, which looks at the country’s food history, includes an advert for curry powder being sold by an Edinburgh grocer in 1798.
The grocer, John Caird, informs customers through the Edinburgh Evening Courant that he “has just received a parcel of REAL INDIA CURRY POWDER in the original package”, which he was selling for 2/6d a canister.
Organisers of Lifting the Lid said a new understanding of the long-standing place of curry at the heart of the nation’s cuisine was among a range of insights on offer.
Staged during Scotland’s Year of Food and Drink, the exhibition has been designed to help visitors learn about how earlier diets are linked to what we eat today. Curator Olive Geddes said the show would also cast new light on class and other key aspects of Scots society through the ages.
Curry has been available in Scotland for longer than you think
The price of curry powder was a particularly illuminating example, she said, adding that its cost would have made it too expensive for the working class.
She said: “[The amount offered for the jar of curry powder] was a considerable sum in the late 18th century and was way beyond the means of ordinary workers – it was clearly a novelty for the elite.”
Organisers said most of the exhibition was based on collections of recipe books, dating from the 17th century to the 1940s, which are held at the National Library.
Instead of functioning as guides to preparing meals that would have been served on an everyday basis, these were mostly written by female members of wealthy families as memory aids for recording favourite dishes.
They have been supplemented by published recipe books, household accounts and inventories, as well as tradesmen’s bills, menus, visitors’ journals, maps and amateur and government films about food.
“The records we have are mostly for the wealthy,” said Ms Geddes. “But the exhibition also looks at the role of the cook from the ordinary housewife and domestic servant to the professional chef.
“The social and economic significance of food will also feature. How far has social convention dictated what was eaten by whom and when?”
Among the items on show is John Reid’s The Scots Gard’ner – published in 1683 and believed to be the country’s first-ever recipe book.
The exhibition also tells of old Scottish measures such as a “chopin” (two pints), a “mutchkin” (just under a pint), a “peck” (two gallons) and a “forpet” or “lippie” (half a gallon). And while age-old dishes such as cullen skink, crannachan and clootie dumpling have lived on, organisers said there were many others – including powsowdie (a sheep’s head broth), crappit heids (haddock heads and livers) and cruddy butter (a type of cheese) – which have “all but disappeared in the mists of time”.
Ms Geddes said: “We hope that, with this exhibition, people can learn more about food in Scotland and how tastes have changed and developed.”
Food and nutrition experts in the Capital have welcomed the new exhibition and said it could help change contemporary eating habits which are unhealthy.
Emma Conroy, founder of Edinburgh Nutrition, said: “I think people might be surprised at the diversity of foods that people ate in the past.
“I would be delighted if people who go to this exhibition champion seasonal and locally grown foods – that would be great news.”
She added: “Now, we often have to look at labels to work out exactly what food is – if you have to do that, you probably shouldn’t be eating it.
“I set great store by traditional foods and traditional cooking processes.”
The exhibition will run at the National Library of Scotland from today until November 8.Howling Tower: Monster Stats, Part 3
In part 1 and part 2 of this series, we looked at ability scores and hit points. In this installment, we look at damage output for official fifth edition monsters.
First, a note about how I calculated damage output (average damage per round, or DPR). This topic is covered in a good amount of detail in the Dungeon Master’s Guide, but even with detailed guidelines, it’s not always a straightforward task. The general rule is to calculate the maximum amount of damage the creature can dish out in 3 rounds and divide by 3 to arrive at DPR. Area attacks are counted as doing double damage; the DMG bases this on an assumption that the attack hits two targets and both fail their saving throws, but I prefer to think of it as the attack hitting three targets, one of whom blows its saving throw and takes full damage while the other two succeed and take half damage each. The effect is the same either way (damage x2), but the presumption of one fail/two succeed is both more realistic in my experience and more useful when applied across the board to the effect of many types of attacks and powers.
Those simple rules cover the broad middle ground nicely but leave lots of room for interpretation around the edges. For example, what about monsters that do ongoing damage that’s ended by a repeated saving throw? I assume the saving throw succeeds on the target’s second try. Because damage gets applied at different times—the start and end of both the target’s and the monster’s turn all make appearances—applying this assumption consistently across the board has different impacts on different monsters.
My damage calculations are also based on what I consider to be realistic opportunities for damage. For example, the Monster Manual seems to assume that a triceratops will inflict its trampling charge damage every round; I consider that unlikely, even if it meets the requirements 3 rounds in a row. Instead, I adapt the “1 failed save / 2 successful saves” rule of thumb, which means the triceratops stomps one character, not three. That dramatically lowers its damage output from 46 points per round to 31—a drop of two offensive CR levels. The same limitation applies to attacks like the purple worm’s tail stinger. My assumption is that in 3 rounds of combat, one target will fail the saving throw and two will succeed, so the tail poison adds (42 + 21 + 21 =) 84 damage to the total, not 126.
If an attack causes paralysis, petrification, or a similar effect that’s likely to take a player character completely out of the fight for at least 2 full rounds, that’s included as damage done according to a quick-and-dirty formula for PC hit points: (CR x 7) + 8. Fear, poison, and similar effects don’t count in this category. Frightened and poisoned characters still contribute to the fight, just not as effectively.
Finally, where appropriate, monsters are considered to be prepared for hostility. The treant, for example, is assumed to already have two trees animated and ready to rumble before initiative gets rolled, so it doesn’t need to waste its precious first round waking up allies.
Whew. That’s a lot of basic assumptions. Let’s finally look at...
Damage by CR
Chart 1 is a scatter plot of every monster’s DPR*. It doesn’t look like an entire Monster Manual worth of data points, but that’s because most of them are crammed on top of each other at the left end of the plot. (Eighty percent of monsters in the MM are CR 11 or lower.)
*Except for the CR 30 tarrasque. It’s left off most of these charts because there are no monsters between it and the next toughest monsters at CR 24. The tarrasque’s lone data point adds no useful information, sitting out at the end of that big gap.
The main takeaway from this plot is how nicely the points cluster around that trend line running through it. The trend line sets our formula for average monster damage:
DPR ≅ (CR x 6.4) + 2
If your monster uses the same attacks every round, then that number is your target for its damage. If you have a more complex monster whose attacks change from round to round—a dragon with a rechargeable breath weapon, for example, or a spellcaster—then you need to multiply the DPR number by 3 and aim to cause that much total damage over the span of 3 rounds.
Chart 2 offers a slightly different view of the same data. It shows the minimum, maximum, and average damage at each challenge rating, making it useful for seeing how much play exists in the numbers at each CR. As usual, everything from CR 12 to 24 should be viewed with some skepticism, because there are only 48 creatures spread across those 13 CR levels.
The formula given above varies somewhat by creature type, as you might expect. The numbers below are multipliers that can be applied for different types. An average beast, for example, does 30 percent more damage than the formula predicts. Numbers in parentheses indicate how many creatures of that type are in the MM, as a rough guide to how statistically reliable these numbers are.
DPR multiplier by creature type
ooze (4) x 2.11
aberration (18) x 1.49
plant (12) x 1.43
beast (7) x 1.30
undead (27) x 1.27
humanoid (51) x 1.24
elemental (23) x 1.21
monstrosity (47) x 1.12
construct (16) x 1.11
dragon (45) x 1.09
fiend (34) x 0.96
giant (13) x 0.96
fey (7) x 0.89
celestial (7) x 0.86
Oozes appraise so highly because of engulfing and splitting, both of which have the potential to double or triple their damage output—or not, depending on how the fight goes. They’re difficult monsters to rate because they have two complicating factors: their damage is trick-based and unreliable, and most oozes have annoying traits (such as ruining weapons) that make them nastier opponents than their deadliness alone implies.
It’s easy to assume these multipliers are a guide to how much you should upgrade or downgrade a particular monster’s punch, but that’s not really the case. Instead, they afford a big-picture window into the balance between a creature type’s offensive and defensive ratings. Creatures with a multiplier much above 1 tend to get more of their overall challenge rating from offense than from defense; the higher the multiplier, the more those creatures tend to be glass cannons. At the other end of the scale are fey (who tend to be tricksters rather than death-dealers) and celestials (traditionally hard to kill).
The split is interesting. Of the 14 creature types, five of them are balanced between offense and defense (multipliers between 0.96 and 1.12), and only two are weighted toward defense. That leaves half the field weighted toward offense, which reveals something about the philosophy underlying fifth edition monster
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Throw him in the mix, and it’s worth asking if they can matchup throughout a seven-game series. Maybe, maybe not. Either way this looks like an exceedingly astute choice, albeit one out of left field.
If you read this list and have doubts about its plausibility, do not worry. You’re right. All this exercise does is prove just how tiny LeBron’s market actually is. Potential suitors need roughly $30 million in cap space and be in position to win a championship right away. Even as the rising cap sets a new precedent, those two qualities hardly ever align.
Even if LeBron wanted to leave the Cavaliers, it’d be incredibly hard for him to find a team that makes basketball sense, let alone account for all the other factors he’d need to weigh in the face of a landscape-shifting decision.
He’s stuck where he is.Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) didn’t join his fellow Kentucky senator’s filibuster until it was nearly its twelfth hour, but that hasn’t stopped him from using it as a fundraising tool in a new email delivered to supporters today. The email asks supporters to sign a petition on Facebook that reads, “I stand WITH Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell. They are shining examples of Republican leadership” and make a donation to McConnell’s campaign.
Does McConnell’s fundraising plea represent another instance of the senator jumping on the Rand Paul “bandwagon,” as Mediaite’s Andrew Kirell put it in a recent column, or was he genuinely inspired by the filibuster to make a renewed stand for civil liberties?
Jon Stewart was one of the first to go after McConnell for hopping on the “concern-the-executive-branch-might-be-trampling-the-Constitution-train” on an episode of The Daily Show last week. Stewart pointed out that unlike the younger generation of senators like Paul and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), McConnell was in office during the Bush years and did not stand up against issues like “torture” and “warrant-less wiretapping.”
Watch video below, via Comedy Central:
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>> Follow Matt Wilstein (@TheMattWilstein) on Twitter
Have a tip we should know? [email protected] want to try to make you understand what you have done.
This is my family’s grave. I want you to know more about them.
This is my Great Grandmother, my Great Grandfather and my Great Aunt in 1915.
This is a family photo in the 1920s. The man in the middle is my Great Grandfather, Risaburo Ebata. He came to Vancouver from Japan over a hundred years ago. He was born 1873 and died in 1930. He had six children, including my Grandmother, Shizue, sitting beside him (his wife is on his other side). He had bought a house for his family to a house on Burrard and Second in Kitsilano. He died suddenly in his 50s.
This was the funeral of a Yada family cousin. Their tall gravestone was luckily not touched by the vandals.
These were my Great Uncles playing around at Kitsilano beach. You see, they were real people.
Here’s my other Great Uncle in the neighbourhood.
The woman beside him in the family portrait is my Great Grandmother, Ima. She also came to Vancouver from Japan over a hundred years ago. She was born in 1879 and passed away in Winnipeg, in 1959. My Grandmother and her brother and sister brought her ashes back to Vancouver in the 1970s.
The third person in the family grave is my Great Uncle, Shigezo. He is in the family portrait, in the middle between my other two Great Uncles. He was born in Vancouver. He died tragically at the young age of 25 years old. He worked at a lumber camp and he drowned after he fell in to the water and was trapped beneath the logs.
The first to die was my Great Grandfather in 1930. The whole family was devastated with his sudden death. My Great Grandmother became a widow with six children.
This was my family at the gravesite after 1932, when my Great Uncle, Shigezo had passed away.
Here is another gathering at the gravesite. My Great Grandmother had lost her husband suddenly in 1930 and then two years later, her eldest son passed away. She was so shocked when she heard the news, she fainted.
This was my Great Grandmother’s funeral in Winnipeg in 1959. She had to move east to Winnipeg after the second world war following the internment of the Japanese Canadians.
This was in the 1970s when my Grandmother, her sister, brother and his wife brought back their Mother’s ashes to Mountain View Cemetary to be reunited with her husband and son.
This was at the grave of another family member whose name I did not know.
This is a blurry photo from the 1970s of my Great Uncle and Great Aunt and other family visiting the family grave.
I am the only family member left living in Vancouver. I have been entrusted to the care of the family grave.
I hope this blog can help you to understand why your crime hurts the Mountain View Cemetary families so much.Significance The rate of erroneous conviction of innocent criminal defendants is often described as not merely unknown but unknowable. We use survival analysis to model this effect, and estimate that if all death-sentenced defendants remained under sentence of death indefinitely at least 4.1% would be exonerated. We conclude that this is a conservative estimate of the proportion of false conviction among death sentences in the United States.
Abstract The rate of erroneous conviction of innocent criminal defendants is often described as not merely unknown but unknowable. There is no systematic method to determine the accuracy of a criminal conviction; if there were, these errors would not occur in the first place. As a result, very few false convictions are ever discovered, and those that are discovered are not representative of the group as a whole. In the United States, however, a high proportion of false convictions that do come to light and produce exonerations are concentrated among the tiny minority of cases in which defendants are sentenced to death. This makes it possible to use data on death row exonerations to estimate the overall rate of false conviction among death sentences. The high rate of exoneration among death-sentenced defendants appears to be driven by the threat of execution, but most death-sentenced defendants are removed from death row and resentenced to life imprisonment, after which the likelihood of exoneration drops sharply. We use survival analysis to model this effect, and estimate that if all death-sentenced defendants remained under sentence of death indefinitely, at least 4.1% would be exonerated. We conclude that this is a conservative estimate of the proportion of false conviction among death sentences in the United States.
In the past few decades a surge of hundreds of exonerations of innocent criminal defendants has drawn attention to the problem of erroneous conviction, and led to a spate of reforms in criminal investigation and adjudication (1⇓–3). All the same, the most basic empirical question about false convictions remains unanswered: How common are these miscarriages of justice?
False convictions, by definition, are unobserved when they occur: If we know that a defendant is innocent, he is not convicted in the first place. They are also extremely difficult to detect after the fact. As a result, the great majority of innocent defendants remain undetected. The rate of such errors is often described as a “dark figure” (4)—an important measure of the performance of the criminal justice system that is not merely unknown but unknowable.
However, there is no shortage of lawyers and judges who assert confidently that the number of false convictions is negligible. Judge Learned Hand said so in 1923: “Our [criminal] procedure has always been haunted by the ghost of the innocent man convicted. It is an unreal dream” (5, p. 649). And in 2007, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in a concurring opinion in the Supreme Court that American criminal convictions have an “error rate of [0].027 percent—or, to put it another way, a success rate of 99.973 percent” (6, p. 182). This would be comforting, if true. In fact, the claim is silly. Scalia’s ratio is derived by taking the number of known exonerations at the time, which were limited almost entirely to a small subset of murder and rape cases, using it as a measure of all false convictions (known and unknown), and dividing it by the number of all felony convictions for all crimes, from drug possession and burglary to car theft and income tax evasion.
To actually estimate the proportion of erroneous convictions we need a well-defined group of criminal convictions within which we identify all mistaken convictions, or at least most. It is hard to imagine how that could be done for criminal convictions generally, but it might be possible for capital murder.
The rate of exonerations among death sentences in the United States is far higher than for any other category of criminal convictions. Death sentences represent less than one-tenth of 1% of prison sentences in the United States (7), but they accounted for about 12% of known exonerations of innocent defendants from 1989 through early 2012 (2), a disproportion of more than 130 to 1. A major reason for this extraordinary exoneration rate is that far more attention and resources are devoted to death penalty cases than to other criminal prosecutions, before and after conviction.
The vast majority of criminal convictions are not candidates for exoneration because no one makes any effort to reconsider the guilt of the defendants. Approximately 95% of felony convictions in the United States are based on negotiated pleas of guilty (plea bargains) that are entered in routine proceedings at which no evidence is presented. Few are ever subject to any review whatsoever. Most convicted defendants are never represented by an attorney after conviction, and the appeals that do take place are usually perfunctory and unrelated to guilt or innocence.
Death sentences are different. Almost all are based on convictions after jury trial, and even the handful of capital defendants who plead guilty are then subject to trial-like-sentencing hearings, usually before juries. All death sentences are reviewed on appeal; almost all are reviewed repeatedly. With few exceptions, capital defendants have lawyers as long as they remain on death row. Everyone, from the first officer on the scene of a potentially capital crime to the Chief Justice of the United States, takes capital cases more seriously than other criminal prosecutions—and knows that everybody else will do so as well. And everyone from defense lawyers to innocence projects to governors and state and federal judges is likely to be particularly careful to avoid the execution of innocent defendants.
This extraordinary difference in resources and attention generates two related effects. (i) Advocates for a defendant are much more likely to pursue any plausible postconviction claim of innocence if the defendant is under sentence of death. (ii) Courts (and other government actors) are much more likely to consider and grant such a claim if the defendant is at risk for execution. As a result, false convictions are far more likely to be detected among those cases that end in death sentences than in any other category of criminal convictions.
The high exoneration rate for death sentences suggests that a substantial proportion of innocent defendants who are sentenced to death are ultimately exonerated, perhaps a majority. If so, we can use capital exonerations as a basis for estimating a lower bound for the false conviction rate among death sentences.
Since 1973, when the first death penalty laws now in effect in the United States were enacted (8), 143 death-sentenced defendants have been exonerated, from 1 to 33 y after conviction (mean = 10.1 y) (9). In a previous study we found that 2.3% of all death sentences imposed from 1973 through 1989 resulted in exoneration by the end of 2004 (7). A study by Risinger (10) estimated that had biological samples been available for testing in all cases, 3.3% of defendants sentenced to death between 1982 and 1989 for murders that included rape would have been exonerated by DNA evidence through February 2006. That estimate, however, is based on a small number of exonerations (n = 11) (10). Both studies were limited to convictions that occurred 15 y or more before the study date, and so include a high proportion of all exonerations that will ever occur in the relevant groups. Nonetheless both studies underestimate the false conviction rate for death-sentenced defendants because they do not reflect exonerations that occur after the study period, and do not include false convictions that are never detected at all.
Capital defendants who are removed from death row but not exonerated—typically because their sentences are reduced to life imprisonment—no longer receive the extraordinary level of attention that is devoted to death row inmates. (This applies as well to those who are executed or die on death row from other causes.) If they are in fact innocent, they are much less likely to be exonerated than if they had remained on death row. As a result, the proportion of death-sentenced inmates who are exonerated understates the rate of false convictions among death sentences because the intensive search for possible errors is largely abandoned once the threat of execution is removed.
In other words, the engine that produces an exoneration rate that is a plausible proxy for the rate of false conviction among death-sentenced prisoners is the process of reinvestigation and reconsideration under threat of execution. Over time, most death-sentenced inmates are removed from death row and resentenced to life in prison—at which point their chances of exoneration appear to drop back to the background rate for all murders, or close to it. Thus, we will get a better estimate of the rate of false capital convictions if are able to estimate “what the rate of capital exonerations would be if all death sentences were subject for an indefinite period to the level of scrutiny that applies to those facing the prospect of execution” (7). This study does just that.
Current Study Data. We examine exonerations among defendants sentenced to death from the beginning of the “modern” death penalty in the United States in 1973, after the Supreme Court invalidated all prior death sentencing laws (11), through the end of 2004. Our data come from two sources. (i) Death sentences since 1973 are tracked by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) of the Department of Justice, which maintains data on the current status of all death-sentenced defendants in that period (12). We know that 7,482 defendants were sentenced to death in the United States from January 1973 through December 2004, and we know when (if ever) each defendant was removed from death row by execution, death by other means, or legal action by courts or executive officials. (ii) The Death Penalty Information Center maintains a list of defendants who were sentenced to death in the United States and exonerated since the beginning of 1973 (13), including 117 who were sentenced to death after January 1, 1973 and exonerated by legal proceedings that began before the end of 2004. We collected additional data on these cases from public records and media sources, expanding on the dataset used by Gross and O’Brien (7). We were able to match on several key variables 108 of the 117 death sentence exonerations in this period to specific cases in the BJS database to produce the database we analyzed. Table 1 displays the status of the 7,482 death-sentenced defendants we studied as of December 31, 2004, the final day of our study period. On that date, 12.6% of these defendants had been executed, 1.6% were exonerated, 4% died of suicide or natural causes while on death row, 46.1% remained on death row, and 35.8% were removed from death row but remained in prison after their capital sentences or the underlying convictions were reversed or modified. Table 1. Death-sentenced defendants in the United States, 1973–2004 (n = 7,482) Table 1 is a snapshot of the status of these defendants at the end of the study period. (It would look quite different if it displayed the status of death-sentenced defendants at the end of 1985, for example, or 2000.) It cannot be used directly to estimate the rate of exoneration because exonerations are a function of time. Many of the defendants on death row at the end of 2004 had only been there for a year or two, far less than the mean of 10.1 y from conviction to exoneration for all capital exonerations since 1973. Over time, many of those who remained on death row at the end of 2004 will be removed (or already have been); most will end up with sentences of life imprisonment. If the pattern for death sentences from 1973 through 1995 holds, over two-thirds of prisoners sentenced to death will have the judgments against them overturned. The majority will remain in prison for life (14, 15), but some will be exonerated and released. Threat of Execution. A central variable of interest is whether an exoneration took place while the defendant was still under threat of execution (for detailed information, see SI Materials and Methods, section 1). The status of the defendant as under threat is obvious when a defendant is exonerated and released directly from death row. On the other side, a defendant is clearly not under threat of execution when the exoneration is the product of a process that began years after removal from death row. In other cases, determining the threat status of the defendant at the time of exoneration is more demanding. We identify defendants who were under threat of execution to focus on exonerations that benefited from the extraordinary levels of effort and scrutiny that are applied to defendants who might be put to death. Many defendants who leave death row might be sent back. Hence the under-threat-of-execution category includes defendants who were removed from death row but remained eligible for resentencing to death, and in whose cases the prosecution was actively pursuing a new death sentence or considering whether to do so. For example, Ronald Williamson was sentenced to death in Oklahoma in 1988, and awarded a new trial in 1997 because of constitutionally inadequate representation by his trial lawyer (16). He was exonerated by DNA testing 2 y later, in 1999, while awaiting a retrial at which he might have been sentenced to death again. His exoneration was under threat of execution. We also count an exoneration as under threat if the process that ultimately led to the exoneration began while the defendant was on death row, even if the final decision to release the defendant was made after he left death row. This sort of delay is common for defendants who are removed from death row when their convictions are reversed by reviewing courts but not released until months or years later when the prosecution decides to dismiss the charges. In some cases the process is more elaborate. For instance, John Thompson was sentenced to death in Louisiana in 1985 (13). In 2001 he sought a new trial based on newly discovered evidence, but received only a reduction in his sentence to life imprisonment. Thompson successfully appealed the denial of a new trial and was acquitted in 2003. Thus, although his death sentence was vacated 2 y before his acquittal, we treat him as exonerated under threat of execution because the legal proceedings that led to exoneration began while he was on death row and ran to their conclusion two years later. We define an exoneration under threat of execution as an exoneration that is the result of legal proceedings that were initiated while the defendant was on death row. The date we assign to an exoneration is the date of removal from death row, the last date on which the exoneration can be initiated and still count as under threat, not the date on which the process was completed. Using these criteria, we determined that 107 of the 117 exonerations that occurred before the end of 2004 were under threat of execution, and 10 exonerations were not under that threat. The significance of this classification is apparent from Table 1. Of defendants sentenced to death since 1973, 35.8% had been resentenced to a prison term by the end of 2004. However, only 8.5% of capital exonerations (10 of 117) came from this group even though these prisoners were, by definition, at a later stage of their imprisonment than those who remained on death row. (Except for those who are exonerated—and a very small group who are resentenced to lesser penalties and eventually released—all prisoners who are sentenced to death do ultimately die in prison. They all start out on death row, some stay there until death by execution by other means, and the rest eventually are moved to the general prison population where they remain until they die.) Our estimate of the rate of false convictions among death-sentenced defendants is based on the hypothesis that death-sentenced prisoners who remain under threat of execution are far more likely to be exonerated than those who remain in prison but no longer face that threat. We use a Cox proportional hazards model with a time-dependent covariate to test that hypothesis. We find, consistent with expectations, that death-sentenced defendants who are no longer under threat of execution had a rate of exoneration approximately one eighth of that for defendants who remained on death row, 0.131 (P < 0.0001) (with 95% confidence interval of 0.064–0.266) (SI Materials and Methods, section 3). Analysis. Our task is to estimate the cumulative probability over time of the event of interest, exoneration, in the population of death-sentenced defendants who remain under threat of execution. The temporal measure (t) is time from conviction. Estimating this probability is complicated by the structure of the population for two reasons. (i) Individual defendants joined this population across a 32-y period. Their duration in the study period varied from 1 to 32 y. (ii) All death-sentenced defendants began, at conviction, under threat of execution, but for most that threat, and their membership in the population of interest, ended within several years, usually because they were resentenced to life imprisonment. The net effect is that the number of defendants under threat of execution is a decreasing function of time from conviction, ranging from n = 7,482 at t = 0 y to n = 0 at t = 30.7 y (Fig. 1). Fig. 1. The status of death-sentenced defendants and the occurrence of exonerations, by time from conviction. The black line represents the total number of all death-sentenced defendants by time from conviction and the gray line the number of defendants who remained on death row (DR) and were therefore available for exoneration under threat of execution by time from conviction. The three areas between the black and gray lines display the dispositions of those defendants who were removed from death row over the time period by mode of removal: execution, suicide or death from natural causes, and legal proceedings (court orders or executive clemency). A minority of defendants who were removed from death by legal proceedings were exonerated. The plus symbols mark exonerations by date measured in time from conviction. The 10 blue plus symbols (on the black line) mark exonerations that were not under threat of execution by the date of the completion of the exoneration. The 107 red plus symbols (on the gray line) mark exonerations that were initiated under threat of execution by the date of removal of the defendants from death row. To estimate this cumulative probability, we use survival analysis. This technique has been used in a related context, to estimate the rate of all reversals of death sentences in the United States (15). It is most commonly used, however, to evaluate the efficacy of medical treatments when not all patients experience the outcome of interest. The issue we address is analogous, but the analogy is counterintuitive. We use survival analysis to assess the prospects of members of a population that is subject to a special risk. In the usual medical context, the condition that defines the population is a pathology such as Lyme disease or diabetes; for our study the defining condition is “death sentence.” As a result of this condition, every member of this population is subject to the risk of a terminal event that might remove him from the group that has survived with this condition. In biomedical survival studies, that terminal event that is studied is death from the pathology in question; for our study it is exoneration. This is a counterintuitive equivalence: For our purposes, remaining in prison following a death sentence counts as “survival;” and exoneration, which removes the subject from prison, is analogous to “death” in the common context in which survival analysis is used. Survival analysis is often used to evaluate the efficacy of a medical treatment that may reduce mortality from a pathology. In this study the “treatment” that lowers the probability of the terminal event of interest (exoneration) is removal of the threat of execution. (This too is a counterintuitive analogy. Exonerating an innocent defendant is, of course, a good thing for that defendant, but removal from death row is equivalent to a treatment that reduces the “risk” of exoneration.) Our focus, however, is not on the treated group (those removed from death row) but on those who remain untreated (defendants who remain under threat of execution and therefore at high risk of exoneration). In this study, as in medical research, subjects may be removed from the population of interest by means other than the terminal event at issue. In survival analysis of a disease, the usual means of exit by other means are death from a different cause or discontinuation of participation in the study. In our study, all deaths after capital sentencing (by execution, suicide, or natural causes) remove the person from the population that is subject to the risk of execution. However, most removals from the population by means other than exoneration are by legal action that reduces the defendant’s sentence to life in prison and thereby eliminates the threat of execution. A primary difficulty in estimating the cumulative probability of exoneration is that some defendants were censored, i.e., they did not have an opportunity to be exonerated under threat of execution during the study period. Some defendants were removed from that threat during the study period but would have been exonerated had they remained under threat; others, who were sentenced to death relatively recently, remained under threat and had not been exonerated at the end of the study period but would have been exonerated at some later point if the study period were extended. As a result, a simple proportion of exonerated defendants to all defendants is a biased estimate of the cumulative probability of exoneration. We therefore use the Kaplan–Meier estimator to calculate the cumulative probability of exoneration under threat of execution for death-sentenced defendants, by time from conviction through 2004. This estimator takes account of the censoring of observations caused by recency of incarceration on death row, death from suicide or natural causes, or other removals from the threat of execution. The Kaplan–Meier survival function estimates the probability of being event-free (remaining on death row) up to a given length of time from conviction. Its complement (1 minus the estimator) estimates the cumulative incidence of the event (exoneration) up to the given length of time from conviction. Unlike a simple proportion, the Kaplan–Meier estimator is unbiased in the presence of independent censoring (see further discussions in Sensitivity Analysis), and is completely nonparametric; it can be viewed as a censored data analog of the empirical distribution function. (17, 18) (SI Materials and Methods, section 2). As Fig. 2 shows, the cumulative probability of exoneration for death-sentenced defendants who remained under threat of execution for 21.4 y was 4.1% (with a 95% confidence interval of 2.8–5.2%). [We replicated the Kaplan–Meier estimate of the cumulative probability of exoneration under threat of execution using the Fleming–Harrington estimator. Both results are virtually indistinguishable (SI Materials and Methods, section 3).] Fig. 2. Kaplan–Meier (K-M) estimate of the cumulative rate of exoneration (solid line) and 95% confidence interval (dashed line) under threat of execution for defendants sentenced to death in the United States from 1973 through 2004 by time from conviction to removal from death row. Exoneration under threat of execution is defined as exoneration that resulted from legal proceedings that were initiated before the end of 2004 and while the defendant was under sentence of death. This 4.1% estimate may approach the underlying rate of false convictions because it reflects the cumulative effect of a process that is uniquely efficient at detecting such errors. To rely on this estimate, however, two additional steps are necessary. Sensitivity analysis. An important assumption for the validity of the Kaplan–Meier estimator is that censoring events that remove subjects from consideration are statistically independent of the time to the event of interest if the subjects had not been removed. In this context, that assumption is plausible with respect to censoring by recency of conviction and by death from suicide or natural causes while under threat of execution. On the other hand, there are strong reasons to believe that both execution and removal from death row by legal procedures without exoneration are not independent of time-to-exoneration. Because the assumption of independence may be violated, sensitivity analysis is necessary. Specifically, (i) 13% of death-sentenced inmates were removed from death row by execution (943 of 7,482). Some executed defendants may have been innocent, and, although none has been exonerated after execution (9), they might have been exonerated if they had remained alive and on death row. However, we expect that the proportion of innocent defendants is lower among those who are executed than among those who remain on death row (7) (SI Materials and Methods, section 4). The threat of execution is the engine that drives the process of exonerating innocent death row prisoners, and it is likely that this process becomes more painstaking as inmates approach their execution dates. This concern about executing innocent defendants also drives a second bias: (ii) It increases the proportion of innocent defendants among the 36% of death row inmates who were removed from death row and resentenced to prison but not exonerated (2,675 or 7,482). Courts and executive officials explicitly recognize that it is appropriate to take the possibility of innocence into account in deciding whether to reverse a conviction for procedural error or commute a death sentence to life imprisonment, and a wealth of anecdotal evidence suggests that this practice is widespread (SI Materials and Methods, section 4). As a result, those who are resentenced to punishments less than death are more likely to be innocent than those who remain on death row. In short, we believe that (i) executed defendants are less likely to have been exonerated if they had remained on death row than those who in fact remained on death row, and (ii) defendants who were removed from death row but remained in prison are more likely to have been exonerated if they had remained under threat of execution. These two biases are not equivalent in magnitude. Nearly three times as many unexonerated death-sentenced defendants were resentenced to prison (2,675) as were executed (943). Even a modest increase in the proportion of innocent defendants among death-sentenced prisoners resentenced to life imprisonment, compared with those who remain on death row, would more than offset a complete absence of innocent defendants among those who are executed. We use competing risks methodology (18), along with explicit assumptions about the counterfactual probability of exoneration for those who were executed or resentenced to prison, to develop a sensitivity analysis for the Kaplan–Meier estimate of the cumulative exoneration rate. First, we estimate the cumulative incidence of exoneration subject to the competing risks of execution and resentencing by 21.4 y after conviction, on the assumption that censoring by recency, suicide, or natural death was independent of these three event processes. The estimates of the probabilities of removal from risk of exoneration by exoneration under threat of execution, by execution itself, or by resentencing, are 2.2% (1.7%, 2.7%), 23.8% (22.3%, 25.3%), and 48.3% (46.7%, 50.0%), respectively. Thus, a defendant sentenced to death had an estimated 2.2% chance of being exonerated while under threat of execution by 21.4 y after conviction, assuming those executed or resentenced had zero chance of being exonerated (i.e., allowing for the competing risks of execution and resentencing) (SI Materials and Methods, section 3). Consider instead the assumption that, had they remained on death row, (i) those who were executed would have had zero chance of exoneration, and (ii) those who were resentenced would have had twice the chance of exoneration as the entire population of defendants sentenced to death. This yields the following estimate of the cumulative probability of exoneration, had those who were exonerated or resentenced instead remained on death row: 2.2% + 0 (23.8%) + 2 (2.2%) (48.3%) = 4.4%. Using the Delta method, the confidence interval for this estimate is 3.41–5.28%, assuming that the cumulative incidences of exoneration and resentencing have zero covariance. A zero probability of exoneration for executed defendants had they remained on death row is necessarily, for the purposes of this estimate, a conservative assumption. We believe that the assumed probability of exoneration for those who were removed from death row and resentenced to prison, twice the mean for the population, is reasonable. We conclude that the Kaplan–Meier estimate we obtained is conservative. Indeed the same result we would obtain if we assume that the probability of exoneration for those resentenced to prison, had they remained on death row, is equal to or greater than 1.77 times the population average [2.2% + 0 (23.8%) + 1.77 (2.2%) (48.3%) = 4.1%]. Estimating false convictions from exonerations. Because there is no general method to accurately determine innocence in a criminal case, we use a proxy, exoneration: an official determination that a convicted defendant is no longer legally culpable for the crime for which he was condemned. There will be misclassifications. Some exonerated defendants are guilty of the crimes for which they were sentenced to death. We expect that such errors are rare, given the high barriers the American legal system imposes on convicted defendants in persuading authorities to reconsider their guilt (1⇓–3, 7) (SI Materials and Methods, section 4). To date, one such case has come to light, and has been reclassified (19). Monte Carlo simulations reveal that the effect of such misclassifications on the cumulative rate of exoneration is linear: If 10% of exonerated defendants were in fact guilty, the mean cumulative rate of innocence for death-sentenced defendants would be 3.7% rather than 4.1% (95% confidence interval of 3.3–4.0%); if 20% were guilty, the mean rate would be 3.3% (95% confidence interval of 2.8–3.7%) (SI Materials and Methods, section 3). On the other side, some innocent defendants who remained on death row for more than 21.4 y but were not exonerated are misclassified as guilty. Some may still be exonerated; some may be executed; and most will likely die in prison, on death row or off, of natural causes or suicide. In the absence of better data we assume that the probability of a legal campaign to exonerate any prisoner under threat of death who has a plausible innocence claim is 1, and we assume that the probability of success for an innocent prisoner who remains under such threat for at least 21.4 y is also 1. These are necessarily conservative assumptions. To the extent that these probabilities are in fact less than 1, our estimate will understate the actual rate of false convictions.† The distribution of possible misclassifications is asymmetrical: 216 defendants remained on death row longer than 21.4 y, whereas only 107 were exonerated under threat of execution. Unless the process of death row exoneration is assumed to be unrealistically thorough, it is likely that the number of innocent death-sentenced defendants misclassified as guilty exceeds the number of guilty defendants exonerated under threat of execution and misclassified as innocent. [The proxy we use (the exoneration rate) is also important in its own right: It is a direct measure of the rate of death sentencing of defendants later determined to be legally not guilty.] Taken together, the sensitivity analysis and the likely net effects of misclassification both point in the same direction and suggest that our 4.1% estimate of the rate of false conviction among death-sentenced defendants is conservative.
Discussion We present a conservative estimate of the proportion of erroneous convictions of defendants sentenced to death in the United States from 1973 through 2004, 4.1%. This is a unique finding; there are no other reliable estimates of the rate of false conviction in any context. The main source of potential bias is the accuracy of our classification of cases as true or false convictions. On that issue it is likely that we have an undercount, that there are more innocent death row defendants who have not been identified and exonerated than guilty ones who have been exonerated in error. The most charged question in this area is different: How many innocent defendants have been put to death (6)? We cannot estimate that number directly but we believe it is comparatively low. If the rate were the same as our estimate for false death sentences, the number of innocents executed in the United States in the past 35 y would be more than 50 (20). We do not believe that has happened. Our data and the experience of practitioners in the field both indicate that the criminal justice system goes to far greater lengths to avoid executing innocent defendants than to prevent them from remaining in prison indefinitely. One way to do so is to disproportionately reverse death sentences in capital cases in which the accuracy of the defendants’ convictions is in doubt and to resentence them to life imprisonment, a practice that makes our estimate of the rate of error conservative. However, no process of removing potentially innocent defendants from the execution queue can be foolproof. With an error rate at trial over 4%, it is all but certain that several of the 1,320 defendants executed since 1977 were innocent (21). It is possible that the death-sentencing rate of innocent defendants has changed over time. No specific evidence points in that direction, but the number and the distribution of death sentences have changed dramatically in the past 15
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into their grids means that India’s leading states will become laboratories for understanding what the future of the power sector might look like in a nation that has only recently achieved a unified electric grid.
A solar farm in the village of Gunthawada, Banaskantha - SAM PANTHAKY/AFP/Getty Images
For now, all experiments are required, including testing and deployment of storage technologies to manage fluctuating loads and swinging electricity prices. Experience can inform policy and set standards that lead rather than lag for this emergent industry. Similarly, checking the power leakages from beleaguered DISCOMs, while trying to decouple India’s power sector from politics, may be accomplished by rolling out new smart metering technologies. Currently several states are experimenting with pilot projects that may inform large-scale procurement and roll out along the lines of the successful light-emitting diode (LED) bulb distribution project undertaken by India’s Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL).
Another experiment in decoupling power distribution from politics, particularly in the agriculture sector, a network of solar micro-grids coupled with high-efficiency irrigation pumps could turn farmers from being a drain on the power sector to potential local power producers (when their pumps sit idle). Finally, India’s central government has an ambitious program to transform its automotive sector by facilitating large-scale deployment of electric vehicles. While this will be executed by India’s Ministry of Heavy Industries, the surging power demand from this initiative could provide a new lifeline to state DISCOMs looking for new consumers. The challenge with all such experiments will require that India’s various ministries streamline and let states tailor make initiatives suitable to their agendas—only they can solve India’s paradox of plenty.
Kartikeya Singh is a fellow and deputy director of the Wadhwani Chair in U.S.-India Policy Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
Commentary is produced by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a private, tax-exempt institution focusing on international public policy issues. Its research is nonpartisan and nonproprietary. CSIS does not take specific policy positions. Accordingly, all views, positions, and conclusions expressed in this publication should be understood to be solely those of the author(s).
Banner photo credit: NARINDER NANU/AFP/Getty ImagesIMSA has not ruled out hosting additional split race events on a selective basis, following a successful trial run last weekend at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca.
Sunday’s TUDOR United SportsCar Championship doubleheader featured separate Prototype/GT Le Mans and Prototype Challenge/GT Daytona races, each two hours in length, a format that was initiated due to lack of pit lane space.
“It was an experiment going into it. But it was implemented by necessity, simply because with 56 entries and a pit lane that can in no way accommodate that kind of content, we had no choice but to split them,” IMSA President and COO Scott Atherton told Sportscar365.
“There was a little trepidation going into it for obvious reasons. I think coming out of that weekend, it’s the rare exception that you’d find someone that wasn’t very happy with it in general.
“For the most part, when you talk to the competitors, they really enjoyed the configuration and the ability to race in their own race without the interference of the other classes.”
Both races saw close battles and relatively clean racing, with only two safety car periods in the PC/GTD event and the P/GTLM round running caution-free for the second consecutive race under that class format.
While the amount of green flag running time was a stark contrast to the caution-plagued Twelve Hours of Sebring, Atherton said they still prefer to have a single combined race when possible.
“[The split race format is] worthy of further consideration,” Atherton said. “But I want to make sure everybody understands that we are still focused on endurance racing, that’s our niche.
“For the Tequila Patron North American Endurance Cup, they will remain, as always, with a full, four-class configuration.
“But for some of the other events and at venues that we know we have limitations on pit lane, as that’s usually the deciding factor, [this format would be a consideration].”
Atherton said measures were taken to ensure both races in Monterey were presented equally, and that policy would have to continue for any future doubleheaders.
“We don’t want a decision like that to create an ‘A’ and a ‘B’ show,” he said. “We would always want to consider both of them as one, even though as they did this past weekend at Mazda Raceway, they raced separately.
“But we were very careful to make both races have live television coverage. We had the same type of pre-race build-up. We would be very careful to make sure that if and when we choose to split the categories again that everyone gets equal billing.
“I think we did a good job of balancing that this past weekend. That would be the criteria going forward.”
One area of improvement, however, would come with format of practice, which saw combined sessions for all four classes that resulted in a congested pit road and busy track.
“Fifty six cars around Mazda Raceway is too many,” Atherton added. “It doesn’t allow teams to properly prepare for their races.
“If we were to do that over again, we would have re-configured the schedule to provide the race groups the opportunity to practice as they race. We didn’t have that flexibility and couldn’t alter the schedule after the fact.”
An additional split race is scheduled for Virginia International Raceway in August, which will feature a standalone GTLM/GTD event plus two 45-minute sprint races for PC cars combined with IMSA Prototype Lites.
No changes, however, are expected to be made to this year’s schedule, with consideration being made for 2015, should car counts and pit space be a limiting factor.Round Table Discussion on Grimdark with C.T. Phipps and James Schmidt/mightythorjrs
Hey folks,
This is C.T. Phipps, author of ESOTERRORISM and THE RULES OF SUPERVILLAINY, here with James Schmidt/mightythorjrs to talk about one of my favorite topics in fiction: GRIMDARK. Grimdark is a subject which is very near and dear to my heart, underlying my two novels and inspiring me to write my upcoming fantasy series WRAITH KNIGHT.
It’s a much-misunderstood and ill-defined concept, having emerged spontaneously in fandom first as an insult directed at dark, gritty fiction and then as a descriptor which authors have reluctantly accepted. Having discussed the subject on both my blog (http://unitedfederationofcharles.blogspot.com/2015/07/what-is-grimdark.html) and the SF Signal fanzine (http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2015/07/the-appeal-of-grimdark-by-c-t-phipps-author-of-esoterrorism/), I’m pleased to talk about it again with a person I consider a fellow expert on the subject.
So, let’s get discussing the issue.
So what does grimdark mean to you?
C.T. Phipps: Grimdark, for me, is simply a memorable way of saying, “gritty, adult fantasy and science fiction.” It’s memorable and catchy in a world where you need to have as few words as possible to convey what a book is about. It’s more of a mood than a genre, to me, conveying that this is the kind of place where the return of the king isn’t necessarily Aragorn but Joffrey. I think fantasy, despite being written for adults as early as the Epic of Gilgamesh, is something which constantly struggles for recognition by adults. J.R.R Tolkien wrote the Lord of the Rings, in large part, in order to fight the perception it was for kids.
I think the 21st century is finally where we’re starting to get the impression fantasy is something okay for adults to like and being every bit as “mature” as other genres but there are those who like to push the envelope beyond even the acceptable barriers of that as well. Grimdark, for me, has to be a fundamentally “mature” work and the literary equivalent of an R. Even then, the fact its fantasy means it has to fight for respect. One of the most hilarious things I’ve encountered in my writing career is The Rules of Supervillainy, a book which includes a kid getting his brother murdered in front of him before gunning down his attacker, is classified as Young Adult. Clearly, I should have included more violence and swearing to be properly adult. Hehe.
James Schmidt: First off, I hate labels and grimdark is just another way for people to label books and authors. I understand the need to classify things, it makes it easier to find books you might like, gives things some order. But it can also hurt books and authors to be “type cast” in sub-genres. That said I agree with C.T. that it is a simple way to say “gritty, adult fantasy and science fiction.” A more modern twist on our old favorites, a little more violence and sex, and just a darker tone and feel to Fantasy and Sci-Fi.
2. Who do you think the fathers of grimdark are?
C.T. Phipps: I think grimdark is the direct successor of Sword and Sorcery writing from the old Pulps. Robert E. Howard, Leiber, Clark Ashton-Smith, and others wrote dark fiction without much in the way of heroes. Michael Moorcock is my favorite of the S&S writers, having created a variety of concepts which would go on to influence much of my childhood with Dungeons and Dragons and Warhammer. I think grimdark is separate from Sword and Sorcery, though, because you can be both but Sword and Sorcery conjures a very specific freebooting style of fantasy.
For me, the “modern” grimdark is something created by George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire as well as Andrjez Sapkowski’s Witcher series. In both America and Europe, the two series had a big influence in opening doors for other authors to tell stories about dark and brooding fantasy. I also give credit to Warhammer 40K because anyone who can get away with portraying a combination of the Nazis and Papal Inquisition as the “good guys” has won my respect, even if its in a trainwreck sort of way.
James Schmidt: I definitely see Sword and Sorcery as the godfather of grimdark, I love Robert E. Howard and his works. Reading that has put me on the path to GRRM, Glen Cook, Joe Abercrombie, and Mark Lawrence. As far as who the fathers of grimdark are I could not really say, but the authors I mentioned are who I think of (right or wrong) when someone says grimdark.
Do you have any favorite writers who can be considered grimdark?
C.T. Phipps: Well, I could mention the big dogs at first but I think the pups in the independent scene deserve some love too. I was, actually, introduced to the grimdark genre by Rob J. Hayes’ The Ties That Bind series as well as the Blackguards: Tales of Assassins, Mercenaries, and Thieves anthology. While I’d read and loved the Westeros series, I’d fallen out of fantasy fandom and was more into horror.
The good people at Ragnarok Publications introduced me to a whole different genre which seemed written just for me and I’ve been devouring it for the past four years. It’s how I, appropriately enough, ended up working with Ragnarok Publications. I also would like to give some props to the good people behind Grimdark Magazine, who have written themselves an excellent fanzine. I recommend everyone check them out and pick up a copy if they like what we’re talking about (http://grimdarkmagazine.com/).
James Schmidt: Well anyone who knows me or my blog knows my love for Mark Lawrence. Whether or not he is grimdark someone else can decide. All I know is that he is hands down the best out there right now in my opinion. I recently read and reviewed Beyond Redemption by Michael R. Fletcher and I have to say it blew me away. A dark and crazy book, that took me by surprise. A book and author that I think everyone who likes grimdark or dark fantasy or whatever, needs to know about! Check out the review: Book Review: Beyond Redemption By Michael R. Fletcher
Do you think grimdark is an actual genre now?
C.T. Phipps: Yes and no. I don’t think you can really claim to be a “genre” until people start writing you. The major figures in grimdark like Mark Lawrence, Joe Abercombie, Scott Lynch, and, of course, Martin and Sapkowski didn’t set out to write grimdark. They set out to write fantasy and did so. It’s just their fantasy was dark, grim, and adult. Even my attempts at writing started at grim and dark fiction, not “grimdark.” I think we’re on the road there, though, which is a very good thing. To me, we’re in the proto-genre stage where it’s more of a movement and a descriptor than an actual type of fiction.
James Schmidt: I don’t know about that, but it is a sub-genre and label people love to use right now. I do think that the darker, adult fantasy/fiction is very popular and there are very good authors and books that are classified as such. I am sure with those influences there will be even more great books and authors to come out in the “grimdark” style.
What do you think of grimdark’s future?
C.T. Phipps: I think grimdark’s future is pretty secure. The very fact people are taking it seriously as both a movement and phenomenon is a supremely good sign. The people who played Dungeons and Dragons in their teens have since grown up to become the movers and shakers in media. A Song of Ice and Fire is the subject of academic essays and its adaptation to television is watched with the same attention as The Sopranos.
Future generations of fans are guaranteed as the proto-genre invades other mediums. Popular video game franchises like Dragon Age and Dead Space advertise themselves as “dark fantasy” and “horror science-fiction.” The Witcher series, one of the founders of the movement, is already adapted to three highly-successful video games. Grimdark isn’t a genre yet but I think we’re heading there and it’s not going to go away anytime soon.
James Schmidt: I believe grimdark or as C.T. said “gritty, adult fantasy and science fiction.” has a bright future (ironic I know). Whether you think of it as a label, or a sub-genre, or whatever, the authors and books that have come to define it are some of the best ever. They will continue to inspire even more awesome writers and books. As a very famous dark character once said ” If you only knew the power of the Dark Side”.
——————
About the author:
C.T Phipps is a lifelong student of horror, science fiction, and fantasy. An avid tabletop gamer, he discovered this passion led him to write and turned him into a lifelong geek. He is a regular blogger on “The United Federation of Charles” (http://unitedfederationofcharles.blogspot.com/).
He’s recently released the novels “The Rules of Supervillainy” and “Esoterrorism.” His third novel, “Wraith Knight” is expected to release in January of 2016.
————–
About the books:
Esoterrorism by C.T. Phipps
Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Esoterrorism-Secret-Files-Red-Room-ebook/dp/B0110HOKV6/
Series: From the Secret Files of the Red Room
From the Secret Files of the Red Room Paperback: 456 pages
456 pages Publisher: Ragnarok Publications; 1 edition (July 6, 2015)
Ragnarok Publications; 1 edition (July 6, 2015) Language: English
English ISBN-10: 1941987559
1941987559 ISBN-13: 978-1941987551
There are no good guys in the world of shadows…but maybe some bad men are better than others.
Derek Hawthorne was born to be an agent of the Red Room. Literally. Raised in a conspiracy which has protected the world from the supernatural for centuries, he’s never been anything other than a servant of their agenda. Times are changing, though, and it may not be long before their existence is exposed.
When a routine mission uncovers the latest plan of the magical terrorist, the Wazir, Derek finds himself saddled with a new partner. Who is the mysterious but deadly Shannon O’Reilly? What is her agenda? Couple this with the discovery the Red Room has a mole seeking to frame Derek for treason and you have a plot which might bring down a millennium-old organization. Can he stop the Wazir’s mission to expose the supernatural? And should he?
PRAISE
“A testosterone fueled urban fantasy, the perfect novel for fans who are tired of the paranormal romance trope, and who want to see more of the action and adventure element. It’s big, it’s frantic, it’s violent, and it’s very often funny.”
—Bob R. Milne, Beauty in Ruins
The Rules of Supervillainy by C.T. Phipps
Series: The Supervillainy Saga
The Supervillainy Saga Paperback: 240 pages
240 pages Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (June 7, 2015)
CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (June 7, 2015) Language: English
English ISBN-10: 1514269392
1514269392 ISBN-13: 978-1514269398
Gary Karkofsky is an ordinary guy with an ordinary life living in an extraordinary world. Supervillains, heroes, and monsters are a common part of the world he inhabits. Yet, after the death of his hometown’s resident superhero, he gains the amazing gift of the late champion’s magical cloak. Deciding he prefers to be rich rather than good, Gary embarks on a career as Merciless: The Supervillain Without Mercy. But is he evil enough to be a villain in America’s most crime-ridden city? Gary soon finds himself surrounded by a host of the worst of Falconcrest City’s toughest criminals. Supported by his long-suffering wife, his ex-girlfriend turned professional henchwoman, and a has-been evil mastermind, Gary may end up being not the hero they want but the villain they need.
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Place Matters for Mobility
Children born to low-income parents in Salt Lake City, for example, are much more likely to earn high incomes as adults, compared to children born to low-income parents in Atlanta regardless of the parent’s race. After examining the multiple correlations between the characteristics of metropolitan areas and their economic mobility outcomes, the Harvard team tentatively concludes that levels of neighborhood segregation, school quality, and single-parenthood in a metro area seem to matter most for kids’ eventual earnings (in the latter case, even to those born to married couples but in areas with large numbers of single parents). Those factors, in turn, may impact children’s life chances by influencing their behaviors and values; determining their parents’ access to good jobs and social services; and affecting levels of social capital, trust, and community engagement from which families may benefit.
Of course it is very difficult to identify and rate the importance of these problems as causes of economic hardship, both because these concepts are hard to measure, and because people are not usually randomly assigned to neighborhoods. Crudely, is it people making the place, or the place making the people?
Schooling Gaps
But schools certainly count. Most children are assigned to public schools close to their home. So, racial and economic housing segregation causes racial and economic school segregation. Because more effective teachers are disproportionately found in schools near affluent neighborhoods, black, Hispanic, and poor children attend worse schools. The figure below, taken from a Brookings report I wrote last year, shows that the average middle/high-income student (meaning family income is too high for federal free or reduced lunch program eligibility) attends schools that rank in the 61st percentile on statewide exams, compared to the 40th percentile for poor students:
Figure 1. Percentile Rank on State Exams of School Attended, Average U.S. Public School Student by Group, 2010-2011
To address these quality gaps, reformers have introduced alternatives to the neighborhood school in many cities. Competition for space means that children are sometimes assigned schools based on a lottery, which allows researchers to see clearly how school quality affects student success.
The evidence is in. School quality is hugely important, not only to school-based outcomes like grades and test scores, but also future outcomes like the probability of going to college and the level of eventual earnings. So there may be a range of factors explaining geographical variations in mobility, but one thing is clear: Children born to poor families succeed at higher rates when they attend good schools. Hence, place matters.Football authorities considered cancelling the game due to the heavy haze.
Smoke and poor air quality almost put a stop to this Saturday’s scheduled football game featuring the Langley Rams and the Valley Huskers.
The Canadian Junior Football League considered the game due to the air quality forecast of eight (high) for Saturday night, Rams spokesperson Chris Swartz said Friday morning.
The entire Lower Mainland has been under a blanket of smoke from B.C. wildfires since Tuesday, and air quality in the Fraser Valley has been particularly bad.
After a late-Friday assessment of the situation, BCFC president Gord Johnson announced the game will take place at its regularly scheduled time of 7 p.m. on Saturday in Chilliwack.
The Rams just played their season opener last Saturday on their home field at Langley’s McLeod Athletic Park.Borrachinha def. Bamgbose
It may not be Vitor Belfort, but up-and-comer Paulo Borrachinha has managed to land himself another ex-champ.
The Brazilian middleweight meets former welterweight titleholder Johny Hendricks (18-7 MMA, 13-7 UFC) at UFC 217, which takes place Nov. 4 at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The matchup, which was confirmed by MMAjunkie with Borrachinha’s (10-0 MMA, 2-0 UFC) camp, was first reported by Combate.com. UFC officials have not made a formal announcement of the booking.
Hendricks will look to untie the 1-1 record that he’s amassed since moving up to the UFC’s middleweight division. After a decision win over Hector Lombard at UFC Fight Night 105, Hendricks was knocked out by Tim Boetsch in the second round of their UFC Fight Night 112 encounter.
It’s a delicate moment for the 33-year-old fighter. After multiple issues making the 170-pound limit, he also failed to make weight for his 185-pound bout with Boetsch. Hendricks, who beat fellow ex-champ Robbie Lawler at UFC 171 to earn the vacant 170-pound title, was on a three-fight skid before the move up.
Borrachinha, in turn, comes impressive off back-to-back UFC wins – which cap off an undefeated professional record. The 25-year-old fighter followed a quick knockout over Garreth McLellan, at UFC Fight Night 106, with another TKO, this time over Oluwale Bamgbose, at June’s UFC 212. He has finished all of his fights to date.
For more on UFC 217, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.
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Please check your email for a confirmation.Earth 2.0
Guest List:
David Latham, Astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics,
Dimitar Sasselov, Professor of Astronomy at Harvard University, director of the Harvard Origins of Life Initiative,
Jason Wright, Professor of Astronomy at Penn State, expert in the search for advanced extraterrestrial civilizations,
Sarah Rugheimer, PhD student at Harvard University studying the atmospheres of exoplanets.
With hundreds of Earth-like planets discovered over the past few years, it’s fair to say we’re on the verge of finding alien life. Two new programs at NASA hope to find and analyze thousands more of these exoplanets, as they’re called. Scientists working on the Transiting Exoplanet Surveying Satellite (TESS) and the James Webb Space Telescope say there’s a very real chance of finding extraterrestrial life within the next two decades. So, if we’re about to meet our extraterrestrial neighbors, let’s get to work on some opening lines. What if we’re really not alone?
What’s the news?
The search for exoplanets is heating up — they’ve found 700 exoplanets in the last six months.
Some of them are very strange: There’s Kepler-421b, which has a year that lasts 704 days, the longest on record for a small ‘transiting’ planet. Then there’s a gas giant that orbits 20,000 times further away from its star than Earth is from the Sun. It takes tens of thousands of our years to go around once.
They’ve found a planet turning around a star in a binary-star system, and another planet in the so-called ‘Goldilocks’ or habitable zone that’s rocky like the Earth but 17 times more massive. For a (growing) list of the most extreme exoplanets, look here.
The big news is that the Milky Way alone contains by NASA’s estimate as many as 100 billion other planets, 10% of which might be in the right zone. This makes it all the likelier that there’s life out there, as astronomers have long suspected. All it took was someone to look using the right equipment.
All this sets up the flashy NASA announcement that we will find alien life in next twenty years. Is that plausible? is the question.
What’s next?
There are two planned telescopic/observational projects that are going to change the exoplanet search fundamentally.
TESS (the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) will launch in 2017. It’s run out of MIT, with funding from Google. And its mission will be to perform a “whole-sky survey” — covering 400 times more sky than Kepler has — looking at the brightest stars for transiting exoplanets.
Then the James Webb Space Telescope (really the next Hubble) will serve as the big eye in the sky for the foreseeable future after a delayed launch in 2018. It will launch in 2018, with ‘remote sensing’ infrared sight that will allow astronomers on the ground to look for chemical patterns coming off of planets that suggest life.
There’s still a long way to go for positive proof, though — the necessary rocketry and observation technology isn’t even on the books yet.
Life
The search right now is limited to looking for planets at the right size and in the right neighborhood with respect to their star: that ‘habitable zone’.
The astronomer Christopher McKay says we need to look, when we have better instruments, for six components that, found together, are ‘certainly damn interesting’: oxygen, “temperature, water, sunlight, nitrogen, and nothing that will kill” everything. Life like ours depends on the climate control that comes from water, too; astrobiologists are highlighting the importance of a water ocean.
The worries
Stephen Hawking wants us to lay off the search for alien life:
“I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach… If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the American Indians.”
Nick Bostrom says any proof of advanced life anywhere is bad news. The Fermi Paradox implies little communicating life in our neighborhood. That could be because of one of two “Great Filters”:
a) The advent of life is surprisingly rare, and we’re precious!; or
b) All life keeps wiping itself out past a certain point of development, due to machine superintelligence or environmental collapse.
Back to earth: there are now and ever will be funding troubles. Shifting away from SETI and going to what Latham called the long-cut way — “searching for abodes” — made this work more palatable as pure science and less sci-fi. SETI got Senator Proxmire’s “Golden Fleece” award for government spending.
Still, NASA has had to team up with the Canadian and European space agencies to launch the $8.8 billion James Webb telescope. Sarah Seager says the exoplanet search is the test ofLewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas' efforts at the Hungaroring were compromised when Mercedes lost much of its communications and data systems.
And although it managed to muddle through, thanks to extra help from its engineers back in Britain, the team was slightly compromised in terms of being able to capitalise on the difficult situation Ferrari found itself in.
Asked if the team had got to the bottom of what happened on the pit wall, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff said: "It was a local hardware issue. We found a crack in a fibre optic cable, that made us fly blind.
"Our whole comms and data systems broke down.We didn't have any communications on the 'Fantasy Island' - that is the middle thing we have – and on the pit wall.
"So no radio comms, no data, no TV feed. We somehow managed to get it back occasionally – and that obviously penalised us strongly. So there were conversations at times that Lewis heard and then there were conversations he didn't hear. A difficult one."
Wolff praised the efforts of those helping away from the track to keep its pit wall as up-to-date as possible with what was going on.
"It was an incredible team play," he said. "We had lots of people in Brackley and in Brixworth who were our redundancy systems, feeding us massive amounts of information over to us on the radio.
"At times there were six or seven different people speaking to James [Vowles, Mercedes strategist] and we were trying to make the right decisions. That was a really great team effort."
While Hamilton suggested over the radio that the loss of communication meant the timing of their pitstop was not ideal, Wolff also reckoned that if things had been working better it may have switched drivers earlier afterwards too.
"We could have had it a couple of laps earlier because he [Hamilton] told us he could have gone much quicker. He even said his tyres were in good shape the first set, and we could have tried to leave him out.
"That could have had a potentially massive outcome on the race as we were so close to the Ferraris in the end. But if and whens don't win you races."Screenshot by Eric Mack/CNET
President Obama says he wouldn't mind seeing a curriculum requirement for American high school students to learn a programming language.
"I think it makes sense, I really do," was his response to the idea posed in a live Google+ Hangout earlier today. "I want to make sure that (young people) know how to produce stuff using computers and not just consume stuff."
Obama recalled a conversation he had with Mark Zuckerberg about how the Facebook founder taught himself programming at a young age.
The president suggested that with the high interest in digital technology among young people it makes sense to teach skills like programming and graphic design in high school so that students can go on to pursue a career, with or without a four-year college degree.
In his State of the Union speech on Tuesday, Obama also proposed making preschool available to all 4-year-olds in the country. Given the fluency of the average toddler today with digital devices like iPads, perhaps it makes sense to start even earlier so that the next generation of programmers have a firm grasp of HTML5 or the iOS SDK by the time they start kindergarten.KARACHI: Arçelik AS, a global leader in the home appliances industry, on Friday announced the $258 million acquisition of Dawlance, Pakistan’s market-leading home appliance brand, as part of its global expansion into fast-growth opportunity markets.
The transaction will give Arçelik, which is owned by Koç Group, Turkey’s largest industrial conglomerate, a significant presence in the world’s sixth most populous country at a time of increased economic growth, said a press release.
The acquisition is expected to close by the end of 2016 subject to fulfillment of closing conditions, including regulatory approvals.
Pakistan’s economy is forecast to grow around five per cent annually for the next three years. It has increasingly prosperous working and middle class, with many aged 20-40, and is rapidly urbanising, all of which is very favourable for Arçelik.
Dawlance was founded in Karachi in 1980 and remains a privately-owned company. It has two manufacturing sites in Karachi and one in Hyderabad, supporting 3,000 staff across an extensive distribution, sales and service network. Dawlance operates in refrigerators, air-conditioners, micro-wave ovens, washing machines and freezers.
Dawlance reported 2015 revenues of $221 million and EBITDA of $45 million.
Levent Çakıroğlu, CEO of Koç Holding said Arçelik has made a significant investment in Pakistan in line with its global growth strategy and this investment will further strengthen Turkey-Pakistan economic ties.
Through the incorporation of Dawlance into our group, we will gain a strong and strategic foothold in Pakistan, a promising economy, he added.
Fatih Ebiçlioğlu, President of Consumer Durables Group of Koç Holding, said: “Pakistan is the sixth most populous country in the world with a population of 200 million people. Particularly, its young population, increasingly growing economy, makes it an enticing prospect as a market in the region.
Published in Dawn, July 2nd, 2016Posted 12 December 2017 17:57 CET by Jan Willem Aldershoff
Yesterday’s leaked AACS 2.0 Volume Keys have revealed there’s a major loophole in the AACS 2.0 copy protection used on Ultra HD Blu-ray (UHD BD) discs. The loophole was already known by insiders. The leaked keys, combined with the loophole, pave the way for (open source) software to playback UHD BD discs, but also for new UHD BD ripping software.
The loophole is possible because there are so-called UHD BD ‘friendly’ drives, which are different from ‘official’ UHD BD drives.
The official UHD BD drives are conform the AACS 2.0 specifications which means that for playback of UHD BD discs, an AACS 2.0 host certificate is required. The UHD BD friendly drives are Blu-ray drives that do not fully adhere to the AACS 2.0 specifications but which, for some reason, are able to read UHD BD discs. Official certified UHD BD software (e.g. PowerDVD) requires the AACS 2.0 host certificate, meaning official software will only playback content from ‘official’ UHD BD drives, and not from the ‘friendly’ ones.
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The loophole is, that with a non-revoked AACS 1.0 host certificate (which are available on the internet), it’s possible to playback AACS 2.0 content from the UHD BD friendly drives, as long as you have the disc specific AACS 2.0 volume keys. And a list of 72 of those volume keys is exactly what was leaked yesterday.
Owners of an UHD BD friendly drive who have found the leaked AACS 2.0 volume keys can now use software that allows supplying a AACS 1.0 host certificate and the leaked volume keys to either rip or playback UHD BD discs, given there is software that supports this.
Currently the best known software able to do that is MakeMKV, which has the possibility to use your own database of keys. It’s also possible that other software, such as the open source media player VLC, will be able to playback UHD BD discs soon as well, but obviously only on UHD BD friendly drives.
If you want to purchase an UHD BD friendly drive, then you should get one of these (some of them hard to find / out of stock already):
According to experts on the forums, these drives will continue to work, as long as the firmware of the drives isn’t updated. This means there is currently no way AACS LA can stop UHD BD friendly drives from playing and ripping movies with unofficial software.
Discuss this in the Volume Keys Leaked topic on our DeUHD Forum.
Please don’t ask for the volume keys or a non-revoked AACS 1.0 host certificate, we don’t allow posts about that.Early man '
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Sheikh Saeed would have been part of that MI6-backed funnel. Others in Musharraf’s government were convinced that Sheikh Saeed was also a CIA asset. In a little-noted article on Saeed’s murky background in March 2002, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported that: “There are many in Musharraf’s government who believe that Saeed Sheikh’s power comes not from the ISI, but from his connections with our own CIA.” Officials believe that “Saeed Sheikh was bought and paid for.”
Some senior US intelligence officials agree. John Newman, a former executive assistant to the director of the NSA who spent 20 years in the US Army Intelligence and Security Command, pointed out that despite Sheikh Saeed’s kidnapping of British citizens and related terror offenses, he faced no indictments from the US or Britain, and was even able to travel back to London in January 2000. He had also kidnapped American citizens, but faced no indictments from the US until after 9/11.
“Did the United States not indict Saeed Sheikh because he was a British informant? Did the agency [CIA] receive information provided by Saeed Sheikh from British or Pakistani intelligence?” asked Newman rhetorically at a 2005 Congressional briefing on the findings of the 9/11 Commission Report.
“This would help explain why Saeed Sheikh was not indicted and escaped justice for his crimes and traveled freely around England… If the foregoing analysis has any merit, Western intelligence agencies were receiving reports from a senior al-Qaeda source. Once again, however, al-Qaeda had used Western intelligence to accomplish its own mission. Saeed Sheikh was probably a triple agent.”
Ahmed Omar Sheikh Saeed’s role in the 9/11 attacks on behalf of the head of the ISI, Newman noted, was completely ignored by the 9/11 Commission Report. But the revelation that Sheikh Saeed was likely a triple agent of the ISI, CIA and MI6, also raises questions about bin Laden’s protection by the ISI after 9/11. The failure of US authorities to out Sheikh Saeed’s 9/11 role suggests that his freedom of movement before 9/11 was very much enabled by what Newman describes as his “triple agent” status.
In other words, bin Laden and Sheikh Saeed — apparently a CIA and MI6 asset — shared the same ISI handler, Brig. Ijaz Shah.
Newman argues, essentially, that the Sheikh Saeed story shows how US and British determination to maintain an intelligence asset in the heart of bin Laden’s operations, gave him and his associates an extraordinary freedom of impunity that blew up in our faces on 9/11.
Our jihadists
The Saudi-Pakistani arrangement at Abbottabad provided bin Laden with significant freedom of movement, and an ability to continue maintaining direct contact with al-Qaeda militants. Yet it also coincided with the acceleration of a covert US strategy launched to empower Sunni jihadists.
Around the middle of the last decade, the Bush administration decided to use Saudi Arabia to funnel millions of dollars to al-Qaeda affiliated jihadists, Salafi militants, and Muslim Brotherhood Islamists. The idea was to empower these groups across the Middle East and Central Asia, with a view to counter and rollback the geopolitical influence of Shi’ite Iran and Syria.
Seymour Hersh himself reported in detail on the unfolding of this strategy in the New Yorker in 2007, citing a range of US and Saudi government, intelligence and defence sources. The US-backed Saudi funding operation for Islamist militants, including groups affiliated with or sympathetic to al-Qaeda, was active as far back as 2005 according to Hersh — the same year that bin Laden’s move to Abbottabad under Saudi financial largess was approved.
The thrust of Hersh’s 2007 report has been widely confirmed elsewhere, including by several former senior government officials speaking on-the-record.
The existence of a US covert programme of this nature was corroborated by ABC News that very year.
Then in 2008, a US Presidential Finding disclosed that Bush had authorised an “unprecedented” covert offensive against Iran and Syria, across a huge geographical area from Lebanon to Afghanistan, permitting funding to anti-Shi’a groups including Sunni militant terrorists like the pro-al-Qaeda Jundullah, Iranian Kurdish nationalists, Baluchi Sunni fundamentalists, and the Ahwazi Arabs of southwest Iran. The CIA operation would receive an initial influx of $3–400 million.
Although spearheaded under Bush, the strategy escalated under the Obama administration.
Alastair Crooke, a retired 30-year MI6 officer and Middle East advisor to EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, explained that the US-Saudi alliance would generate a resurgence of al-Qaeda jihadists:
“US officials speculated as to what might be done to block this vital corridor [from Iran to Syria], but it was Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia who surprised them by saying that the solution was to harness Islamic forces. The Americans were intrigued, but could not deal with such people. Leave that to me, Bandar retorted.”
This regional strategy, Crooke said, involved the sponsorship of extremist Salafis in Syria, Libya, Egypt, Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq “to disrupt and emasculate the [Arab Spring] awakenings that threaten absolute monarchism.”
The continuation of the strategy under Obama was also confirmed by John Hannah, former national security advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney, who remarked that:
“Bandar working as a partner with Washington against a common Iranian enemy is a major strategic asset.”
Mobilising extremist Sunnis “across the region” under “Saudi resources and prestige,” wrote Hannah, can “reinforce US policy and interests… weaken the Iranian mullahs; undermine the Assad regime; support a successful transition in Egypt; facilitate Qaddafi’s departure; reintegrate Iraq into the Arab fold; and encourage a negotiated solution in Yemen.”
The activation of the strategy was perhaps most clearly confirmed in a 2008 US Army-sponsored RAND Corp report, which recommended eight strategies for prosecuting the ‘war on terror’ in the region.
Among them was a recommendation to exploit “fault lines between the various SJ [Salafi-jihadist] groups to turn them against each other and dissipate their energy on internal conflicts,” for instance between “local SJ groups” focused on “overthrowing their national government” and transnational jihadists like al-Qaeda. The US “could use the nationalist jihadists to launch proxy IO [information operation] campaigns to discredit the transnational jihadists.”
The US could also “choose to capitalise on the Shia-Sunni conflict by taking the side of the conservative Sunni regimes in a decisive fashion and working with them against all Shiite empowerment movements in the Muslim world… to split the jihadist movement between Shiites and Sunnis.” The US would need to contain “Iranian power and influence” in the Gulf by “shoring up the traditional Sunni regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan.”
Although this would mean empowering al-Qaeda’s chief financial backers among Sunni states, the widening Sunni-Shia sectarian conflict would “reduce the al-Qaeda threat to US interests in the short term,” by diverting Salafi-jihadist resources toward “targeting Iranian interests throughout the Middle East,” especially in Iraq and Lebanon, hence “cutting back… anti-Western operations.”
The same US Army-backed RAND report confirmed that this “divide and rule” strategy had already been activated in the region, specifically in Iraq:
“Today in Iraq such a strategy is being used at the tactical level, as the United States now forms temporary alliances with nationalist insurgent groups that it has been fighting for four years… In the past, these nationalists have cooperated with al-Qaeda against US forces.”
Bringing all this together implies that in the same year that the Pakistani ISI received funding from Saudi Arabia to harbour bin Laden in his custom-built mansion in Abbottabad, the US had covertly partnered with Saudi Arabia to support al-Qaeda affiliated groups as part of a highly clandestine divide-and-rule strategy to counter Iranian influence.
Quoting Hersh from his 2007 report, a US government consultant told him that Prince Bandar bin Sultan and other Saudis had assured the White House that:
“… they will keep a very close eye on the religious fundamentalists. Their message to us was ‘We’ve created this movement, and we can control it.’ It’s not that we don’t want the Salafis to throw bombs; it’s who they throw them at — Hezbollah, Moqtada al-Sadr, Iran, and at the Syrians, if they continue to work with Hezbollah and Iran.”
Thus, the key US contact in Saudi Arabia responsible for the covert ‘redirection’ strategy at its origination was Prince Bandar bin Sultan, then Secretary-General of Saudi’s National Security Council.
As reported by Saleem Shahzad, Prince Bandar — who knew bin Laden personally from their Cold War days — had also met with US and Pakistani officials in the months leading up to the bin Laden raid.
In other words, Prince Bandar was the same senior Saudi official who helped negotiate the agreement under which the Abbottabad operation would be executed in 2011, and who had been tapped under both Obama and Bush to accelerate Saudi funding of Islamist militants to counter Iran.
Yet US officials knew that Bandar was linked directly to the events of 9/11. In tapping the Prince to assist with the anti-Iran strategy and the Pakistan-bin Laden strategy, US officials knowingly collaborated with a Saudi royal who had financed the 9/11 hijackers.
In his book Intelligence Matters (2004), Senator Bob Graham, co-chair of the Congressional Inquiry into 9/11, discusses the contents of a top secret CIA memo dated 2nd August 2002 about two 9/11 hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi. The CIA memo concluded that there is “incontrovertible evidence that there is support for these terrorists within the Saudi government.”
The 28 page section of the Congressional report including discussion of the CIA memo was classified, but some of its contents were leaked, and related issues revealed in press reports. Early in 2000, when Almidhar and Alhazmi arrived at Los Angeles airport, they were picked up by a fellow Saudi, Omar al-Bayoumi, who gave them $1,500 in cash, moved them into his apartment building, and helped them apply for flight school.
Al-Bayoumi worked for Dallah Avco, a Saudi-based airline chaired by Prince Bandar’s father, Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz. The firm is a major contractor for the Saudi Ministry of Defense and Aviation.
In the following months, al-Bayoumi and his associates received regular cashier’s cheques of around $2,000 a month, totaling tens of thousands of dollars. These came from Prince Bandar and his wife, Princess Haifa bint Faisal. Both Bandar and his wife claimed the money was donated for charitable purposes (one payment track was made after one of al-Bayoumi’s associates requested assistance from the Saudi embassy for thyroid treatment), and that they had no idea it was being diverted to fund the 9/11 hijackers.
After 9/11, British authorities questioned al-Bayoumi in London about the Saudi money trail to bin Laden’s hijackers. They had discovered secret papers with the private phone numbers of senior Saudi government officials concealed beneath the floorboards of his flat in London. The investigation went nowhere: al-Bayoumi was soon released, and disappeared into Saudi Arabia.
This disturbing background shows that Prince Bandar was connected to the 9/11 attacks, but protected by US authorities; that he was the White House’s point-man to launch the wider US-Saudi covert arrangement to fund al-Qaeda affiliated groups (coinciding with bin Laden’s move to Abbottabad with Saudi funding); and that by 2011, he was privy to Pakistan’s harbouring of al-Qaeda’s leader and the US-Pakistan arrangement that led to his assassination.
Throughout this period, senior US intelligence officials have said that Osama bin Laden was actively engaged in directing the very al-Qaeda terror activity that Saudi Arabia was busy financing, while also financing bin Laden’s ISI-controlled base in Abbottabad.
“This compound in Abbottabad was an active command and control center for al Qaeda’s top leader and it’s clear… that he was not just a strategic thinker for the group,” said one official. “He was active in operational planning and in driving tactical decisions.”
That claim is consistent with information on bin Laden’s activity contained in the Afghan War logs. The overwhelming implication, and the consistent role of Prince Bandar in the alignment of these events, is that the US-backed Saudi programme to “control” who bin Laden-affiliated Salafis “throw bombs” at, gave bin Laden a free-hand to accelerate his terrorist activity under the auspices of the ISI.
The US-led strategy had, it seems, enabled the Saudi-Pakistani arrangement with the al-Qaeda founder as a matter of geopolitical convenience to undermine Iran.
The great escape
Credible reports of bin Laden’s connections to the Haqqani network also point to the role of the Saudi and Pakistani states in protecting bin Laden.
Two months before the US raid on his Abbottabad mansion, a BBC interview with senior officials of the Haqqani network confirmed a meeting with Osama bin Laden in Chitral in the northwest Pakistan frontier region.
The Haqqani network points directly to the ISI. In his testimony before the US Senate in September 2011, then outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, said that “credible intelligence” confirms that “the Haqqani network… acts as a veritable arm of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency.”
This intelligence goes back many years. In 2008, for instance, confidential NATO reports and US intelligence assessments circulated among senior White House officials confirmed that Pakistan’s ISI at the highest levels had provided military support to Taliban insurgents, particularly the Haqqani network. Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, who according to Hersh was complicit in protecting bin Laden in Abbottabad, had been identified as sanctioning provision of military aid to insurgents affiliated to bin Laden.
In fact, US and British intelligence analyses from just before 9/11 right up until the bin Laden raid not only show that the ISI has supported such al-Qaeda linked insurgent groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan throughout that period, but that US and British officials were well aware of the same.
Various credible sources report that the Haqqani network, with assistance from the ISI, had played a key role in bin Laden’s escape from the Tora Bora complex in 2001 into Pakistan in the wake of the US bombing campaign.
In the New Yorker, Dexter Filkins cites Afghanistan’s intelligence chief from 2004 to 2010, Amrullah Saleh, who told him that ISI operative Syed Akbar Sabir had escorted bin Laden from Chitral to Peshawar in Pakistan: “We believed that he was part of the ISI operation to care for bin Laden.”
Another ISI agent, Fida Muhammad, had confessed to the Afghans that he had been escorting Haqqani insurgents from Pakistan into Afghanistan to fight the NATO occupation for the previous decade. But his most “memorable” job was in December 2001, when he participated in a major ISI covert operation — sanctioned at the highest levels — to help al-Qaeda fighters escape from Tora Bora.
There were dozens of ISI teams operating on the ground at the time who successfully evacuated as many as 1,500 militants from Tora Bora and other jihadist camps.
In his New Yorker story, Filkins quotes former CIA counter-terrorism officer Bruce Riedel on former ISI chief Nadeem Taj, whom he described as being “deeply involved with Pakistani militants, particularly those fighting against India.”
But as Filkins observes:
“Before taking over the ISI, Taj was the commandant of the Pakistani military academy in Abbottabad. That is, he was the senior military official in Abbottabad at the time that American officials believe bin Laden began living there. Taj retired from the Pakistani Army in April, just days before the raid in Abbottabad. Attempts to track him down in Pakistan were unsuccessful.”
According to a 2009 Senate Committee on Foreign Relations report into the Tora Bora debacle, US intelligence had confirmed bin Laden’s presence among al-Qaeda fighters, during the December 2001 bombing campaign — a matter confirmed by the official history of the US Special Operations Command.
US Special Forces in Afghanistan
Yet the commander of the operation, General Tommy Franks, Vice President Dick Cheney, and other senior officials claimed falsely that “the intelligence was inconclusive about the Al Qaeda leader’s location.”
Gen. Franks to this day justifies the decision on an outright lie: “I have yet to see anything that proves bin Laden or whomever was there.”
In reality, the Senate report proves that White House and military officials knew bin Laden was there, and were warned repeatedly that the failure to mobilise US forces to block the wide-open routes into Pakistan would result in his escape.
Henry Crumpton, head of special operations for the CIA’s counter-terrrorism division and chief of its Afghan strategy, had told the Bush administration that “we’re going to lose our prey [bin Laden]” without bringing in US marines already stationed in Kandahar to block those routes.
“The decision not to deploy American forces to go after bin Laden or block his escape,” the Senate report noted, “was made by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his top commander, General Tommy Franks.”
“The implications of these statements are that bin Laden was alive and was allowed to escape,” said Prof. Sunil Ram of the American Military University, writing in the respected Canadian defence journal, Frontline Defence.
Just a month earlier, the Pentagon was directly complicit in secret Pakistani military airlifts into Kunduz which rescued beleaguered Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters from America’s elite Delta Force units on the ground. A CIA official and a Delta Force military analyst told Seymour Hersh for the New Yorker that “the Administration ordered the United States Central Command to set up a special air corridor to help insure the safety of the Pakistani rescue flights.”
The operation was purportedly undertaken to save Pakistani military and intelligence operatives on the ground in Kunduz, whose deaths under US bombing would jeopardise the political survival of Pakistan’s then leader, Gen. Pervez Musharraf.
Yet on 21st November, in response to questions from journalists about reports of the airlifts, Rumsfeld denied the Pentagon’s involvement while also inadvertently revealing his knowledge of the operation’s foreseeable consequences:
“Any idea that those people should be let loose on any basis at all to leave that country and to go bring terror to other countries and destabilise other countries is unacceptable.”
Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defence in the Bush Jnr. administration
In other words, senior White House and Pentagon officials were complicit in ISI operations that foreseeably “let loose” Laden’s Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters to “go bring terror to other countries.”
According to Prof. Ram, who was a senior military strategy advisor to the Saudi Royal family for over a decade:
“The Battle of Tora Bora obviously raises the question why was he [bin Laden] allowed to escape? … if US Special Forces had killed or captured him in Tora Bora in 2001, the basic justification for the Global War on Terror would have been eliminated and the subsequent (and false) claims of links between al-Qaeda and Iraq would have been meaningless.”
He points out that many of the “expansionist policies” subsequently pursued by the Bush administration as outlined by the neoconservative think-tank, the Project for a New American Century, would have had little traction had al-Qaeda been routed and bin Laden killed in Tora Bora.
“The US would have been hard pressed to convince anyone of the need to invade Iraq or continue the war in Afghanistan,” concludes Ram, who was previously an editor at SITREP, the defence journal of the Royal Canadian Military Institute, where he sat on the Defence Studies Committee. “Thus, logic dictates that bin Laden was allowed to escape into Pakistan in late 2001.”
The Haqqani network, which appeared to have been integral to the post-9/11 ISI operation “to care for bin Laden,” to quote Afghanistan’s former intelligence czar, Amrullah Saleh, also remains connected to Saudi Arabia.
The latest batch of confidential Saudi diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks contains documents revealing that the Saudi ambassador to Pakistan met in February 2012 with Nasiruddin Haqqani, the jihadist group’s chief fundraiser at the time, and the son of Jalaluddin Haqqani, the group’s founder. Nasiruddin was later killed in a shooting in Islamabad in November 2013.
The documents show that Nasiruddin asked the Saudi ambassador to convey to the Saudi king his father’s wish for treatment in a Saudi hospital, and mentions that Jalaluddin Haqqani holds a Saudi passport. Another document shows that a senior Saudi foreign ministry official then recommended that the treatment go ahead — although it remains unclear whether it actually did.
Previous US diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks confirmed US intelligence has been well aware for years that Taliban and Haqqani network fundraisers and associates were routinely residing in or travelling to Saudi Arabia, where they engaged in fundraising activities.
While documenting apparent Saudi cooperation with the US to disrupt terror support activities inside Saudi Arabia, the new leaked Saudi cables show that Saudi officials at the highest level are still courting the same militant networks abroad.
In other words, senior Saudi and Pakistani government officials until well after the bin Laden raid have retained close ties to the Haqqani network — the same network which under ISI purview facilitated bin Laden’s escape from Tora Bora in 2001, and with which bin Laden met just months before the May 2011 raid.
The split
But despite bin Laden’s ongoing involvement in directing militant activity, often in liaison with groups supportive of al-Qaeda like the Haqqani network, there can be little doubt that his role in al-Qaeda had significantly reduced.
According to Pakistani tribal sources cited by Gareth Porter who were familiar with bin Laden’s presence in South Waziristan shortly after 9/11, bin Laden had been increasingly sidelined by other al-Qaeda leaders, including his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri.
But Porter vastly overstates his case in arguing that bin Laden’s role in al-Qaeda had become virtually mute — an idea put forward by the US West Point Military Academy’s Counter Terrorism Center which released the bin Laden files.
The latest detailed analysis of the documents from the Abbottabad compound show that bin Laden had overseen the dispatch of al-Qaeda forces across the Middle East from Yemen to Libya, where for instance one of his deputies informed him of “an active Jihadist Islamic renaissance underway in Eastern Libya (Benghazi, Derna, Bayda and that area).”
The Abbottabad documents also confirmed that in the months before bin Laden’s death, al-Qaeda’s leadership and sponsors in the Pakistani ISI were — as with Hekmatyar — actively seeking some sort of accommodation with the Americans.
The documents recorded former ISI chief Hamid Gul telling his al-Qaeda contacts: “We are putting pressure on them [America] to negotiate with al-Qaeda... [and] that negotiating with the Taliban separate from al-Qaeda is pointless.”
But the most intriguing revelation is that Bin Laden’s deputy, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, told bin Laden in early 2011 that UK security services were in contact with Libyan al-Qaeda operatives in Britain:
“British Intelligence spoke to them (these Libyan brothers in England), and asked them to try to contact the people they knew in al Qaeda to inform them of and find out what they think about the following idea: England is ready to leave Afghanistan [if] al Qaeda would explicitly commit to not moving against England or her interests.”
This proposal had been relayed through an al-Qaeda operative in Libya, then in hiding in Iran, who was in contact with “some Libyan brothers in England.”
It should be noted that in 2007, documents leaked by Snowden showed that the NSA had acknowledged tracking a “communications path” from Osama bin Laden in Pakistan to al-Qaeda leaders in Iraq and Iran.
The new proposal offered a repeat of what British security officials have described as an informal ‘covenant of security’ with Islamists that had been in place during the Cold War and through the 1990s.
According to Lieutenant Colonel Crispin Black, a former UK Cabinet Office intelligence advisor to the Prime Minister, under the ‘covenant of security’ Islamist militants would be able to reside unmolested in Britain and plot to their hearts’ content, as long as they refrained from targeting Britain or British interests.
Al-Rahman went on in the letter to explain how he had already responded to the British proposal:
“I wrote: we can consider the matter and come up with something appropriate along this vein. I will convey the idea to the leadership. He may have told the Libyan brothers by now, and they may have told the British.”
However, bin Laden was intent on rejecting the proposal. A letter to al-Rahman from bin Laden dated 26th April 2011 records the latter’s conviction that UK forces were “sure of being defeated”:
“Regarding what you mentioned about the British intelligence saying that England is going to leave Afghanistan if al-Qaeda promised not to target their interests… I say that we do not enable them on that, but without slamming the door completely closed.”
For bin Laden, the emphasis was on avoiding any such accommodations with the West, telling al-Rahman: “We would like to neutralise whomever we possibly can during our war with our bigger enemy, America.”
Al-Qaeda had, in that context, offered a truce to bin Laden’s Pakistani benefactors, on condition that they cease cooperation with the US: “You became part of the battle when you sided with the Americans. If you were to leave us and our affairs alone, we would leave you alone.”
Extraordinarily, bin Laden was able to use his position from Abbottabad to freely threaten Pakistan with further domestic al-Qaeda terrorist attacks due to the government’s ongoing coordination with the Americans.
The documents show that bin Laden remained obsessed with organising a “large operation inside America [that] affects the security and nerves of 300 million Americans.”
As for the Middle East, bin Laden’s 26th April letter further revealed that he saw the Arab Spring revolutions as an opportunity for the emergence of populist Islamic governments, largely led by the Muslim Brotherhood. He urged Rahman to warn “our brothers in the regions… of entering into confrontations with the parties belonging to Islam, and it is probable that most of the areas will have governments established on the remnants of the previous governments, and most probable these governments will belong to the Islamic parties and groups, like the Brotherhood and the like.”
Al-Qaeda jihadists should cooperate with the emerging governments, “as the current conditions have brought on unprecedented opportunities and the coming of Islamic governments that follow the Salafi doctrine is a benefit to Islam.”
The spate of meetings bin Laden had pursued with militants across Pakistan in the months before the raid were the terror chief’s efforts to enjoin that vision and secure the support of comrades. Hekmatyar, for instance, whom bin Laden had met according to Shahzad Saleem, was already working on accommodating with the Americans. Bin Laden, however, was clearly against this strategy, and wanted to Hekmatyar and others to instead pursue his ‘big tent’ strategy to focus on hitting the US hard.
Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, today’s al-Qaeda chief — previously bin Laden’s senior deputy and right-hand man
In contrast, bin Laden’s second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, had a very different strategy of response to the Arab revolutions. Inspired by his personal experience of the intolerance to “Islamic militancy” under US-backed Muslim regimes during the Cold War, Shahzad Saleem reported that in the months prior to bin Laden’s death:
“Zawahiri therefore promoted the idea of ideological divides within the Muslim world, and encouraged revolts and terrorism to polarise societies to such a point of chaos that they would be unmanageable and amenable to Western intervention. It was believed that such intervention would open the gates for a battle between the West and the Muslim world.”
The al-Qaeda number two“encouraged narrow ideological views in resistance movements as a strategy to boost revolts against Muslim-majority states,” thoroughly different to bin Laden’s new policy of a re-unification between al-Qaeda and other non-violent Islamist groups.
But Zawahiri’s approach was “shot down” by other senior al-Qaeda leaders, including Sulaiman Abu al-Gaith and Saif al-Adel. They agreed with bin Laden’s vision of al-Qaeda reviving contacts with old networks with “Muslim Brotherhood and Palestinian groups” to “join forces with mainstream Muslim groups” and launch a “joint struggle against Western interests in the Muslim world.”
Betrayal
Zawahiri’s plan was to play the long-game: rather than focusing on Western “heartlands” with spectacular operations, he wanted al-Qaeda to fracture the most strategic regions of the Muslim world, bogging down Western militaries in prolonged insurgencies that would, eventually, coalesce into a major confrontation.
Zawahiri’s vision of polarising Muslim societies along sectarian lines aligned alarmingly well with the Pentagon’s own regional divide-and-rule strategies to foster Salafi jihadists as a way to not just undercut Iran and Syria, but even undermine the potency of democratic uprisings that threatened to endanger the Gulf regimes. It also, of course, appeared to reduce the risk of major mass casualty attacks.
Four days after writing his letter declining the British offer of a renewed ‘covenant of security’, bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound was raided, and the terror chief killed.
By facilitating the assassination of Osama bin Laden, US, Saudi and Pakistani intelligence agencies resolved the internal debate among the terror group’s leadership. While they aborted bin Laden’s vision of a united Muslim world hell-bent on destroying the West, in doing so, they brought to the fore bin Laden’s lieutenant Zawahiri, who was also under Pakistani protection at the time according to ISI sources.
In her book The Wrong Enemy (2014), Carlotta Gall reports that Afghan national security officials were informed by a Pashtun tribal elder in 2005 that al-Zawahiri was “staying as a guest at the house of a senior Pakistani government official in Kohat” — that official was “the governor of the North West Frontier province, a retired general, and a Musharraf appointee.”
The information was passed on to President Karzai, and given US-Afghan intelligence sharing arrangements, would likely have been passed on to the Americans. According to Gall, after the bin Laden raid, “two American counterterrorism officials told me that the account of Zawahiri’s hiding place was entirely possible and that they had seen similar such reports.”
That protection continues to this day. “There are indicators that some elements of the Pakistani government may be protecting Zawahiri,” one US intelligence official told Newsweek a year after the raid. “We have reports that he’s been hanging out in Karachi for brief periods, and we just don’t think he’s going to be doing that without a lot of people knowing about it.”
Back in October 2010, a senior NATO intelligence official told CNN that alongside bin Laden, Zawahiri’s location had also been determined by US intelligence, and that both were living “comfortably” in Pakistan nearby each other, under ISI protection. The revelation indicated that US intelligence on bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad had also identified Zawahiri’s location.
The 2008 Pentagon memo on Abu al-Libi had also showed that since 2005, the CIA was aware that bin Laden and Zawahiri had remained in close proximity, including during bin Laden’s shift toward Abbottabad.
But the US, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan had chosen to target bin Laden, alone.
Under Zawahiri’s watch, al-Qaeda’s activities in the region accelerated across the region in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, Algeria and beyond. The upshot of these activities has not been to align with other Islamist forces, but to accentuate splits within the Salafi-jihadist movements, and within broader Islamist and Salafi movements overall.
This has increasingly ended up serving US geopolitical interests. For instance, the al-Qaeda-affiliated Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), whose fighters reported directly to various senior al-Qaeda deputies, played a key role in the rebellion that toppled Col. Gaddafi, under the sponsorship and protection of NATO.
A Canadian intelligence report from 2009 described the rebel stronghold of eastern Libya as an “epicentre of Islamist extremism”, from which “extremist cells” operated in the region. The intelligence report confirmed that “several Islamist insurgent groups” were based in eastern Libya, many of whom were also “urging followers to fight in Iraq.”
During NATO’s intervention in Libya, al-Qaeda’s integral presence on the ground as part of the rebellion led Canadian pilots to joke privately that they were al-Qaeda’s air force, “since their bombing runs helped to pave the way for rebels aligned with the terrorist group.”
By the following year, US-backed support for al-Qaeda affiliated groups through regional allies — the Gulf regimes and Turkey — focused on Syria. Saudi Arabia played a lead role in the strategy under the helm of none other than Prince Bandar, who in 2012 was appointed Director General of the Saudi Intelligence Agency.
In my exclusive investigation last month, I explored the startling implications of a declassified Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) report revealing that in its drive to topple Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, the West oversaw these allies in supporting Islamist extremist rebels, including “al-Qaeda in Iraq.”
The Pentagon report showed that in August 2012, two years before ISIS invaded Iraq, the DIA had received raw information that the support for al-Qaeda linked rebels threatened to spawn a “Salafist Principality” in eastern Syria that could, further, give rise to an “Islamic State” across Iraq and Syria.
Three years down the line, under an ongoing US-backed rebel supply and training operation, the Saudis, Turks and Qataris are continuing the same strategy that generated ISIS, by openly sponsoring an “Islamist-dominated rebel alliance” in Syria, in which the al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra front is the major player.
“It is unlikely we are going to operate side by side with cadres from Nusra, but if our allies are working with them, that is acceptable,” said former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Adm. James Stavrids. The US is likely to go “pretty far… in terms of engaging with that coalition.”
In reality, little has changed since the good old days driving the Soviets from Afghanistan.
Protection racket
Given bin Laden’s increasing hostility toward any sort of accommodation with the Americans before his death, the al-Qaeda founder may well be turning in his grave at the actions of his successor.
The assassination of bin Laden has paved the way for the complete opposite of bin Laden’s grand vision of crumbling Muslim regimes overtaken by populist “Islamic governments.” Instead, his death has heralded the resurgence of a new geopolitical alliance between the West, the Gulf regimes, Turkey, and al-Qaeda.
It is therefore not surprising that to this day, successive US governments continue to systematically downplay the extent to which the governments of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have deliberately fostered the infrastructure and support network for Osama bin Laden’s Islamist terrorist activity — much of which has occurred while in receipt of extensive Western financial and military aid.
As noted above, just before publishing its report in 2004, the 9/11 Commission received a confidential document from a high-level “unimpeachable source” in Pakistan. The report, commissioned by Zelikow, was damning:
“The imprints of every major act of international Islamist terrorism invariably passes through Pakistan, right from 9/11 — where virtually all the participants had trained, resided or met in, coordinated with, or received funding from or through Pakistan — to major acts of terrorism across South Asia and Southeast Asia, as well as major networks of terror that have been discovered in Europe.”
The document went so far as to reveal that repeated claims about bin Laden’s premature death could be traced back to ISI disinformation, put out to deflect attention from the agency’s complicity in harbouring and promoting al-Qaeda:
“ISI has consistently sought to deny the presence of al-Qaida elements in Pakistan, and to mislead US investigators… This deception has been at the very highest level, and Musharraf himself, for instance, initially insisted he was ‘certain’ bin Laden was dead.”
Musharraf, of course, according to former ISI chief Gen. Ziauddin Butt, was responsible for approving bin Laden’s protection at the Abbottabad compound under the jurisdiction of Brig. Ijaz Shah and the Pakistani Intelligence Bureau.
“ISI issues money and directions to militant groups, specially the Arab hijackers of 9/11 from al-Qaida. ISI was fully involved in devising and helping the entire affair. And that is why people like Hamid Gul and others very quickly stated the propaganda that CIA and Mossad did it.”
The report noted that although bin Laden was very much alive, reports of his being ill are accurate. The terror chief suffered “from renal deficiency [and] has been periodically undergoing dialysis in a Peshawar military hospital with the knowledge and approval of ISI if not of Gen. Pervez Musharraf himself.”
The source of the report even speculated: “Musharraf may be planning to turn over bin Laden to President Bush in time to clinch his reelection bid in November.”
Thus, in 2004, the US government-appointed commission to investigate 9/11 — staffed with former and active government and intelligence advisors — received startling information that Musharraf and the ISI were not only harbouring bin Laden and fabricating reports of his death, but were willing to hand him over to the US to aid with political point-scoring.
To this day, this unpublished 9/11 Commission addendum on Pakistan remains classified.
The US record on Saudi Arabia is equally damning. The infamous classified 28 pages of the 2002 Congressional Inquiry Report into 9/11 has been described by the inquiry’s co-chair Senator Bob Graham as providing shocking confirmation of the role of senior Saudi officials in not just sponsoring al-Qaeda, but providing specific financial support to the 9/11 hijackers and the operation itself. This January, he told a press conference:
“What would you think the Saudis’ position would be, if they knew what they had done, they knew that the United States knew what they had done, and they also observed that the United States had taken a position of either passivity, or actual hostility to letting those facts be known?”
The US has turned a blind eye to the Saudi relationship with bin Laden since the end of the Cold War.
A classified US intelligence report revealed by journalist Gerald Posner in his book Why America Slept (2003), confirmed that the US was fully aware of a secret deal struck in April 1991 between Saudi Arabia and bin Laden, then under house arrest in the kingdom. Under the deal, bin Laden could leave the kingdom with his funding and supporters, and continue to receive financial support from the Saudi royal family, on one condition: that he refrain from targeting and destabilising the Saudi kingdom itself.
After 9/11, a former head of Taliban intelligence, Mohammed Khaksar, gave sworn statements to US intelligence alleging that in 1998, Prince Turki al-Faisal (then Saudi intelligence chief) had renewed
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insolent, arrogant and disrespectful," labelling their behaviour throughout the trial as the worst he had seen in 40 years of legal practice.
He told them they had “quite frankly treated these proceedings with a certain amount of contempt and arrogance”.
The girl was aged 13 to 14 when she was abused between May, 2011, and June, 2012.
The men found guilty by the jury are: Yasser Kabir, 25, of Belgrave Road, Keighley, who was found guilty of three charges of rape; Kabir's half-brother, Tauqeer, (also known as Toki), Hussain, 23, of Belgrave Road, Keighley, who was found guilty of three charges of rape - which included a second victim, a girl of 15.
Sufyan (Sufy) Ziarab, 22, of Kendal Mellor Court, Keighley, and his brother, Bilal (Billy or Browny) Ziarab, 21, of Sedgwick Close, Manningham, Bradford, who were found guilty of two rape charges.
Israr Ali (Sari), 19, of Devonshire Street West, Keighley; Nazir Khan (Khany) 23, of Buxton Street, Keighley; Faisal Khan (Buller) 27, of Buxton Street, Lawkholme, Keighley; Hussain Sardar (Dolly) 19, of Bradford Street, Lawkholme, Keighley; Saqib Younis (Saqi Butcher) 29, of Bradford Street, Lawkholme, Keighley, and Zain Ali (Droopy) 20, of Buxton Street, Keighley, who were convicted of one rape charge.
Cab driver Mohammed Akram, 63, of Holker Street, Keighley, was convicted of sexual activity with a child.
After the case, Peter Mann, head of the Complex Casework Unit at the Crown Prosecution Service in Yorkshire and Humberside, said: “These 12 men are responsible for a wide range of crimes involving child sexual exploitation and abuse.
"Their victims were young, naïve and vulnerable, and were deliberately targeted: one victim was systematically groomed; threatened, exploited and raped.
"A second victim was also threatened and raped by Tauqeer Hussain.
“These victims have shown immense courage and bravery in reporting these matters to the police and in providing evidence to enable us to bring a strong prosecution case.
“The jury have seen through the lies the defendants told in an effort to escape justice. This case sends out a very strong message to all those who may be hesitating about coming forward to report matters such as these. We will not tolerate this type abuse on our streets or in our communities. We will bring dangerous criminals who carry out acts of sexual violence against girls to justice.”Rugby mad Jorja Miller certainly stands out among the boys.
The 12-old-year was the only South Canterbury player named in the under 65kg South Island team after the annual tournament.
Playing on the open side flank, Miller had an impressive three-day tournament despite her side going winless in five games.
JOHN BISSET/FAIRFAX NZ Jorja Miller, on the far left, has another passion - highland dance.
Two other players, No.8 David Edh and first five Fletcher Boraman, also stood out, but in the end only Miller made the selectors' cut.
Miller is not your typical player; her other passion is Highland dancing, which she also excels at, passing her grade four exam with honours.
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MYTCHALL BRANSGROVE/FAIRFAX NZ Hanan Shield player Jorja Miller takes a tackle in the 2015 matchup between Hanan and Canterbury Country at the South Island primary school rugby tournament.
The talented allrounder cannot split the two passions into a priority.
On one occasion in Waimate she danced at a competition, played rugby for Harlequins, and raced back to the hall to compete on stage with muddy knees.
She did believe, however, the dancing helped her footwork beat players on the paddock.
Somewhat surprisingly her favourite part of rugby is tackling her usually bigger opponents, and also running with the ball.
Being named in the under 65kg South Island team set up a unique double for Miller as last year she was one of only two girls to make the South Island under 48kg side, after the tournament in Timaru.
The Kaiapoi tournament was her last primary school event as she is heading to Timaru Girls' High School next year.
However, Miller will be available for one more year of mixing it with the boys at under 13 level. She will again turn out for Harlequins, a side she captained this season.
Miller's passion and skill at the game is no real surprise as she comes from a rugby mad family.
Dad Craig played more than 200 games for Harlequins seniors while mum Tracey was no slug when it came to rugby either, having played in the South Canterbury women's team while her older brothers, Corin and Deon, both play rugby.
No-one blinked an eye when Jorja pulled on the boots at age 4.
Miller said she played rugby because it was fun, like dancing.
"I really enjoy it, I have been doing since I can't remember."
Miller's appearances in 'Green and Black' continues somewhat of a girls' tradition in age-group rugby sides with the likes of Haile Hurring, Dana Mulcahy and Lucy Anderson, before her.
Anderson plays in the Canterbury women's NPC side and was in the wider Black Ferns training squad.
Two South Canterbury boys, Taine Cordell-Hull and Ben Johnston, did make the under 48kg South Island side.
Their side managed one win at the tournament upsetting Canterbury Metro 22-17.Kamal Haasan is known as one of the most progressive voices in Indian cinema – so why has he taken this stand on Jallikkattu? (Reuters)
Jallikattu is a hot topic and every educated Indian suddenly has an opinion on this. Are you wondering why every Indian including those who love their plate of fish, lamb and beef are suddenly talking about protecting animals? Here’s a clue – Kamal Haasan’s statement.
When an iconic actor like Kamal Haasan states that jallikattu is not harmful, that it has always been a part of Tamil Nadu’s culture and that he loves ”jallikattu’, you can bet that he is not talking about something he has no idea about. He knows that what he has said will have widespread political implications. However, Kamal Haasan did not shy away from stating what he felt strongly about. And yes, the topic will trend for days and provoke extreme and mixed reactions from people.
Kamal Haasan also stated, “If you want a ban on jallikattu, ban biriyani too.”
This statement has again triggered extreme and mixed reactions – a lot of people would want to slam the iconic actor for speaking his mind, even the Left-centric and liberal individuals who repeatedly pitch for “freedom of expression” in the country.
Now, why would an iconic actor who is credited with a sharp and intelligent mind, make a controversial statement supporting jallikkattu? Animal activists, hold your rants. Kamal Haasan is not against animal rights nor is the actor propagating anything against or for any religion or political party.
Kamal Haasan is known as one of the most progressive voices in Indian cinema – so why has he taken this stand on Jallikkattu? He is voicing the pulse of the people of Tamil Nadu and presenting a different alternative to the main narrative presented by animal rights activists and others who oppose jallikkattu.
Also, how many of us understand what Jallikattu is? If we think that it is just a bull-fighting sport as bloody as the one in Spain, we are not grasping the concept entirely. With a completely incorrect comparison, we kill the debate altogether.
What exactly is jallikkattu? Firstly, it is unique to Tamil Nadu, which is why urban India may not quite understand its rural significance.
The word “Jallikkattu” comes from the Tamil word “callikkattu” whereby “calli” means coins and “kattu” means package. Jallikkattu refers to silver or gold coins tied on the bull’s horns and in olden times, people used to fight to get the money placed around the horn and that used to be equated as an act of bravery. Later, it became a form of sport, namely, a bull racing event.
Many Tamilians support ”jallikkattu” as a cultural celebration of their community.
Here are some arguments they put forward to justify it:
1. Bull owners invest in the upkeep of their bulls – which means they spend money, human resources and more to maintain their bulls in good condition. Think rationally – why would they want to squander away their investment by letting these bulls get mauled brutally?
2. Jallikkattu is not celebrated every day or every week – it is celebrated during the Pongal festival, which is Tamil Nadu’s traditional harvest festival. On the day of Mattu Pongal, the bulls are worshipped, decorated and then taken for Jallikkattu – a bull racing event. This time-tested custom did not envisage any acts of cruelty to the bulls because it had one man to bravely fight and tame a bull in front of the audience. Over the years, it became a cultural event and a sport.
3. A ban on jallikattu would be a death knell for the native cattle species because livestock keepers will be forced to stop raising native livestock.
4. Losing native livestock is detrimental for the economy as a whole. Wondering why? Self-sufficiency in dairy production will go for a toss and hit rural jobs.
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5. Who will benefit if jallikkattu is banned? Many Tamilians say that it is the private dairy companies that will benefit because they can get away without native livestock breeding and opt for an easier short cut – enter the dairy industry with imported foreign breeds.
6. Every bull is registered with the concerned authorities with details of the owner provided? In fact, the jallikkattu participants have to be checked by a government official. If the purpose of jallikkattu is to have the bulls badly mauled and killed, why would owners details be registered with the authorities or the bulls examined by officials?
For Tamilians, jallikkattu has everything to do with the celebration of their unique cultural identity, it is a celebration of their beliefs, their evolution of rural communities that have lived for centuries together in a state of harmony and the rare coming together of farmers and rural traders at a grand annual event.
Cultural symbolism is integral to the Tamilian way of life. Respect Tamil Nadu’s culture with an open mind – this is what Kamal Haasan has conveyed by nailing it aptly with his powerful statement, “If you want a ban on jallikattu, ban biriyani too.”Disobedient Media previously reported on the Internet Party of New Zealand’s Anti Spy Bill events which have featured a number of high profile guests including Lee Camp, host of RT America’s Redacted Tonight, as well as whistleblowers Lauri Love, Barret Brown, and John Kiriakou, who was a signatory on the VIPS memorandum sent to President Trump denouncing the Russian hacking narrative.
The Anti Spy Bill events serve as an example of the growing power of independent media, which has filled the void left by a mainstream press that has been characterized repeatedly by H.A. Goodman as “P.R. firms” for figures like Hillary Clinton.
H.A. Goodman, the latest featured speaker at the event, is a keen independent journalist who has consistently fought false narratives perpetuated by legacy media as well as the corruption of the political establishment. He spoke with Suzie Dawson on a wide range of topics from Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, to the need for Wikileaks’ founder Julian Assange to regain his freedom.
During the conversation, Goodman described what he viewed as the essential differences between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders’ platforms during the 2016 primaries. He told Suzie Dawson: “Bernie…wanted to break up the banks. He wanted to reinstate Glass-Steagal, he wanted to ban fracking, and to end quagmires; he used those words. And of course he wanted to implement single payer, which Democrats now pretend that they care about.”
Goodman continued: “The difference between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders; Sanders tackled structural issues. He wanted to end quagmires. He talked about transforming a very corrupt political environment; raised money not through Super PACS or a corrupt foundation like the Clinton Foundation. He went from unknown nationally to almost universal name recognition within a year.”
Goodman expressed that the Democrats are focused on pushing failed narratives instead of ‘speaking to the people,’ especially those in the rust belt, and at the expense of structural reforms which would have implemented real change. He said that, if anything, Hillary Clinton was advised by Bush-era neocons. Goodman also discussed the deep corruption within the Democratic Party which were starkly revealed by Wikileaks’ publication of the DNC emails and in the DNC Fraud Lawsuit.
Suzie Dawson, host of the Anti Spy Bill events and leader of New Zealand’s Internet Party, was forced to leave New Zealand due to escalating harassment she had received from authorities in response to her work. She has spoken out repeatedly against the selling of personal data to and by intelligence agencies without consent.
Dawson spoke during the event regarding those who voted for Clinton because they thought of themselves as feminists: “You get people saying of course I’m voting for Hillary Clinton, I’m a feminist. But Hillary Clinton is bombing as many women and children as she can get away with. That’s not a feminist… To me, the feminist movement is an anti-war movement, and anyone who attempts to co-opt it in favor of war and globalization is in my opinion, a fake feminist.” Dawson also stated that it was “frankly ridiculous,” to call people “Neo-Nazis for simply disliking Clinton or not hating Trump enough.”
Dawson also criticized Trump, while commented on Clinton supporters’ “cuddling up” to the deep state and intelligence communities, before addressing the large-scale racism of war.
Kim Dotcom, founder of the Internet Party of New Zealand which hosts the Anti Spy Bill events, is in the midst of a protracted legal battle that recently included revelations that the NSA had continued to illegally spy on him long after New Zealand agencies had officially ended their surveillance. He is currently fighting U.S. attempts to extradite him from New Zealand, and has heavily criticized the NSA for illegally using New Zealand’s spy agencies to monitor him.
Both he and Dawson have raised awareness in New Zealand and internationally on the severe lack of oversight regarding the U.S. government’s collection and use of civilian personal data. They have also spoken against the ongoing buying and selling of this information. To date, both Kim Dotcom and Suzie Dawson’s efforts have been minimally reported by U.S. legacy press; this gap has contributed to the rise for independent media figures, like H.A. Goodman, who continually provide important information to the public where establishment media does not.
The video from the latest Anti Spy Bill event is available here:
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MoreAn Article from Fluentd
Overview
Elasticsearch, Fluentd, and Kibana (EFK) allow you to collect, index, search, and visualize log data. This is a great alternative to the proprietary software Splunk, which lets you get started for free, but requires a paid license once the data volume increases.
This tutorial shows you how to build a log solution using three open source software components: Elasticsearch, Fluentd and Kibana.
Prerequisites
Droplet with Ubuntu 14.04
User with sudo privileges
Installing and Configuring Elasticsearch
Getting Java
Elasticsearch requires Java, so the first step is to install Java.
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install openjdk-7-jre-headless --yes
Check that Java was indeed installed. Run:
java -version
The output should be as follows:
java version "1.7.0_55" OpenJDK Runtime Environment (IcedTea 2.4.7) (7u55-2.4.7-1ubuntu1) OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 24.51-b03, mixed mode)
Getting Elasticsearch
Next, download and install Elasticsearch's deb package as follows.
sudo wget https://download.elasticsearch.org/elasticsearch/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-1.2.2.deb sudo dpkg -i elasticsearch-1.2.2.deb
Securing Elasticsearch
Up to version 1.2, Elasticsearch's dynamic scripting capability was enabled by default. Since this tutorial sets up the Kibana dashboard to be accessed from the public Internet, let's disable dynamic scripting by appending the following line at the end of /etc/elasticsearch/elasticsearch.yml :
script.disable_dynamic: true
Starting Elasticsearch
Start running Elasticsearch with the following command.
sudo service elasticsearch start
Installing and Configuring Kibana
Getting Kibana
Move to your home directory:
cd ~
We will download Kibana as follows:
curl -L https://download.elasticsearch.org/kibana/kibana/kibana-3.1.0.tar.gz | tar xzf - sudo cp -r kibana-3.1.0 /usr/share/
Configuring Kibana
Since Kibana will use port 80 to talk to Elasticsearch as opposed to the default port 9200, Kibana's config.js must be updated.
Open /usr/share/kibana-3.1.0/config.js and look for the following line:
elasticsearch: "http://"+window.location.hostname+": 9200 ",
and replace it with the following line:
elasticsearch: "http://"+window.location.hostname+": 80 ",
Installing and Configuring Nginx (Proxy Server)
We will use Nginx as a proxy server to allow access to the dashboard from the Public Internet (with basic authentication).
Install Nginx as follows:
sudo apt-get install nginx --yes
Kibana provides a good default nginx.conf, which we will modify slightly.
First, install the configuration file as follows:
wget https://assets.digitalocean.com/articles/fluentd/nginx.conf sudo cp nginx.conf /etc/nginx/sites-available/default
Note: The original file is from this Kibana GitHub repository.
Then, edit /etc/nginx/sites-available/default as follows (changes marked in red):
# # Nginx proxy for Elasticsearch + Kibana # # In this setup, we are password protecting the saving of dashboards. You may # wish to extend the password protection to all paths. # # Even though these paths are being called as the result of an ajax request, the # browser will prompt for a username/password on the first request # # If you use this, you'll want to point config.js at http://FQDN:80/ instead of # http://FQDN:9200 # server { listen *:80 ; server_name localhost ; access_log /var/log/nginx/kibana.log ; location / { root /usr/share/ kibana-3.1.0 ; index index.html index.htm; }
Finally, restart nginx as follows:
$ sudo service nginx restart
Now, you should be able to see the generic Kibana dashboard at your server's IP address or domain, using your favorite browser.
Installing and Configuring Fluentd
Finally, let's install Fluentd. We will use td-agent, the packaged version of Fluentd, built and maintained by Treasure Data.
Installing Fluentd via the td-agent package
Install Fluentd with the following commands:
wget http://packages.treasuredata.com/2/ubuntu/trusty/pool/contrib/t/td-agent/td-agent_2.0.4-0_amd64.deb sudo dpkg -i td-agent_2.0.4-0_amd64.deb
Installing Plugins
We need a couple of plugins:
out_elasticsearch: this plugin lets Fluentd to stream data to Elasticsearch. outrecordreformer: this plugin lets us process data into a more useful format.
The following commands install both plugins (the first apt-get is for out_elasticsearch: it requires make and libcurl )
sudo apt-get install make libcurl4-gnutls-dev --yes sudo /opt/td-agent/embedded/bin/fluent-gem install fluent-plugin-elasticsearch sudo /opt/td-agent/embedded/bin/fluent-gem install fluent-plugin-record-reformer
Next, we configure Fluentd to listen to syslog messages and send them to Elasticsearch. Open /etc/td-agent/td-agent.conf and add the following lines at the top of the file:
<source> type syslog port 5140 tag system </source> <match system.*.*> type record_reformer tag elasticsearch facility ${tag_parts[1]} severity ${tag_parts[2]} </match> <match elasticsearch> type copy <store> type stdout </store> <store> type elasticsearch logstash_format true flush_interval 5s #debug </store> </match>
Starting Fluentd
Start Fluentd with the following command:
sudo service td-agent start
Forwarding rsyslog Traffic to Fluentd
Ubuntu 14.04 ships with rsyslogd. It needs to be reconfigured to forward syslog events to the port Fluentd listens to (port 5140 in this example).
Open /etc/rsyslog.conf (you need to sudo ) and add the following line at the top
*.* @127.0.0.1:5140
After saving and exiting the editor, restart rsyslogd as follows:
sudo service rsyslog restart
Setting Up Kibana Dashboard Panels
Kibana's default panels are very generic, so it's recommended to customize them. Here, we show two methods.
Method 1: Using a Template
The Fluentd team offers an alternative Kibana configuration that works with this setup better than the default one. To use this alternative configuration, run the following command:
wget -O default.json https://assets.digitalocean.com/articles/fluentd/default.json sudo cp default.json /usr/share/kibana-3.1.0/app/dashboards/default.json
Note: The original configuration file is from the author's GitHub gist.
If you refresh your Kibana dashboard home page at your server's URL, Kibana should now be configured to show histograms by syslog severity and facility, as well as recent log lines in a table.
Method 2: Manually Configuring
Go to your server's IP address or domain to view the Kibana dashboard.
There are a couple of starter templates, but let's choose the blank one called Blank Dashboard: I'm comfortable configuring on my own, shown at the bottom of the welcome text.
Next, click on the + ADD A ROW button on the right side of the dashboard. A configuration screen for a new row (a row consists of one or more panels) should show up. Enter a title, press the Create Row button, followed by Save. This creates a row.
When an empty row is created, Kibana shows the prompt Add panel to empty row on the left. Click this button. It takes you to the configuration screen to add a new panel. Choose histogram from the dropdown menu. A histogram is a time chart; for more information, see Kibana's documentation.
There are many parameters to configure for a new histogram, but you can just scroll down and press the Save button. This creates a new panel.
Further Information
For further information about configuring Kibana, please see the Kibana documentation page.Share. Character profiles from new merchandise disclose details. Character profiles from new merchandise disclose details.
As expected, Bane's origin and motivations are different in The Dark Knight Rises than they are in the comics, and some new merchandise sheds more light on both his character and Catwoman.
Blastr points out these SPOILERISH character profiles from the now available tie-in book The Dark Knight Rises: The Secret Files Scrapbook.They don't give away the fates of certain characters, but they do illuminate their pasts and what they're up to when we meet them in the upcoming movie. So if you don't want to know any of that or the differences in their film and comic versions, don't read on.
Exit Theatre Mode
Here's what they have to say about Bane: "Little is known about Bane. He was born in prison and trained in the darkest forms of deception by the League of Shadows, but rumor has it he was cast out due to his extreme behavior. Bane is a ferocious hand-to-hand fighter who is willing to do anything in order to take down his opponents. Bane is in peak physical shape, but he must wear a breathing apparatus that feeds him with pain relieving gas due to an old injury. He's never been photographed without his mask and only a handful of people have seen his face. While his true motives remain a mystery, he appears to be building an army of followers in the dark tunnels underneath Gotham in order to create his own League of Shadows."
And here's the skinny on Catwoman: "Selina Kyle is a world-class cat burglar and mistress of disguise. She's cunning and devious, but has a deep sense of honor. As Catwoman, she targets Gotham's wealthiest. Her weapons usually include infrared goggles, bladed high-heel boots, and a belt filled with lock picks."
As you can see, the film's Catwoman is pretty much in line with her traditional portrayal in the comics, while Bane's bio appears to be the most altered. Bane did get involved with Ra's and Talia Al Ghul in one particular Batman storyline, but his reasons for coming to Gotham were quite different in the comics.
The Dark Knight Rises opens July 20.Recently, we posted a brief overview of the Ethereum ICO craze. Before that, we had reviewed how blockchains work in general.
Today, we’ll delve deeper into the process of mining.
In this article, we’ll introduce briefly the concepts of Proof of Work (PoW) and Proof of Stake (PoS). We’ll talk about why Ethereum, the second largest blockchain, is planning to switch the former for the later and share some forecasts as to the outcomes this decision might lead to.
Let’s get to it.
Byzantine Generals’ Problem
Among his many breakthrough accomplishments, Satoshi, the mysterious founder of Bitcoin, is praised for coming up with a solution to what’s known as Byzantine Generals’ Problem.
The issue is basically this.
Suppose there’s a war. There’s an army that has a city encircled, but due to exhaustion of resources, the army’s generals are undecided whether it’s smarter to attack or to retreat. Suppose, also, that it’s the 15th century and the commanders, who are all in camps far apart, have no way of communicating effectively save for sending messengers.
How could these generals (let’s say there are 20 of them) reach a consensus?
Obviously, they’ll have to vote. If the majority (at least 51%) decides to move forward with a strategy (of attacking, or of retreating), the whole army will have to get behind their choice. That’s only fair and logical.
But then they’ll face another problem: how to ensure that no general involved in making a decision votes the wrong way on purpose, just to confuse things?
Well, in the world of blockchains, the generals are miners. And choosing a war strategy for them is agreeing on a set of rules, a certain view of the history of digital events that are posted on the network.
The way that Bitcoin enables reaching a distributed consensus and punishes, or rather discourages, bad actors for acting dishonestly is by using the Proof of Work (PoW) algorithm.
What is Proof of Work (PoW)?
Initially, PoW was proposed as means to protect network connections and systems from the denial of service (DoS) attacks. One of its first implementations was hashcash — the technology that is still being used to secure the mining process on Bitcoin and was engineered by Adam Back, one of Bitcoin co-developers.
Essentially, PoW is just a piece data that’s both hard to produce, computing wise, and easy to verify on the receiving end.
The PoW principle was first used to deter spam emails. A person had to solve a puzzle of some kind, i.e put effort, before sending an email, and then they had to attach a solution they’d come up with to the letter’s header so that the recipient could recognize it.
The main gist of the idea was making it difficult and time-consuming for a spammer to send bulk, trashy ads. All the emails without a proof of work were easily identifiable as spam, and, therefore, recipients never opened them.
On Bitcoin, Proof of Work is a miner’s responsibility. Whenever a new block with transactions appears on the network, validators start to compete in solving a mathematical problem (generating Proof of Work) attached to it. The winner, a miner who manages to figure out the cryptographic nonce first, gets to write to the blockchain’s history and is then rewarded by the network with a certain amount of crypto coins.
The blockchain adjusts the difficulty of these mathematical problems so that it takes a miner roughly 10 minutes to find a solution. Hence, we get the universal 10 minute block time on the Bitcoin blockchain.
What are the drawbacks of using Proof of Work?
The fairly high level of security provided by PoW comes with a cost. Some, including Ethereum’s founder Vitalik Buterin, consider the algorithm to be too wasteful and costly.
Here are some of the most typical concerns people have about Proof of Work:
Millions of hashes that are generated by miners around the world do not really solve anything. The immense work and resources put into securing blockchains are not, in any way, useful to society. And after a computational problem is solved, miners proceed to solve the next one, throwing their previous efforts on the floor. From the environmental standpoint, server farms with powerful mining equipment that utilize vast amounts of electricity to do basically nothing, are not beneficial to our world. The process of resolving computational problems is complex and competitive and those with the most advanced mining hardware have an edge over those who don’t. This creates an arms race among miners, and makes the validators’ community more exclusive (there’s isn’t a whole lot of people willing to buy up equipment and manage substantial amounts of computing power). And exclusivity goes against the idea of decentralization — the key principle behind the blockchain technology. This leads to the most talked about PoW related concern that is the possibility of a 51% attack. While a mining pool that has a centralized control over the network can still play it fair, nothing would stop it from attacking a blockchain, invalidating legitimate transactions and double spending crypto coins.
To avoid facing these potential issues ever, the creators of Ethereum — the second largest blockchain in the world — are planning to switch from PoW to Proof of Stake (PoS).
What is Proof of Stake?
Proof of Stake takes labor work out of the mining process. Instead of time and electricity — the external resources validators are used to putting into generating PoW — the algorithm enables miners with most coins (internal resources) to write to a blockchain’s history. The underlying principle behind PoS is that the more invested a validator is in the network (the bigger stake they possess), the less likely they are to attack it, and, therefore, the more validating rights they should be given.
The only cryptographic calculations involved in PoS are those establishing if a miner owns a needed amount of cryptocurrency. On Ethereum, according to its developers, a person who has 5% of all ether will be able to mine 5% of all the transactions happening on the blockchain.
The system will decide whose turn it is to commit a block pseudo-randomly, weighing the selection toward miners with the most coins. And it will allow more people to participate in the validating process: there would no longer be a need to purchase expensive hardware to mine.
What benefits can PoS bring to Ethereum?
The issue of unnecessary energy wasting will be forgotten about, as no mining, in its traditional form, will take place.
No competition in solving computational puzzles will mean no demand for advanced mining hardware. Hence, more people will be encouraged to participate in the validation process.
Despite reducing energy costs, by a lot, PoS will make attacks on the blockchain even more expensive. If anyone decides to buy up 51% of ether to try to alter transaction blocks, they’ll have to pay millions of dollars to get the coins (due to limited supply and increased demand ether price will be increased drastically) and then risk losing their money by destabilizing the very blockchain they’ve put their funds in. It’s hard to imagine a sane person doing that.
Besides assuming that a miner won’t risk their money to hack the blockchain, PoS offers a scenario of how malicious activities can be diffused, if they do occur. If a chain takeover happens, Ethereum community can simply hard fork the network and destroy the deposits of the attacking miners’, no matter how much coins, i.e. mining power, they might possess.
It would take some healing, a few days probably before the blockchain gets on tracks again. But, in the long run, no one except the offenders will suffer substantial losses. Conversely, the honest validators will end up richer as the crunch in supply of ether caused by the fork, will make the coins’ cost rise even more.
Want to learn more about Ethereum, Bitcoin and the Blockchain technology in general? Contact our expert for a free consultation.Another 9/11, another Brussels, another Paris? According to indictments unsealed yesterday by the Department of Justice, a three-man Islamist terror cell plotted versions of all the above for another attack on New York City. Before they could carry it out, an FBI undercover agent discovered the plot in 2016, then coordinated an international manhunt to capture all three erstwhile terrorists:
The alleged scheme was more nefarious than many: The group, which wanted to attack Times Square and the New York City subway system, claimed to have been in touch with an Islamic State affiliate to obtain the official sanction of the terrorist group, prosecutors said. One of them, a U.S. citizen living in Pakistan, traveled in that country to meet with explosives experts and another purchased bombmaking materials and secured a cabin within driving distance of New York City, the prosecutors said. … Prosecutors alleged the men in New York plotted similar mass destruction during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. The men wanted to carry out bombings and shootings in Times Square and the New York City subway system and shoot people at concert venues, and they referenced similar attacks in Brussels and Paris, authorities said. Bahnasawy told the undercover FBI agent he wanted to “create the next 9/11” and in May 2016 sent maps of the New York City subway system with plans for where explosives could be detonated, prosecutors alleged. He also asserted the group should put a car bomb in Times Square, prosecutors alleged.
The DoJ rounded up the suspects beginning in May 2016 in the US, followed by an arrest in Pakistan in late 2016 and in the Philippines in April of this year. The man arrested in the US, Abdulrahman El Bahnasawy, has already pled guilty to terrorism offenses, and the US is working on the extradition of the other two men, 19-year-old Talha Haroon and 37-year-old Russell Salic.
Bahnasawy and Haroon made their declaration of loyalty to ISIS through a man they thought represented the terrorist cult. Unfortunately for them — and fortunately for the Big Apple — the man was an undercover FBI agent. Salic pledged to raise money for the operation, and later sent the same agent $423 in funding. (Times must be tight for ISIS.)
CBS provides a little more detail on the terrorists’ spitballing on tactics, showing that they had paid attention to earlier Islamist attacks in Europe:
Federal prosecutors say they've thwarted an ISIS terror plot that targeted New York City: https://t.co/8lnAQ89rdw pic.twitter.com/3Q6wRwihuW — CBS This Morning (@CBSThisMorning) October 7, 2017
One of the men, Abdulrahman El Bahnasawy, bought bomb-making materials but was arrested after traveling from Canada to New Jersey in May 2016 to stage the attacks, authorities said. His arrest came after an investigation using an undercover FBI agent posing as an Islamic extremist. According to criminal complaints, El Bahnasawy sent the undercover an image of Times Square with a smartphone message saying, “We seriously need to car bomb times square. Look at these crowds of people!” In another, El Bahnasawy expressed a desire to “shoot up concerts cuz they kill a lot people. … We just walk in with guns in our hands. That’s how Paris guys did it,” the papers said.
According to The Guardian, Haroon wanted to conduct a subway attack with firearms and suicide vests. After shooting people until their bullets ran out, Haroon suggested, “we let the vests go off.” That parallels the Paris attacks, but also Brussels and Mumbai. Those continue to serve as models for terrorists, but hopefully the FBI’s success in stopping these will eventually discourage it.
Neither Haroon nor Salic have been approved yet for extradition. The US might have to wait on Salic, who faces terror charges at home related to pro-ISIS activity:
Salic, who is a doctor and is accused of sending money to help fund the planned attacks, was also arrested in the Philippines for his alleged involvement in kidnappings and beheadings blamed on pro-Isis militants, a Philippine official said. The chief state counsel, Ricardo Paras, told the Associated Press that a Manila court was considering an extradition request from the US government. Even if the court approves the request, the Department of Justice in Manila needs to decide whether Salic will face charges in the Philippines first or be allowed to be flown to the US to answer the terrorism financing allegations there, Paras said. “The US can also request for a temporary surrender of Salic to its custody, but it’s in our options to require him to face criminal complaints here first,” Paras said.
Salic would face a life sentence here. In the Philippines, he might face a tougher penalty, as the legislature has taken steps to restore the death penalty. Perhaps Salic won’t fight extradition too hard after all."With the opportunity of online learning coming on,…what we talk about is shifting from this factory model system to a student-centered one that personalizes for each and every child," says Michael Horn, co-founder of the Clayton Christensen Institute and co-author of the new book Blended: Using Disruptive Innovation to Improve Schools
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at the elevator and grilled her on who she was and why she was in the hotel. Perhaps he believed (based on her casual dress and tattoos) that she might be going in to make trouble. I had to explain she was my hotel suite mate and official convention guest. Incidentally there was a life-size Hillary cardboard figure greeting us delegates in our hotel break room (Picture 1). Most insulting since there was no corresponding Bernie figure and we had not yet voted! In our convention “goodie bags” was a pro-Hillary book “Killing the Messenger” by David Brock. No book by Bernie. At the massive Wells Fargo Center on Monday evening we found a flashy televised fantasy event staged just for Hillary. Even the Opening Convention Prayer only mentioned Clinton. It is the only time I have ever “booed” a prayer (as did most other Bernie delegates). A slap in the face. Monitors handed us signs based on the script of the moment.
If Michele Obama was about to speak we were offered signs bearing her name or it might be a Hillary sign or a “Stronger Together” sign. What a waste of paper. The Bernie people declined to take them. If we tried to hold up homemade “No TPP” signs they would be taken from us. They did not want Obama to be embarrassed. Before we delegates voted the pro-Hillary convention speakers repeated over and over: “We are so excited to be at this historic event to elect the first woman President of the United States, Hillary Rodham Clinton.” Premature and insulting. On the last convention night (Thursday) as I searched for a seat in the convention center almost all chairs in the Kentucky section had “Reserved” signs on them, so I sat next to a KY Hillary delegate whom I did not know. This really bothered her and she asked me (three times) if I would be “more comfortable” with the Bernie delegates. I declined to move. As I interacted with her it hit me that she and the other Hillary delegates had apparently been told that we “Bernie people” were going to make trouble when Clinton was given the nomination. I said to her “You know we’re not going to make any trouble tonight, don’t you?” That seemed to calm her down. I now believe Hillary delegates were given information to make them fear us so we would not interact with one another. The DNC insiders REALLY didn’t want us talking to each other. Since the convention I went to South Florida to support Tim Canova in his run against Debbie Wasserman Schultz. I then traveled to Standing Rock North Dakota to stand with the Lakota against the Energy Transfer Partners Pipeline. I voted for Jill Stein in the Presidential Election.”
What Janice went through was the biggest disappointment for Bernie Delegates. to watch the Super Delegates that went to Hillary Clinton while the delegation remained a half and half spread at the convention would be the exact reason Hillary Clinton would lose. The American voters simply did not want Hillary Clinton and preferred Bernie Sanders over both Trump and Hillary. Hillary Clinton had stacked the deck and in the long run elected Donald Trump.
MICHIGAN
“How the DNC and Hillary Clinton stole the state that Bernie Sanders unexpectedly won.”
After an insane loss, Hillary Clinton would bribe the Superdelegates in the state to voting for her and convincing the Bernie delegates to follow suit. It would would also be confirmed on wikileaks that Hillary Clinton targeted the Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow as a potential Vice President. The state went to Hillary Clinton at the Convention, stealing it from Bernie Sanders.
A recent interview with Bernie Sanders Delegate Zackary Reinhardt and asked him questions about being a Bernie Delegate and the convention:
Me: “Did you remain for Bernie Sanders even after the Primary? Or did you switch to Hillary?”
Zackary Reinhardt: “I actually couldn’t vote because I was doing field for another candidate and couldn’t make it back in time and couldn’t get an absentee because we have a rule that makes you go the clerks office the first time you vote absentee/ That being said I would have written in Bernie. It’s the only blank on my voting record.”
BC DeGraff: “Did you attend the convention?”
Zackary Reinhardt: “I helped organize the walkout. The original intent was going to be storm the stage until we warned we could face serious charges because of the people present and some were worried that it might be more risky for POC. I helped organize it with a group called the Coalition of 57 which was comprised of 2 Bernie delegates from each state and territory. We walked out immediately following the nomination and then returned for the mothers of Black Lives Matter out of respect.”
BC DeGraff: “How did you feel when they announce Hillary won Michigan, despite the people of Michigan wanting Bernie Sanders, not Hillary Clinton?”
Zackary Reinhardt: “I actually told one of our super delegates Representative Sandy Levin that he was not only making a mistake but that his vote would inevitably lead to a Trump presidency.”
BC DeGraff: “Do you believe Bernie Sanders would have won in 2016? and do you think he will in in 2020?”
Zackary Reinhardt: “We had printouts of this election prediction from that week by five thirty eight. Yes I think Bernie would have won and so do Trumps very own pollsters and I think 2020 is an open field or at least I hope so.”
(“ We had printouts of this election prediction from that week by five thirty eight” -Zackary Reinhardt:)
( “Zack and I carried a sign reading “YOU Earned Your #DemExit”( Had to sneak that sucker in my overalls. On the record.) because throughout the campaign we saw case after case of unethical and often illegal methods to tip the scale. The results are null and void, it was rigged. I was there to represent the people who elected me, the people who sacrificed time, money, and energy, where (super) delegates refused to represent them. I walked out because the vast majority of the people in the room sat in their seats or cheered as injustice took place before them camouflaged in patriotic balloons.” — Sara Alicia Huerta Long Bernie Sanders Delegate from Michigan)
Another Bernie Sander’s delegate would give me a statement that would shed light on her experience and how the convention played out for her:
BC DeGraff: “Did you vote for Hillary in the Primary? Did you write Bernie in or did you choose another candidate?”
Sara Alicia Huerta Long: “I flew home from Philly for 6 hours to vote for a third party candidate who doesn’t accept corporate donations.”
BC DeGraff: “I voted Jill Stein in the General Election, that was the closest to Bernie Sanders’ platform. Yes, I’m breaking the 4th wall here a little and my rules, but you guys are heroes to me and many Progressives. One final question. Do you think the Democrats have learned from the walkout?”
Sara Alicia Huerta Long: “Shucks. Brandon, it was an honor to be there to represent our comrades. The 4th wall be damned! Thank you for the work you are doing. Until the average democrat accepts that the election was rigged they will never understand the reason for the walkout, and so can’t learn from it. Until campaign finance reform happens I refuse to believe that the Establishment Democrats are interested in learning from the walkout.”
Another Delegate I would interview:
( I was a delegate for MI-CD 06. I was in Philly. The atmosphere was disgustingly oppressive. We were pressured to conform in the name of “unity”- the Hillary delegates were extremely rude and pulled Bernie signs out of our hands, as well as anti-TPP signs and other progressive issue signs.)
BC DeGraff: “What did you feel when you first got to the convention?”
Charles Niswander: “Before we went, we had the idea we would be able to make some headway on policy issues with other delegates and party officials. When we arrived, it became obvious every Hillary delegate as well many “neutral” party officials did not want heavy discussion about policy issues that drew a strong contrast between the two. Every time, a surprising number of times, we were “advised” to relax and enjoy ourselves because it was over, and that “arguing” the issues made us look “divided” and might hurt Hillary. I had to resort to the above homemade sign after they began physically ripping Bernie and anti-TPP signs out of our hands. Having read the leaked emails long before the convention, I knew about the HFA Victory Fund and how much the DNC needed it, and I saw how the media was wrapped around Hillary’s finger, taking her advisement for their “journalism”. Donna Brazile has no excuse to have “not realized” as a leader of the Democratic Party. I’m just a nerd from Michigan and I knew.”
BC DeGraff: “How did you feel when Hillary won the Nomination?”
Charles Niswander: “While it wasn’t a “surprise” given the fact the results became obvious at least after New York, it was a shock. Here in Michigan, people just don’t like her. They loved Bernie. That was reflected in the vote, of course. But I saw the crowds Bernie got in Brookly. I just can’t believe she won there. I believe it has something to do with the many thousands of people wrongly dropped off voter rolls in NY- a LOT of people were unable to vote in the primary. It probably also has a lot to do with inherent unfairness of having closed primaries, especially with crazy requirements like having to have registered with the party months in advance- I mean I’ve followed Bernie for years, since he’s been in the Senate, but not everyone has time to keep up on Washington names- some people only start paying attention close to election time. That can’t be blamed on Hillary- but with all else that has been proven, I sincerely believe strings were pulled regarding the voter rolls in NYC and elsewhere. This was not an uncommon belief among Bernie supporters and fellow delegates. And so many forms of collusion have been proven, such as cutting the debates (and dis-inviting Tulsi Gabbard from them for disagreeing) and colluding with the DNC to suggest story spins that hurt Bernie to major media outlets, or stories meant to keep positive focus on Hillary and skepticism of Bernie. I believe much of the blatant media bias was in part due to that- using the authority and weight of the DNC to spin stories to media contacts, many (or most) of whom were already quite comfortable with taking spins direct from the HRC campaign anyway so many factors involved, but when Hillary basically BUYS the nomination, and everyone in the DNC looks the other way because the party is broke,well, if that’s not corruption and fraud, then what is? So I think history will find me justified in my holding up the “Fraud” sign at the convention in Philly. Note also- all the TV camera’s turned away when I held it up. I was elected by the people of SW MI knowingly. My attitude and opinions about Hillary, her right-wing policy and her provable dishonesty and corruption, were all known to those who elected me to be a delegate. So how is it not a story, why would the camera’s turn away? It is shameful. We’re talking about the future of our nation, and they acted like it was a big party. A coronation. It made me sick. I was on the Platform Committee for the Michigan Democratic Party as well, where I officially confirmed Michigan’s opposition to the TPP in the Michigan platform. My opinion is that the party elite just don’t care about the issues- they care about their positions.”
Hillary Clinton would later go on to lose Michigan like she did states like Indiana where she did the same rigging. Hillary Clinton did not have a chance of beating Donald Trump because she acquired the Democratic Nomination without the people. She acquired the nomination through the super delegates. She did not win the Democratic Nomination correctly like a leader wins elections, she won it like a dictator, she took it.
WYOMING
“The state where MSM reported on the rigging in real time.”
MSNBC’s Morning Joe would report this state as being rigged and openly discuss how the Democratic Party was ultimately rigged against Bernie Sanders and the Progressive Movement that did not want Hillary Clinton as the Democratic Nominee. Bernie Sanders, who won the state only received 7 delegates and Hillary Clinton won 11 and would take all the Super Delegates at the convention. This marks just one of many states to see this happen. This one was confirmed in real time.
The people of Wyoming wanted Bernie Sanders and that would definitely show in the General Election where the people of Wyoming voted Donald Trump. Hillary Clinton was genuinely unpopular among the voters in Wyoming, yet she managed to take the state at the convention and lose the state in the General Election. The DNC and Hillary Clinton underestimated the average voter and didn’t connect with the people of Wyoming the way they did with Trump and Bernie Sanders. A Bernie Sanders delegate from Wyoming would share his story with me:
(Results show that Hillary Clinton was barely able to get 5 counties while Sanders doubles that and ties in 8)
Brandon De Graff: “How were you treated at the convention?”
Erik Molvar: “That’s an interesting question. Overall, I was treated pretty decently at the convention, although I did get in a very heated argument with our State Chairwoman at one of the morning meetings. The one exception was this: I went over to the protest area the day of the VP nomination, to hear from the protestors and carry their concerns inside the convention, since they were walled off inside FDR Park by high fences as if it was a concentration camp. When I went to leave, the police had locked the entrance to the park. I asked them through the fence where I could go to get out, and they told me to follow the fence toward the river to find the exit. They lied — the exit was the other way — and I wasted half an hour in a pouring thunderstorm without an umbrella trying to find it.
(On the right: Erik Molvar)
Brandon De Graff: “Were you Bernie or Bust?”
Erik Molvar: “I was Bernie all the way to the vote. I supported Hillary after the convention, because there was a ‘half a loaf’ of progressive priorities offered by her campaign, including free college for families making less than $125,00 a year, and a $15 minimum wage, thanks to Bernie’s leadership. And I suspected that Trump would not only deprive us of any progressive policies, but also would reverse a lot of past progress. And he has. But the Bernie or Bust movement is absolutely understandable and justifiable, and I spent a lot of energy over the months following the convention explaining to Hillary supporters that Bernie voters didn’t owe Hillary their allegiance, and that Hillary needed to convince Bernie voters that she really would advance their progressive priorities to get them.”
Erik Molvar: “For that reason, I always got along pretty well with the Bernie or Bust crowd (although I did get kicked off a couple of particularly purist Facebook groups).”
Wyoming will always be remembered as the state they rigged in the light of day what they normally did in the dark. The rigging of Wyoming reached fever pitch on a “Morning Joe” segment on MSNBC, where host Joe Scarborough admitted that the “system is so rigged” and asked why Americans even bother voting.
INDIANA
“How the Delegates reacted to the Convention and how the Super Delegates stole the State at the Convention”
(Map shows Bernie wins in green)
John Zody and Pete Visclosky would be the only Super Delegates to not vote Hillary Clinton. The rest would vote for Hillary Clinton, giving the state to Hillary Clinton at the convention after Bernie Sanders won the state. Hillary Clinton only won the state because of the Super Delegates. This is also why she lost the state in the General Election. She did not have the people on her side. One delegate, who would vote for Hillary Clinton in the General Election would tell me her story:
“I was treated fine at the convention. The Hillary delegates from Indiana gloated a little, but were otherwise civil (to me, at least). I was treated rather obnoxiously by some Bernie delegates from other states, who still believed, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, that something might happen on the convention floor. I felt fine when Hillary received the nomination. Was I happy? Not really, but she crushed us. It was inevitable after the March primaries. I did not walk out. It may have been nobly intended, but it served no useful purpose. It fed a Republican media narrative of dissent and disorder. It did nothing to actually shake the democratic establishment or to demand their attention. They ignored those who walked out as sore losers. The message I left the convention with was of two competing narratives, both of which I hated. The two competing narratives? Official DNC Narrative: Hillary is great! Feminism! Years of hard work and experience! Unity! Bernie also is here and everything is fine! Everything’s fine! It’s fine! Loudest Bernie Supporter Narrative: Hillary is a warmongering hell witch. Bernie was robbed. Maybe there will be a revolt at the convention and he’ll be named! Ok that didn’t happen; why is everyone gloating about Hillary winning? Why are her supporters so blind/stupid/happy? They suck. I’m going to put duct tape on my mouth, because I’ve been silenced by the DNC. Meanwhile, I’m over here with a sense of foreboding because everyone, EVERYONE, is missing the bigger picture. The DNC failed because they didn’t actually work to listen to and incorporate the Bernie supporters in a substantive way. The Bernie core failed because the loudest group preferred to protest rather than than try to figure out the DNC game, and try to fight/win. It was a week of failing to listen and build bridges. Of clinging to our separate groups and pretending our selected group was the only group of real Democrats/liberals/leftists. Of each side being more concerned about getting our own way than about forming a team to do work that matters. I loved most of the people I met at the DNC; I loved or liked the Indiana delegates. But the entire week was incredibly frustrating, and I felt both ignored and yet berated by both sides. In the end, I voted for Hillary, because even though I’m from Indiana, and my state would go red no matter what, I refused to waste my vote even more by leaving it blank or doing a write in. And I would never vote for Stein. We cannot re-litigate the 2016 primary until we die. It is over, it is done, and we must MOVE FORWARD. Helping other people is ALL THAT MATTERS. Are you actually doing the work? Organizing? Listening to all of the people in your community? Or are you just picking a piece of ground, putting up a flag that says “I’m right”, and defending it until the end? Because that is not fighting for people; it is fighting for your own pride. People’s lives and homes and health matter more than the purity of any movement or ideal.” — Elizabeth Merrill Hyde
After this interview, I would inform Elizabeth Merrill Hyde that her state was actually rigged, to which she she added: “We should move on!” Hyde is a party loyalist and was not concerned with the parties corruption.
Another Delegate would not feel the same way about the DNC openly rigging the primary in favor of Hillary Clinton:
“I voted for Jill in the general. I knew Indiana would go Trump and wanted to support a third party possibly getting FEC funding, so I voted my conscience. A lot of us delegates in Indiana did the same
I did walk out. I’d been staying in constant contact with my volunteers and supporters in Terre Haute via Facebook and asked them what they wanted me to do on their behalf. They unanimously told me to walk the fuck out because I went there to speak for them, and they felt cheated and pissed off about the DNC’s treatment of Bernie and his delegates. I was probably going to walk out anyway, but I wanted to make sure my district supported that first.
I left the convention feeling invisible. We’d been silenced heavily. Our state dem chapter called on us to embrace unity and think of the good of the party from day one. The same message was pounded into us at every event we attended. Our delegation was given assigned seating that purposely kept the Bernie supporters out of camera view because we were not supportive of our superdelegates voting against the popular vote of the state.
They confiscated our signs, but we snuck in markers to doctor the premade signs they’d made for us to hold preaching Hilary’s message.
We were warned to not protest, to not show disrespect and that if we violated those requests we would be kicked out and have our credentials taken.
When the roll call vote happened, our delegation was furious that one of our super delegates didn’t even show up, and the others voted against the popular vote. Indiana is a famously, deeply red state — people came out to vote BECAUSE of BERNIE. This was the protest my county was screaming while I was there — I know for a fact I registered at least a hundred new voters myself who ONLY registered to vote Bernie. Other delegates from the state reported the same from their districts. We felt strongly that Indiana was completely misrepresented — and that anger turned into apathy at the polls in the general.
The Bernie delegates had tried numerous times to talk about this with our state party leaders. We warned them that if they voted against the people, they’d be sinking Indiana in the general. They demeaned us, called us sour grapes and told us to shut up and fall in line.
Many of us attended the rules and regulations meeting at the state convention and pleaded for a change to the rules that requires superdels vote in line with the popular vote. The rules committee chairperson told us to stop being sore losers. In a state we had won. It did not sit well, and that contention was heavy and lasted through the entire state convention and into Philly.
Beyond Indiana, we saw several other delegations punished and silenced on the convention floor. Oregon, Washington and California were treated awfully. They had white noise fans set up near their sections to drown out their protests and chants, had the lights dimmed on their delegates so their signs and shirts didn’t show up on tv. There was HEAVY protest from all 1900 of us the entire convention but everyone back home was telling me the news networks weren’t reporting any of it and were spinning a tale of unity and solidarity. The experience America saw was 100% the opposite of what actually took place in those walls.
I left the convention angry. We were not given a fair voice. The entire convention was a coronation. Every speaker was preaching party unity and they shoved that message down our throats and ignored every attempt we made to stand up for ourselves. Dels in every state will tell you they tried to warn their local parties that endorsing HRC meant trump victory. They wrote us ofd. We were the ones out in the field talking to the people. We KNEW and we tried every way we could to prevent this disaster, and nobody listened.
There were volunteers who’d paid to come all the way to Philly to work at the convention. The Bernie supporting ones were denied their credentials after arriving, which was utter bullshit.
In the end, most of my fellow Indiana delagates made the choice to walk out because we knew it’d been rigged from the get go. We had experienced it in our own state and were very active in keeping close to delegates in other states, so we knew it was country wide. Our network of 1900 was very close and well organized and we knew we got played and tossed aside like children. When I left Philly, I knew I’d be welcoming Trump in November. We all did. We were the 1900 people in the country NOT shocked by the election.
I came home to a county of really pissed off people. Many of them completely pulled out of politics after watching the fiasco. The election was on my birthday. It was awful. I’d devoted my LIFE to a grassroots campaign, started the effort in my county and built a group of 1000 volunteers over ten months. I gave up normalcy and sleep for a year to be the voice of the people in a country that tells me that matters. I left Philly discouraged, depressed and uninspired to take part in politics again. I’ve still been involved, but I no longer trust the DNC, my state party or the Dems in general. The recent Donna Brazille stuff has been vindication, but too little too late. We knew we got robbed and we were called conspiracy theorists. Our own state chair treated several of our delegates terribly during and after the convention, and has been dismissive and rude since — gatekeeping many Bernie delagates from assuming positions of importance in the state party. Notably, Gina Ungar from Evansville and Amanda Schutte from district 6.
If there’s anything else you’d like to know, I’m an open book. Gina and Amanda have both been incredibly involved since the convention but were treated like dogs during and since.” -Gina Paradis
In conclusion, the DNC cheated to steal Indiana from Bernie Sanders, many are unaware of is like Elizabeth and many are aware of it like Gina. The unfair Democracy we have needs reformed.
I would interview another Bernie or Bust voter Anand Balar:
BC DeGraff: “Tell me about how you were treated at the convention, how you felt when Hillary received the nomination, did you walk out and what message did you leave the convention with and who did you vote for!”
Anand Balar: “ I was treated decently by the Indiana delegation until the day President Obama spoke. We had a No TPP banner to protest him and a Hillary delegate in a row above ours got pissed off at us and said “this is so disrespectful of our president”. And then he tore the sign outta our hands. That was the most aggressive I experienced someone be antagonistic toward me. When HRC won the nomination I felt sick to my stomach and participated in the walkout. I left the convention thinking the DNC cared about nothing. They are more money hungry than the GOP at this point. And that’s just what they must do to compete unfortunately. And so I radicalized fast and am now a hardcore Trotskyist. I realized we need systematic change.”
BC DeGraff: “Who did you vote for?”
BC DeGraff: “ Do you have anything you want to say to my readers?”
Anand Balar: “ Thank you for sharing it Brandon. I’d like readers to know that the biggest takeaway from the convention and also from the election in general was how much power we have if we have strength in numbers and are conscious. Trump v Hillary was by and large a disastrous election because we lost a feel for how much control we could have. In a country of 300 million+ we don’t have to have an uninspiring election like that. Look out for more anti establishment candidates and populists if you want change in the country.”
Another Indiana Bernie Delegate would give me her story and tell me about her experience:
“I have publicly stated I overheard a State Chair complaining about the financial arrangement with “National”. He said when they took back their deposit, they took “more than they put in”.
Here in Indiana we lost almost everything. We were poised to take back the Governor’s office but lost every statewide race.” -Sue Spicer:
BC DeGraff: “Were you Bernie or Bust at the convention?”
Sue Spicer: “Not exactly. I was in the delusional group still working to save the party from this huge mistake. It was an education. Now I’m running to unseat my superdelegate myself.”
BC DeGraff: “Are you part of the #DemExit movement currently?”
Sue Spicer: “I am not. I am #DemEnter. My journey into the party started in Iowa with Bernie.”
BC DeGraff: “When you discovered that the election was rigged against Bernie Sanders, what was your ultimate reaction?”
Sue Spicer: “I want to fire the crooks myself. I want to show them you just can’t do this to people and keep your job.”
BC DeGraff: “Do you plan on supporting Bernie Sander’s 2020 run that he’s silently hinting at?”
Sue Spicer: “I’m #StillSanders. It’s him or whoever he’s standing next to.”
BC DeGraff: “who did you vote for and what message do you have for voters?”
Sue Spicer: “I traded my Indiana write in for Jill Stein for an Ohio Hillary vote. Don’t let them discourage you. I’ve said for decades, one of my mantras is “don’t let the evil people get you down”. Another, “ there’s a one in front of every million” to get folks to vote. VOTE. To not vote is to hand over your power.”
Sue is absolutely right, the lesser of two evils and the evils that have taken advantage of the American people the way they did at the Democratic Convention is nothing short of corrupt. The Democratic Party and the Hillary Clinton Campaign crossed the line and it would eventually cost her the Election. Bernie Sanders would have more than likely been President if Hillary Clinton had not stacked the deck and ran a fair campaign without using the DNC to shoo Bernie voters out. The Convention showed that the Bernie Delegates were mistreated, misinformed and deceived.
OREGON
“The state where nature endorsed Bernie Sanders would go to Hillary Clinton by the Superdelegates and her own greed.”
Everyone knows the story of Oregon, the state where a bird landed on a podium in a classic moment that lasted for several seconds. In those several seconds, we captured history and a moment that will go down in history as the moment nature endorsed Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders words after the bird flew off will live in infamy as they resonate with the message of Progressives: “No more war”. Bernie Sanders has openly opposed wars, sanctions and in 2017, the 700 Billion Dollar military budget increase.
Solea Kabakov, a Delegate I would ask about her experience would tell me a little about her experiences with the DNC:
BC DeGraff: “How were you treated at the convention?”
Solea Kabakov: “ It’s a long story. Oregon Berners organized and strategized prior to the convention, but we were not treated well. It was traumatizing. I was part of the organized walk out after Clinton was declared the nominee.”
Solea would indicate to me that there was a lot to tell. By her words, this is likely because the convention was so hard on the Bernie Delegates as many of them were mistreated. She would later tell me:
“She (Hillary Clinton) was not elected by the people, this was a stolen nomination absolutely.”
The people in Oregon wanted Bernie Sanders, they didn’t want Hillary Clinton. for 7 superdelegates to go directly to Hillary Clinton despite losing in every county but one shows that the representatives of Oregon weren’t willing to bend to the will of the voters they supposedly represent. With superdelegates being 10,000 for every 1 vote, this betrays the average voter and gives rise to corrupt politics that don’t share the same interests with the people.
WASHINGTON
“Bernie Sanders won Washington, at the Convention, Hillary Clinton would steal all the states superdelegates”
Bernie Sanders won the state by a landslide, yet would not receive a single superdelegate, going against the will of the Washington voters. A Washington Delegate (Nick Vaidyanathan) would tell me how the convention would go down and what he would experience:
BC De Graff: “How were you treated at the Convention?”
Nick Vaidyanathan: “Complex question. I was the whip of delegation. Pithily, like I was irrelevant. The mics were turned off. Absolutely no discussion about the future of the party or actual debate was done. I paid thousands of dollars (forced hotel rooms that were $300+/night, plane tickets, etc) to sign my name affirming a vote and sit through a commercial that denigrated Bernie and pretended we weren’t there.”
(List of Superdelegates)
BC De Graff: Were you Bernie or Bust?
Nick Vaidyanathan: “Very much so. Though I may have been convinced to swallow bullshit if any kind of olive branch had been extended. I.e. actually ending Superdelegates, adopting Bernie’s symbolic platform recommendations without reservations, naming Bernie or Elizabeth Warren as the VP coffee. Instead, the DNC and Democrats acted with a combination of condescension, annoyance, and generally gloated about Hillary’s “victory.””
BC De Graff: “What moment at the convention stood out the most and what message did you leave the convention with?”
(List of Electors)
Nick Vaidyanathan: “When Bernie moved for recording the results as counted and then nominating Clinton, 68 out of the 72 of us walked out. Conservatively I’d say 1000 Bernie delegates walked out, probably closer to 1500. There was almost no discussion about this on MSM, no analysis of what that implicated for the Clinton campaign. The message the DNC and Clinton have Berners was, simply “fuck you. Things are gonna go our way. Deal with it.” It was most obvious contrasting T-shirt design for Bernie being sold at the DNC versus the Hillary poster. Democracy in the Democratic Party is a sham. That convention had nothing in the way of actual policy, decision making, or transformation as attended by the delegates. I’d heard that’s the way it was going to be, but it’s quite a different thing to actually experience it.”
Another Bernie Delegate (Charles James Adkins) I would talk to had a different take on the rigging and seem to ignore the Democratic National Conventions unorthodox rigging of the state using the superdelegates:
BC De Graff: Hi, Charles, I’m doing an article and was wondering if you could answer some questions about the DNC National Convention last year.
Charles James Adkins: I’m up for answering some questions!
BC De Graff: What state were you a Bernie Delegate from and how were you treated at the convention?
Charles James Adkins: “Washington State and I was treated Alright I mostly stuck with the other Native American Delegates though.”
BC De Graff: “Were you Bernie or Bust?”
Charles James Adkins: “I was not.”
BC De Graff: “What was the message you left the convention with and who did you vote for?”
Charles James Adkins: “I left the convention saddened at how little the Clinton campaign felt they needed to do to get the Sanders supporters on their side. the lack of outreach is what I think ultimately lost them the election. I voted for sanders at the roll call vote at the convention and in the general I ultimately decided to vote for Hillary Clinton. though I do not blame those that decided not to.”
(New York Times Results)
I would then go on to ask him about the rigging:
BC De Graff: “Are you aware your state was rigged? All the Superdelegates defied the people’s unanimous vote for Bernie and voted for Hillary?”
Charles James Adkins: “I strongly disagree with that statement.”
BC De Graff: “Bernie won in every county yet received no superdelegate, why do you think that is?”
Charles James Adkins: “I have no comment What other questions do you have? And I don’t mean to come off as adversarial I just have my own frustrations with the process and don’t really want to relive that.”
Charles James Adkins strongly disagreed that his state was rigged, yet Delegate Nick Vaidyanathan describes in detail a different story. The proof is in the system as Hillary would receive 110,000 votes from 11 Superdelegates, taking the state from Bernie who won the state by 72.7%. The DNC and Hillary Clinton cheated Bernie Sanders out of the state of Washington using the superdelegates and would see the repercussions when 4 Electors that were supposed to vote for the will of the people, would not voted Hillary Clinton. 3 would vote for Colin Powell and a Bernie or Bust Robert Satiacum, Jr., A member of the Puyallup Tribe, refused to vote for Hillary Clinton. Washington preferred Bernie Sanders.
ARIZONA
“The state that refused to let voters vote”
Arizona was perhaps one of Bernie Sanders’ most campaigned state. He would campaign there after Jane Sanders witnessed the Ten City Prison Concentration Camp. The polling stations were reduced the polling stations and gave way to massive crowds and lines to vote for their candidates. Maricopa County in particular had one polling site for every 21,000 voters. 868 places removed is a sign of a declining democracy. The way that the delegates were treated shows the lack of respect for the voters who want their voices heard in their illusive Democracy that purges their votes and demonizes them if they speak out against their selected Candidate.
(Lines in Arizona due to Voter Suppression)
I recently interviewed an Arizona Delegate Kelly Thornton Jones, who would tell me about the State Convention and the National Convention in Philadelphia:
BC DeGraff: “What stood out the most in your experience? What moment was most memorable?”
Kelly Thornton Jones: “Where should I begin? We Bernie delegates were treated like wedding crashers by Arizona Hillary Clinton delegates. From the time of arrival we were separated into our respective camps.”
(Kelly Jones boos DWS on Far Right)
BC DeGraff: “So you didn’t feel welcome there?”
Kelly Thornton Jones: “Fuck no, we were interlopers. Made very clear. Hillary Clinton folks looked down their noses at us from the get go. The vibe prepared us for what was to come. For the next 5 days.”
BC DeGraff: “What happened at the State Convention? Was the voter suppression discussed by the officials running the floor?”
Kelly Thornton Jones: “We were constantly harassed. That’s actually laughable, Not a peep”
(AZ Super Delegates)
BC DeGraff: “ Since the Primary, did the experience change your mind on the 2 party system? Who did you vote for in the General Election?”
Kelly Thornton Jones: “Yes, we need more parties. I #demexited right away. I voted for Bernard Sanders. Wrote him in proudly. We are far too diverse a culture to have only 2 viable options. Chocolate or vanilla? I want mocha almond fudge.”
Despite Hillary Clinton winning, she would have lost if voter suppression had not occurred. Bernie Sanders did immense canvasing the state.
ALASKA
“A state that went to Bernie Sanders in a landslide went to Hillary Clinton in a landslide at the Convention.”
Bernie Sanders would take the state at almost 80 percent. nearly 80 percent of Alaskan voters wanted Bernie Sanders. Only 2,146 people voted for Hillary Clinton. This would change at the convention.
Only 1 Superdelegate did not cast their vote for Hillary Clinton. Bernie Sanders would not receive a single Superdelegate. 6 Superdelegates would cast their votes for Hillary Clinton. The total of the votes would be 62,146 votes for Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders would lose the state with only 8,447 votes.
MINNESOTA
“superdelegates steal another state in the 2016 Primary
|
in schools across the country." Guest host Mark Belling on the Rush Limbaugh Show added, "They're force-feeding this down our throats." Beck blustered, "It doesn't matter how you try to sell it to us, it doesn't matter how many celebrities you get, it doesn't matter how many bars open early, it doesn't matter how many beer commercials they run, we don't want the World Cup, we don't like the World Cup, we don't like soccer, we want nothing to do with it.... They continually try to jam it down our throat."
As this blog goes on to note, Rupert Murdoch is by definition a socialist since the Fox Soccer Channel is central to this whole conspiracy.
Here's more from Beck:
Beck said, "Barack Obama's policies are the World Cup. Their policies, his policies are the World Cup of political thought..."The rest of the world like Barack Obama's policies. We do not, and I'm cool with that. If you want Barack Obama's policies or the World Cup in your country have at it. I don't hate you. I don't understand you, but I don't hate you….I believe that everything you need to know about Barack Obama's policies can be explained by the World Cup… Congratulations to Barack Obama and his polices that will have as much success as the World Cup in America. Go try those polices someplace else. They'll be wildly successful."
Now some of you will say, ah, Tomasky, they're just doing this for ratings, don't get your knickers in a twist. Well, sure, maybe they are to some extent.
But the interesting thing here is that it's exactly the same style of argument they use for everything. Insuring all your citizens is the moral equivalent of soccer, since it's foreign, and one heard precisely the same kind of rhetoric from these hyenas during the healthcare debate.
There are two choices here, either they mean it or they don't. If they mean it, they're out of their minds. If they don't, then they're just a bunch of liars or hypocrites. I doubt very much, for example, that conservative parents in America are yanking their little children out of their soccer games any more than conservative senior citizens are refusing to cash their Social Security checks. Either way it isn't pretty. And this is the madness we live with, folks.A group of young Halifax entrepreneurs will be pitching their business proposal to the Dragons tonight on CBC Television's Dragons' Den.
The 43 young people from north-end Halifax are looking to expand their salad dressing business called Hope Blooms.
The small business began as a community garden project with less than a dozen kids. The students planted and tended the crops turning them into a line of organic salad dressings sold at the Halifax Seaport Farmers' Market.
The dressing sells for $8 a bottle. From each bottle sold, $1 goes into a scholarship fund for the kids.
The teens were making 200 bottle per year. Now the business has grown to making 200 per week. Christina Hubley said they can't keep up with demand.
"We usually sell out by 10 a.m. and the other vendors are jealous of us because we're sold out before them," she said.
The business could continue to grow if it had a year-round greenhouse — a pitch that impressed at least one Dragon in the promo for Wednesday night's show.
"We're social entrepreneurs. With a small portion of our profits, we use [that] to buy seeds and our tools and teach community members … how to grow," said one of the young entrepreneurs.
"Makes me cry," said Arlene Dickinson in a commercial for the episode.
The students are hoping they're granted a $10,000 loan so Hope Blooms can continue to grow.
The episode airs Wednesday night at 8 p.m.Dear backers!
The Kickstarter is getting closer to its conclusion! Just one week left! We want to again thank all of you for your amazing support, all your feedback and the great discussions we have had so far! We are not yet there however, we still need a little bit more to cross that 500k€ line! So, we decided to introduce a few new additional reward tiers, essentially “boosted” existing rewards tiers. These are a small step up from the existing packs for those of you who feel like helping with a little “plus” just before the end. It’s a small plus, but it can make a big difference. And to thank you for getting those packs, we added a few DACs* or even a second Lifetime Subscription in some of them! We hope you like it, let us know!
(*DAC: Dual Access Coupons: These items can be turned individually into one month of game time, or be sold on the in-game markets to other players for in-game money)
Upgrade for all Bronze Founder Packs and above!
If you pledge (or have already pledged) a Bronze Founder Pack or above, you will get a special Kickstarter spacesuit for all your characters! This is a reward exclusive for the Kickstarter campaign!
If you pledge (or have already pledged) a Bronze Founder Pack or above, you will get a special Kickstarter spacesuit for all your characters! This is a reward exclusive for the Kickstarter campaign! New Pack: Boosted Bronze Founder Pack! (€40)
This pack comes between the Bronze and the Silver Pack and is only digital. By pledging this pack, you will get a Kickstarter suit and the additional name reservation granted by the 6,000 backer milestone. It contains:
- Game at launch (PC Digital)
- Thanks in the credits as an early backer
- “Bronze Founder” Forum Title
- 7 DACs (value post-release: €136)
- Original Soundtrack (Digital)
This pack comes between the Bronze and the Silver Pack and is only digital. By pledging this pack, you will get a Kickstarter suit and the additional name reservation granted by the 6,000 backer milestone. It contains: - Game at launch (PC Digital) - Thanks in the credits as an early backer - “Bronze Founder” Forum Title - 7 DACs (value post-release: €136) - Original Soundtrack (Digital) New Pack: Double Silver Founder Pack! (€100)
This pack is a bundle of 2 Silver Packs and is only digital. By pledging this pack, you will get a Kickstarter suit and the additional name reservation granted by the 6000 backer milestone for 2 accounts. It contains:
- Game at launch for 2 accounts (PC Digital)
- Thanks in the credits as an early backer (for each account)
- “Silver Founder” Forum Title for 2 accounts
- 22 DACs (value post-release: €396)
- Original Soundtrack (Digital)
- In-game Pet (lvl.1 version) for 2 accounts
- 2 Closed Beta Access Keys.
This pack is a bundle of 2 Silver Packs and is only digital. By pledging this pack, you will get a Kickstarter suit and the additional name reservation granted by the 6000 backer milestone for 2 accounts. It contains: - Game at launch for 2 accounts (PC Digital) - Thanks in the credits as an early backer (for each account) - “Silver Founder” Forum Title for 2 accounts - 22 DACs (value post-release: €396) - Original Soundtrack (Digital) - In-game Pet (lvl.1 version) for 2 accounts - 2 Closed Beta Access Keys. New Pack: Boosted Emerald Founder Pack! (€1300)
By pledging this pack, you will get a Kickstarter suit and the additional name reservation granted by the 6000 backer milestone. It contains:
- Game at launch for 2 accounts (PC Digital)
- Thanks in the credits as early backer for 2 accounts
- "Emerald Founder" Forum Title for 2 accounts
- 80 DACs (value:1440€ post-release)
- Lifetime Subscription for 2 accounts!
- Original SoundTrack (Digital)
- ID Card Arkship Passenger (Emerald) for 2 accounts
- In-game Pet (lvl.1 version) for 2 accounts
- In-game Pet (lvl.2 version) for 2 accounts
- In-game Pet (lvl.3 version) for 2 accounts
- In-game Pet (lvl.4 version) for 2 accounts
- In-game Pet (lvl.5 version) for 2 accounts
- Closed Beta Key Access for 2 accounts
- Alpha Access Key for 2 accounts
- Alpha Team Outfit for 2 accounts
- "Dual Universe" T-Shirt
- "Dual Universe" Poster
- "Dual Universe" Tote Bag
- "Dual Universe" Artbook
- "Dual Universe" Metallic Box (numbered)
- "Dual Universe" Collector Box
- Arkship USB Key
- Alpha Team Member Statue (male or female)
- Alpha Team Member Statue (remaining one)
- Custom Avatar Portrait
- 1 hour Call Conference with JC
By pledging this pack, you will get a Kickstarter suit and the additional name reservation granted by the 6000 backer milestone. It contains: - Game at launch for 2 accounts (PC Digital) - Thanks in the credits as early backer for 2 accounts - "Emerald Founder" Forum Title for 2 accounts - 80 DACs (value:1440€ post-release) - Original SoundTrack (Digital) - ID Card Arkship Passenger (Emerald) for 2 accounts - In-game Pet (lvl.1 version) for 2 accounts - In-game Pet (lvl.2 version) for 2 accounts - In-game Pet (lvl.3 version) for 2 accounts - In-game Pet (lvl.4 version) for 2 accounts - In-game Pet (lvl.5 version) for 2 accounts - Closed Beta Key Access for 2 accounts - Alpha Access Key for 2 accounts - Alpha Team Outfit for 2 accounts - "Dual Universe" T-Shirt - "Dual Universe" Poster - "Dual Universe" Tote Bag - "Dual Universe" Artbook - "Dual Universe" Metallic Box (numbered) - "Dual Universe" Collector Box - Arkship USB Key - Alpha Team Member Statue (male or female) - Alpha Team Member Statue (remaining one) - Custom Avatar Portrait - 1 hour Call Conference with JC Upgrade for all Emerald Founder Packs and above:
Shipping costs will be paid by Novaquark!
Please note that in order to level these new offers with the higher pledges, we also added a second Lifetime Subscription to the existing 5,000€ and 7,000€ pledges (it won’t show in the pledge list, because we cannot edit pledges once they are created).
As always, let us know what you think about these new packs. We hope you find them motivating, and that they will help trigger the final boost towards 500k€, or even perhaps beyond, towards our stretch goals! Where will we stop? ;)
The Novaquark TeamThe Running Man Challenge viral video has turned into a major pop culture hit. Launched by high schoolers Kevin Vincent and Jeremiah Hall, the dance features a quick rhythmic step that’s catchy and entertaining. The dance went mainstream after numerous college and professional athletes, celebrities, and grandmothers posted their own renditions.
The song utilized in all Running Man Challenge videos is the 1996 hit “My Boo” by the Ghost Town DJs. The Miami Bass-inspired anthem came to fruition when Rodney “Kool Kollie” Terry and Carlton “Carl Mo” Mahone met in So So Def A&R Lil Jon’s office. Terry created the drums and the infectious bass while Mahone added his keyboard and played the melody of the song. Suddenly, the trunk-rattling, electro-smooth R&B track was born.
The creation process included some luck. “Carl Mo was a keyboard player at the time but not understanding what he was doing he set the key in his voice and his tone,” said Terry. “It was very low and the original lead singer could not hit that low note period.”
Virgo Williams had entered sessions for “My Boo” as a background singer. Little did she know, she would be the voice behind the record. “When I was first called in, I got some initial background vocals on there,” said Williams who goes by the name Madison Bleu now. “Then they asked me to set up and do the lead. When I first heard the track, I was excited thinking that this was going to be amazing because it’s going to be different. You don’t hear a lot of R&B vocals on top of bass tracks.”
An unexpected savior was involved in hitting that low note. “There was a guy in the studio who sang the record and Virgo followed him piece by piece and we pieced it together,” said Terry. “The notes were so low for a female to hit because it wasn’t a female’s voice or key. That’s why I tell people, we fucked up and lucked up pretty much.”
The song was part of a collection of bass records released by So So Def Records as a compilation in the Summer of 1996. “There’s a bunch of records that were on the So So Def Bass All-Stars compilation,” said So So Def Records Founder Jermaine Dupri. “They all sound the same basically. They all have the same tempo. That’s the whole mentality with the compilation. It was a compilation built across music that was a certain tempo. So when I heard ‘My Boo’ it was a standout amongst the rest of the records because it sounded more like a commercial record. But it also just sounded like that thump, thump that DJs do when they mix R&B records on top of ‘Planet Rock’ or something like that.”
The record initially took off when DJ Greg Street broke the song on V103 during Freaknik in the Summer of 1996. It became a summer anthem and helped propel the compilation to gold status.
Despite the success, the group still remained relatively anonymous. “I honestly just think it was a wrestling match Columbia was having with itself because they really didn’t understand how to approach the situation,” Terry said. “I was the individual signed to So So Def, but I’m not the individual that was singing on the record obviously. And then Virgo, who at the time — and I’m so glad that she’s back and she’s getting the credit that she deserved — we had a situation where she was under bad management and they wouldn’t allow her to be involved in the situation. I kind of had to move on without her and I think Columbia’s situation was ‘ok, if you don’t have the girl to sing the record, nobody can be in here.’ That added to all of the mystique that was going on.”
Williams also remained anonymous as the singer. To this day some people still think Inoj is the vocalist. “People who were close to me knew, but for people outside of my immediate circle it was kind of difficult seeing people, said Williams. “I’d ride by and hear the song play, but I believe that everything happens for a reason and now it’s here again and everybody knows now.”"H.O.P.E." redirects here. For other uses, see Hope (disambiguation)
"H2K" redirects here. For the esports team, see H2k-Gaming
The Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) conference series is a hacker convention sponsored by the security hacker magazine 2600: The Hacker Quarterly that is typically held at Hotel Pennsylvania, in Manhattan, New York City.[1] Occurring biennially in the summer, there have been twelve conferences to date with the most recent occurring 20–23 July 2018.[2][3] HOPE features talks, workshops, demonstrations, tours, and movie screenings.
HOPE was significantly inspired by the quadrennial Hack-Tic events in the Netherlands which also inspired the annual Chaos Communication Congress (C3) held in Germany. Summercon was also an influential predecessor.[citation needed]
Structure [ edit ]
HOPE has been held at Hotel Pennsylvania in New York City every time except once since 1994. The event is always structured in a similar way. It consists of three days and three nights of activities, including talks, workshops, and performances. It also features hackerspace villages, a film festival, lock picking villages, a wide variety of vendors, art installations, live video, vintage computers, robots, an amateur/ham radio station, electronics workshops, and book signings.
[citation needed]
The closing ceremony is a regular part of the event, celebrating the event, the organizers, and volunteers, but also features performances. Since 2006, monochrom's Johannes Grenzfurthner is a regular performer at the closing ceremony.[citation needed]
Conferences [ edit ]
HOPE: Hackers On Planet Earth [ edit ]
Held 13–14 August 1994 at the Hotel Pennsylvania, the first HOPE conference marked 2600: The Hacker Quarterly's 10th anniversary. Over 1,000 people attended, including speakers from around the world. Access to a 28.8 kbit/s local network was provided.[4] This conference was visited and covered in the second episode of the "Your Radio Playhouse" show, later renamed This American Life.[5]
Beyond HOPE [ edit ]
The 8–10 August 1997 Beyond HOPE conference was held at the Puck Building, in Manhattan, New York City. Attendance doubled, with 2,000 attendees. Bell Technology Group helped to support the hackers. A TAP reunion and a recorded live broadcast of Off the Hook took place.[6] A 10 Mbit/s local network was provided to attendees.[7]
H2K [ edit ]
The 14–15 July 2000 HOPE returned to the Hotel Pennsylvania, where subsequent conferences have been held. The conference ran 24 hours a day, bringing in 2,300 attendees. Jello Biafra gave a keynote speech. In a cultural exchange between the punk rock icon/free speech activist and the hacker community, Jello drew connections between the two communities, despite his lack of computer experience. The EFF also raised thousands of dollars. The conference provided a working Ethernet and a T1 link to the internet.[8]
H2K2 [ edit ]
H2K2, 12–14 July 2002, had a theme focused on U.S. Homeland Security Advisory System. H2K2 included two tracks of scheduled speakers, with a third track reserved for last-minute and self-scheduled speakers, a movie room, retrocomputing, musical performances, a State of the World Address by Jello Biafra, keynotes by Aaron McGruder and Siva Vaidhyanathan and discussions on the DMCA and DeCSS. Freedom Downtime premiered on Friday evening (14 July). The conference provided wireless 802.11b coverage and wired Ethernet, an open computer area for access to a 24-hour link to the Internet at "T-1ish" speeds, made available by the DataHaven Project[9] and an internal network.[10]
The Fifth HOPE [ edit ]
The Fifth HOPE, 9–11 July 2004, had a theme on propaganda, and commemorated the anniversaries of both the H.O.P.E. conferences and Off the Hook (with a live broadcast of the show from the conference, Beyond H.O.P.E.). Keynotes speakers were Kevin Mitnick, Steve Wozniak, and Jello Biafra. There was also a presentation by "members" of the Phone Losers of America who celebrated their tenth anniversary. The Cult of the Dead Cow hacker collective celebrated its twentieth anniversary at the conference. The conference provided access to a four-layer public network with two T1 lines, plus backup links to the internet via a public terminal cluster, various wired connections, a WiFi network on three floors and a video network.[11][12][13][14]
HOPE Number Six [ edit ]
HOPE Number Six, 21–23 July 2006, included talks from Richard Stallman and Jello Biafra.[15] Kevin Mitnick was scheduled to be at the conference but was unable to appear: while on vacation in Colombia an illness prevented his timely return to the U.S. Hope Number Six had a 100-megabit Internet connection; the conference organizers claimed it was the fastest Internet connection to-date at any U.S. hacker conference. The event's theme was based on the number six and The Prisoner (a designation shared by the titular "prisoner,").[16] Notable occurrences:
Steve Rambam, a private investigator heading Pallorium, Inc., an online investigative service, was scheduled to lead a panel discussion titled "Privacy is Dead... Get Over It." A few minutes before the start of the panel, Rambam was arrested by the FBI on charges that he unlawfully interfered with an ongoing case Federal prosecutors filed against Albert Santoro, a former Brooklyn assistant New York district attorney indicted in January 2003 on a count of money-laundering. [17] [18] [19] The charges were eventually dropped [20] and the talk was subsequently held in November 2006, long after the conference. [21]
, a private investigator heading Pallorium, Inc., an online investigative service, was scheduled to lead a panel discussion titled "Privacy is Dead... Get Over It." A few minutes before the start of the panel, Rambam was arrested by the FBI on charges that he unlawfully interfered with an ongoing case Federal prosecutors filed against Albert Santoro, a former Brooklyn assistant New York district attorney indicted in January 2003 on a count of money-laundering. The charges were eventually dropped and the talk was subsequently held in November 2006, long after the conference. Jello Biafra began his talk by referring to the arrest of Steve Rambam, noting the convention had been more "spook heavy" than usual.[22] He then announced a "special message" to "any Federal agents that may be in the audience", and mooned the convention.
The Last HOPE [ edit ]
The "Last HOPE" took place 18–20 July 2008 at the Hotel Pennsylvania. A change from past years was the use of an Internet forum to facilitate community participation in the planning of the event.
The conference name referred to the expectation that this would be the final H.O.P.E. conference due to the scheduled demolition of its venue, the Hotel Pennsylvania. The Save Hotel Pennsylvania Foundation was created to work toward keeping the building from being demolished by its then-new owner, Vornado Realty Trust.[23] The "Next HOPE" was scheduled for Summer 2010. At the closing ceremony it was revealed that the use of the word "last" could also refer to the previous event, or one that had ended (referring to The Last HOPE itself).
Steven Levy gave the keynote address. Kevin Mitnick, Steve Rambam, Jello Biafra, and Adam Savage of MythBusters were featured speakers. Descriptions and audio of the talks can be found at thelasthope.org[24][25][26]
The Next HOPE [ edit ]
The 8th HOPE convention, "The Next HOPE", took place on 16–18 July 2010.[27] The Next HOPE was held at the Hotel Pennsylvania,[27] as the plans by Vornado to demolish the hotel are on hold.
HOPE Number Nine [ edit ]
HOPE Number Nine occurred 13–15 July 2012 at Hotel Pennsylvania in Manhattan.[28][29]
Keynote presentations for HOPE Number Nine were given by The Yes Men (with Andy Bichelbaum as principal speaker and Vermin Supreme also participating) and NSA whistleblower William Binney.[30] Chris Kubecka, principal speaker of a presentation about internet censorship was served a cease and desist letter in an attempt to censor the presentation by Unisys and threatened with termination[31] for a presentation titled "The Internet is for Porn! How High Heels and Fishnet Have Driven Internet Innovation and Information Security"[32]. Unisys demanded all information regarding the presentation be removed from the internet, but the Streisand effect occurred, with the censorship attempt posted on thousands of websites instead. A first for the conference, a ghost speaker @JK47theweapon had to deliver most of the presentation due to legal threats against Kubecka. Prior to beginning, the MC invited "any hangers on or associates of the law firm of Baker & McKenzie" to speak to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).[33] Baker & McKenzie is the law firm of Unisys Netherlands which threatened to terminate its employee by letter for giving a presentation about internet censorship.[34]
HOPE X [ edit ]
2600 logo prominent at the bottom. The badge used at HOPE X. It was a patch evocative of a police shield, with thelogo prominent at the bottom.
HOPE X took place from 18–20 July 2014 at Hotel Pennsylvania. The keynote speakers were Daniel Ellsberg and Edward Snowden; also featured was noted former NSA official and whistleblower Thomas Drake.[35] The theme of the conference was "dissent", and whistle-blowing was a topic of a good number of talks.[36] But the conference also featured critical talks about the state of hackdom, for example Johannes Grenzfurthner of monochrom spoke about the problems of rockstar martyrdom within the hacker scene and the creation of hacker cult figures (like Snowden, Appelbaum or Assange) by unreflective members of the community or the media.[37]
Notable changes included a massive increase in available bandwidth. Previous conferences had a 50 Mbit connection; HOPE X had a 10 Gbit fibre optic connection provided by Hurricane Electric. This geometric increase in bandwidth made possible live streaming of all conference talks in real time. The Ellsberg/Snowden keynote was seen in over 120 countries. This also was the first year all conference areas were fully connected to the conference network, albeit with the Workshop floor with slightly limited connectivity (a 1 Gbit connection, as compared to the 10 Gbit backbone of the other conference spaces). Five different wireless networks were provided to conference attendees. The hammocks on the mezzanine level, which provided a place for some attendees to sleep if they were unable to procure a place to otherwise do so, were replaced by inflatable furniture in a dedicated "Chill Space" area. Mezzanine space was also explicitly dedicated to attendee meetups in the form of villages, similar to assemblies at Chaos Communication Congresses and villages at hacker camps, specifically "Village Zone A" (primarily a soldering and electronics workshop), "Village Zone B", "Lockpickers Village", and "Noisy Square". Workshop tracks were published in the schedule and the conference took nearly all the hotel's available meeting space.[citation needed]
HOPE XI [ edit ]
HOPE XI (The Eleventh HOPE) took place from 22–24 July 2016 at Hotel Pennsylvania.[38] Cory Doctorow was the[39] keynote speaker. Like last time, HOPE XI was provided Internet transit by Hurricane Electric at 111 Eighth Avenue over a fiber connection leased from RCN Corporation.[40] Aruba Networks sponsored 50 wireless access points which were used to provide 3 wireless networks for attendees, two of which were secured with either WPA or PSK, another network for the NOC, and one for the press and speakers.[41]
Network connectivity was fully provided for in all areas, which came into use throughout the conference as many talks were filled to capacity and attendees either watched streams on their own devices or in designated overflow and viewing areas.[citation needed]
The Circle of HOPE (HOPE 12) [ edit ]
The 12th HOPE conference, "The Circle of HOPE", occurred 20–22 July 2018. Speakers included Chelsea Manning, Barrett Brown, Richard Stallman, Jason Scott, Matt Blaze, Micah Lee, and Steve Rambam, among many others.[42]
See also [ edit ]President Trump will spend the Fourth of July at the White House with military families and his staff for an evening of celebration, maintaining a tradition that presidents have observed for decades.
Trump and first lady Melania Trump will first join a picnic with military families on the South Lawn before watching a fireworks display from the Truman Balcony on Tuesday, according to the White House.
Although the president and his family spent the weekend in Bedminster, N.J., where Trump keeps a property, they were scheduled to return to Washington on Monday evening ahead of the holiday. Trump will depart for his second trip overseas on Wednesday.
The Fourth of July picnic at the White House is a longstanding tradition dating back to at least the Carter administration, although not every president has attended it every year.
Former President Barack Obama held the picnic and fireworks viewing for military families during his presidency, but had to cancel the festivities last year due to weather and instead moved planned musical performances inside to the East Room.
Trump has already delivered the first Fourth of July speech of his presidency. He spoke Saturday evening at the Kennedy Center's Celebrate Freedom Rally, where he excoriated the media for what he sees as unfair coverage and touted his administration's efforts to serve veterans.
The Trump White House has already held several major events on the South Lawn.
Melania Trump earned praise for her successful Easter Egg Roll this spring, and members of Congress and their families recently descended on the South Lawn for the annual Congressional Picnic.Very strong, high-quality work! Congrats!
However, I have to register my objection to the basic premise of your work, which seems to be that the TARDIS interior is in some alternate dimension that connects to the police box through the doorway. I don't think it is.
I don't think there is an exterior of the TARDIS interior. It's not dimensionally linked to the police box -- it's just inside the police box. The police box is just literally bigger on the inside than it is on the outside, and that's all there is to it.
Also: Your TARDIS interior isn't nearly large enough, I would argue. "Time Crash" seems to imply that the TARDIS is at least the size of Belgium (given that its explosion would leave a hole that exact size), and I'd argue it's probably larger than that.
Click to expand...NEW YORK (Reuters) - Lindsey Gehl and Ryan Bell have a vision of their June wedding being white - and green, too.
Women in wedding gowns jump during the "Parade of Brides" in Sao Paulo October 23, 2011. REUTERS/Nacho Doce
The 27-year-olds will pledge their troth in a traditional ceremony, followed by a reception amid the scenic trails and wildlife habitats of the Pilcher Park Nature Center in Joliet, Illinois, to which they’re donating $600.
Indeed, their dedication to the environment is so true, they’ve forked out a little more to have invitations printed on recycled paper, and to have drinks served in glasses instead of plastic tumblers.
“It would have been cheaper to have our wedding at a church, but we both love nature and we believe it’s important to do what we can for the environment,” says Gehl, a teacher.
Gehl and Bell are in good company. In a November survey by chain store David’s Bridal, 78 percent of respondents said they were taking steps to green their weddings, while 35 percent planned to serve local food or decorate with local flowers - both steps that reduce a wedding’s carbon footprint.
Those who have scoffed at “green” as being synonymous with “cheap” may have to eat their words.
Wedding planners say there’s an increased focus on environmental niceties that may not save money, and may even plump up a wedding bill.
Take food, for example. Locally sourced produce tends to cost more than those by large institutions based further away, says Loren Michelle, proprietor of Naturally Delicious, a caterer and event planner based in Brooklyn, New York.
“I pay $14-$16 a pound for New York State aged cheddar. Regular cheddar would be $6 to $8,” she says, while New York wine is more expensive than wine from California. In-season local vegetables may be less expensive, but not by much.
Organic food of any kind is pricy. About a quarter of Michelle’s customers request free-range, grass-fed meat, which can cost 30 percent more.
As a genre of nuptial celebrations, eco-friendly weddings have held steady at about 11 percent of weddings since the economy tanked in 2008, reports TheKnot, a wedding planning website.
And hosts are keen on not being wasteful, says TheKnot editor Anja Winikka.
To be sure, it can be stylish to be “eco-chic”, says blogger Anne Chertoff, who writes for WeddingWire, an online platform for vendors. A bride could give her gown to a charity, or favor a caterer that will donate unused food.
Some green choices can be gentler on the wallet.
“For my wedding we used locally grown organic dahlias and hydrangea and saved almost $1,500,” says Kate Harrison, founder of the Green Bride Guide.
Couples can halve their flower budget, and keep a lid on their carbon footprint, if they avoid having exotic flora shipped in from tropical locations, says TheKnot’s Winikka. Moving flowers from the ceremony to the reception area can trim some costs, while enjoyment of the blooms may be prolonged by having guests take them home afterwards.
GREEN TO THE EXTREME
For radical savings, couples can emulate Lane Bigsby, who in October, opened a low-cost rental service for vintage wedding props, Something Borrowed Portland. ( somethingborrowedpdx.com/ ).
Instead of “something borrowed, something blue,” Bigsby’s maxim for her Portland, Washington wedding last August was a green one; everything had to be borrowed, used or homemade, then reused or recycled after the event.
She spent $3,000 on a hundred guests, in a year when the average wedding cost $27,021, according to TheKnot survey. A neighborhood seamstress created her dress with a frilly skirt of old curtains. Sheets were cut into napkins, and burlap bags from the local coffee roaster redeployed as table runners. Guests brought entrees and took home leftovers. The goal? Zero waste.
“We had one small grocery bag of garbage, and I took it home and sorted through to save things and compost the rest,” says Bigsby, 36, who works as a project administrator at an energy efficiency consulting company.
Here are some tips for couples who’d like their big day to be eco and budget conscious:
RECYCLE DRESSES
Alter a dress that’s already in the family - his or hers. Or buy a used gown for a third of its retail price, according to Harrison. Check out RecycledBride.com, which also offers items like shoes and rings.
Sell the dress after the wedding to recoup some costs or donate it to a thrift shop serving a favorite cause. The Bridal Garden in New York City gives all proceeds to benefit education for local children. The Glass Slipper Project ( www.glassslipperproject.org ) and donatemydress.org give bridesmaid gowns to high school students who can't afford prom dresses.
CAR POOL, AND LOCATION POOL
Skip the parade of honking cars and hold the reception and ceremony in the same location. Arrange car pooling.
WEB INVITES
Invitations made from recycled paper and soy ink are fine, but perhaps consider a web invite, or use free wedding websites to provide directions and hotel information. Guests can RSVP online.
GREEN GIFTS
Create a green registry. Ask only for essential gifts or have guests contribute to a charity.
THE RING
Consider a vintage ring. Or buy wedding rings made with post-consumer gold and man-made diamonds.
GREEN, IN MODERATION
Not every green wedding idea is smart. Bigsby - certified in Portland as a “Master Recycler” to educate the public about environmental issues - recommends against ‘compostable’ dishes; these apparently don’t compost in a landfill or in home composts, which don’t get hot enough.
(The author is a Reuters contributor. The opinions expressed are her own. This is part of a five-story package moving on marriage and money, moving June 4-7)Ever since Qatar was awarded for the 2022 World Cup, the championship has been punctuated by controversial topics. Corruption Allegations have been acquired with the tournament to be played in the winter, because of the high temperatures during the summer months in the emirates.German newspaper Bild revealed that the 1.2 million workers who are working to get the infrastructure ready are currently living in inhuman conditions. The newspaper said that the workers - mostly from Nepal and the Philippines - only earn 1$ hour and live in small rooms, often with no air conditioning, although the heat sometimes rises to 50 degrees. In addition, many workers cannot leave Qatar because the employer took their passports.- ''Despite all the promises, Qatar has not changed anything. We will launch a global campaign to put pressure on Fifa. This is about life and death for many people, says communications manager Tim Noonan.''There must be nine stadiums for the World Cup 2022. Another three arenas have not been renovated, which is a must in order to offer comfort and amenities in accordance with European standards.Lawyer and politician
For the basketball and baseball coach, see Birch Bayh (coach)
Birch Evans Bayh Jr. (born January 22, 1928) is an American politician and former U.S. Senator from Indiana, serving from 1963 to 1981. He is the only non–Founding Father to author two amendments, XXV and XXVI, to the United States Constitution and was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president in 1976.
Born in Terre Haute, Indiana, Bayh won election to the Indiana House of Representatives in 1954, and eventually became the youngest Speaker of the House in Indiana history. In 1962, he narrowly defeated incumbent Republican Senator Homer E. Capehart. Bayh became Chairman of the Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments in 1963, and in that role Bayh authored two constitutional amendments. The Twenty-fifth Amendment establishes procedures for an orderly transition of power in the case of the death, disability, or resignation of the President of the United States. The Twenty-sixth Amendment lowered the voting age to 18 throughout the United States. Bayh also led unsuccessful efforts to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment and eliminate the Electoral College.
Bayh authored Title IX of the Higher Education Act of 1965, which banned gender discrimination in higher education among institutions receiving federal funding. Bayh also authored the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act and co-authored the Bayh–Dole Act. He led the Senate opposition to Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell, two of President Richard Nixon's unsuccessful Supreme Court nominees. Bayh intended to seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972, but declined to run after his wife was diagnosed with cancer. He sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976, but dropped out of the
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re-create, and distribute. It cannot be copyrighted or owned.
10. Chindogu are without prejudice
Chindogu view all human beings as equal. Therefore, they can't favor a race, religion, age group, gender, or class.
Chindogu Examples
With the 10 tenets fixed firmly in your heart, let's look at some examples of chindogu. From these you'll be able to clearly see each one at work.
Butter Stick
The butter stick is possibly the most well-known chindogu. Maybe because it's the one people could actually see themselves using (almost). When you don't have a knife or the time to butter toast, the Butter Stick is there for you. I wonder what other condiments could work in stick form…
360-Degree Camera Hat
When you can't choose the best camera angle, choose them all. This invention is designed to create panoramic photos. Strap the Camera Hat to your head and snap the pictures. Get the pictures developed, tape them end-to-end in a circle, and stick your head inside.
Noodle Cooler
Sometimes ramen and udon are just too hot. That's why you slurp. But maybe that's not enough to keep the noodles from burning thy lips. Enter the noodle cooler. An electric fan cools your noodles before they get close to scalding your mouth.
Shoe Broom and Dustpan
Getting the broom out of the closet for a small bit of dust is a real pain. And bending down to use a handheld broom can be difficult for the elderly and obese. That's when you slip these babies on. Use one foot to sweep and the other to collect. But then, how do you get your dustpan foot up to the trash can?
Lipstick Guide
Get the perfect lipstick application every time. Just strap on the lip stencil and go to town. This speeds up the lipstick process a lot. No more slow precision. Smear the lipstick all over the place and you're done. Efficient!
Umbrella Shoes
Stop letting dangerous waters pour all over your expensive shoes. This invention protects those Guccis and Air Jordans from inclement weather. Plus you don't have to worry about wet socks, which is the worst thing about rain.
Camera Umbrella
Whether you're in the splash zone at Sea World or a kitsune wedding, there are times you want to get wet and take pictures. This invention was made for such occasions. A tiny umbrella for your camera. Finally, you can take your $6000 Nikon camera to the water park! Just don't drop it in the Lazy River.
Back Scratch Guide
Telling friends where to scratch you can be a chore.
A little left. Up a little. No, back down.
Slip on this chindogu shirt and use the accompanying chart to identify the itchy area. Your scratch companion now knows the exact square to attack.
Hay Fever Headset
Keep tissues spooling toward your nose at all times.
You get a sneeze attack on a crowded bus! No problem. Reach up, pull down, and cover that sneeze.
Eyedrop Funnel Glasses
Sometimes your eyes need drops. You could hover the eyedropper above your peepers and hope for the best. But we know how that ends. 50% of that precious eye medicine goes on your cheeks. And you can't be wasting eye medicine like that. Not in today's economy.
Good thing you've got Eyedrop Funnel Glasses. Now, you can drop any liquid into your eyes with 100% accuracy.
Baby Mop (or Cat Mop)
There's nothing lazier than babies and cats. Both need food and shelter, but offer nothing in return. Time to turn the tables on these miniature hobos. The baby mop and cat mop will transform your shiftless baby/cat into a useful cleaning machine.
You can actually buy the baby mop. Because chindogu by nature cannot be patented (tenet number 9), anyone can produce them. The unprincipled charlatans over at BetterThanPants sell a version of Kawakami's baby mop.
But be warned: if you buy this, you're not buying chindogu (see tenet number 5).
Swiss Army Gloves
What is a toothbrush anyway? Some bristles on a stick. And what is your finger but a fleshy stick with bone in the middle? Why not cut out the stick middleman and just attach the bristles to your finger? You've just entered a whole new level of hamigaki).
Onion Chopping Glasses
Of all the chindogu inventions listed here, this is the one I could most see myself using. I hate getting onion pain in my eyes. It's the worst. Your eyes get watery, your vision gets blurry, and before you know it, you've chopped off a finger.
But you can chop onions pain free with this inventions. Little fans on either side of the glasses blow the onion fumes away from your eyes. The glasses themselves probably protect a little bit too.
Noodle Splash Guard
Eating ramen too fast will invariably get broth all over your precious, precious locks. Enter the Noodle Splash Guard, the invention that guards your hair from ramen or udon splash. Now you can eat with gusto!
Umbrella Tie
You're off to your high power job in Japan. You're wearing your high power suit. But the weather forecast calls for rain in the afternoon. You don't want to lower the power of your suit by carrying an umbrella. Especially when it's not raining. People will look at you and think "that guy or gal must be really low power."
This chindogu lets you wear your umbrella while retaining all the power you've stored up. When it starts to rain, you'll be the only salaryperson keeping dry, because those other low power fools didn't bring an umbrella.
Subway Sleeper
You've been working all day. Like a literal 24 hour day. It's time to go home. But you can't keep your eyes open during your train ride home. What if you fall asleep and miss your stop? You'll wake up in bumpkinville, that's what.
This is when you need the Subway Sleeper Hat. You can sleep without falling face first into the floor. Also, the handy sign on the hat tells other passengers what stop you're getting off at, so they'll know when to wake you.
The Selfie Stick
You read that right. Before it was sold in stores, the selfie stick was chindogu.
Kenji Kawakami came up with the idea while on vacation. He gave his camera to a child, asking them to take his picture. When he turned his back, the child ran away with the camera.
So he invented the "Self Portrait Camera Stick" in 1983. It was made and sold by Minolta but quickly failed. In 1995, he added it to his first chindogu book.
Wait a minute. If the chindogu selfie stick was created to be sold, then it's not real chindogu (tenet number 5). Sorry Kawakami-san. Those are the rules.
Chindogu History
The story of chindogu is the story of one man, Kenji Kawakami. Kawakami was born in Nara prefecture in 1946. He studied aeronautical engineering at Tokai University in 1967 but dropped out when he got involved with student movements in the 1970s. Young Japanese college grads from the 60s became violently opposed to the ruling Japanese and American powers in the 1970s. Kawakami himself lobbed molotov cocktails at police. It was these days of radical thinking that eventually led to the philosophy behind chindogu.
But as the years wore on, activism began to splinter into smaller and smaller left wing sects which fought amongst themselves. By the 1980s, most Japanese activists entered lives in the system they had previously opposed. Kawakami took several jobs, mostly freelancing writing and editing. He even wound up writing scripts for the Japanese children's cartoon Calimero.
This eventually led him to a job as editor of a popular home shopping catalog, Tsuhan Seikatsu 通販生活 （ つはんせいかつ ）. This is ironic considering how much he hates materialism. "I despise materialism and how everything is turned into a commodity," he once said. Maybe it was this irony, becoming something he hated, which drove him to create chindogu. He began making his "unuseless" inventions during his time at Tsuhan Seikatsu.
Chindogu would have remained an obscurity if he hadn't been working for the mail order catalog. As an editor, he was in charge of filling each page. One month, he had extra pages to fill.
Kawakami filled the empty pages with products that weren't for sale. The first was his eye drop funnel glasses (which he himself used). The second was a solar powered flashlight (which can only be used if you have enough light to power it). He dubbed these items "chindogu" and sent the catalogs out.
His inventions were an instant hit. Readers demanded more and Kawakami complied, inserting pictures of new inventions in each catalog. Before long he began getting invitations to art exhibitions, interviews, and TV shows.
Eighteen months later, chindogu caught the eye of Dan Papia, a writer for the English language magazine, the Tokyo Journal.
Dan decided to write an article about Kawakami's gadgets, and thus the concept was introduced to the English speaking world. Readers loved it and Kawakami's inventions became a regular feature in the pages of the magazine.
It wasn't long before Tokyo Journal readers began sending their chindogu ideas to Dan. That's when it hit him. Dr. Kawakami shouldn't be the only one making these "unuseless" inventions. He believed it was a new art form and everyone should be allowed to participate.
In 1995, Dan founded the International Chindogu society along with Kenji Kawakami. They established rules for proper chindogu creation (the ten tenets listed above). That same year, he and Kawakami collaborated on the first chindogu book "101 Unuseless Japanese Inventions: The Art of Chindogu." They made another book "99 More Unuseless Japanese Inventions: The Art of Chindogu" in 1997.
From here chindogu took off. The International Chindogu Society began gaining members. Passionate advocates like Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall introduced chindogu to new communities. Kenji Kawakami was invited for interviews and TV appearances outside of Japan. He became a regular fixture on the BBC's It'll Never Work? and Tomorrow's World. In Europe, he was seen as a genius artisan of the surreal. In the US, a wacky inventor. In Hong Kong, a potentially profitable innovator.
For all his fame, Kawakami has never made a yen off of his inventions (remember tenet number 1). He's never registered a patent and never will. He has said "Things that should belong to everyone are patented and turned into private property…the world of patents is dirty, full of greed and competition." In addition, he waives the speaker fees any time he gives a talk and donates any money he makes from books and articles to his favorite causes.
Kawakami never married and has no children. He pursues his dreams to the fullest and continues to hold exhibitions and work on his side businesses. He's shown no signs of slowing.
Chindogu are made to stimulate imagination, not profits, so Kawakami will likely continue creating chindogu until the end. "I think of chindogu as an intellectual game to stimulate anarchic minds," he's said "or a physical manifestation of my way of thinking."
His "way of thinking" was initially contagious. But does chindogu have the momentum to stand the test of time?
Chindogu's Spread and Decline
Since its rise in popularity in the mid-90s, chindogu has taken on a life of its own. Societies, clubs, and association were formed. Exhibits were held. Though chindogu activity still continues, it seems to have died down. Kawakami himself is still active, but as he ages, the future of chindogu is uncertain.
The Japanese Chindogu Society is still run by Kenji Kawakami, but the website is defunct. He's more of an analog guy anyway. Not much for the digital. "If you look at digital products, they all isolate people and leave them in their own small world, depriving them of the joy of communicating with others," he once said. "I can't deny that they make life more exciting and convenient, but they also make human relationships more shallow and superficial." This explains the astounding lack of Kawakami-driven chindogu info online.
He does things in the real world though. Kawakami exhibited his creations at Design Tide '07, a now-defunct design show in Tokyo. It was a pretty small exhibition from the looks of the video above.
In 2010, behind the scenes videos of a chindogu documentary appeared on YouTube.
The 9 videos, each about 15 seconds long, show Kawakami dressed as some kind of 18th century dandy. They were posted by the ChindoguSociety YouTube channel, which has zero subscribers as of this writing. As far as I can tell, the documentary was never completed. The same year, he appeared in an interview with ABC news.
These small blips of Kawakami activity, paired with his hate for the digital world, make me wonder if the idealistic inventor is still doing things and not publicizing them.
Dan Papia, the English translator of the chindogu books, is still the President of The International Chindogu Society. He founded the society in Los Angeles. The old version of the website is still up and running (for now). It paints a clear picture of chindogu's cult status in the late 90s. He is currently a professor at the Global Communications Arts Institute in Tokyo.
There may or may not have been several chindogu societies throughout the U.S., or perhaps the world. Some sources claim the International branch has "10,000 members.", but one has to wonder how and when that number was counted, and if it's still accurate. Nevertheless, there is one piece of evidence that proves there was a chindogu society in Milwaukee, WI at one point. The video below, shows the society's chindogu competition from 2007.
Though America's fascination with chindogu is (mostly) gone, France's love is alive and well. The Chindogu Association of France may not have a website, but they did put together a book called "The 10 Commandments of Chindogu"
Kawakami exhibited chindogu at the Foire Internationale de Marseille in 2013 and 2014. Footage of the 2013 exhibition can be seen in the video above.
The yearly Paris fair, Foire D'Automne, featured a chindogu exhibit in 2016 as well. The Paris art museum, Palais de Tokyo, featured Kawakami photos and inventions as works of art in 2015.
Is Chindogu Worth Preserving?
At this point, Kawakami is the only one carrying the chindogu torch. Clearly, he'll never stop inventing. But he can't go on forever. Someone will have to continue his work. The question is, should they?
Chindogu may have lofty ideals, but its popularity stems from stereotypes. They're not seen as merely "wacky inventions," but "wacky Japanese inventions." It's even in the title of the chindogu books. Chindogu's wackiness comes from Kenji Kawakami's personality, not his nationality. Unfortunately his ideas and philosophy get lost in the shuffle of marketing, and the "weird Japan" stereotype is perpetuated.
But it's his ideas, not the weirdness, that's worth preserving. Consider the words of Tim Moore from Idea Champions.
"It makes no difference whether the resulting invention is absurd, like Chindogu… The point is to keep exercising the mental muscle that crosses wires, tries absurd combinations, and associates the previously unassociated."
That's what creativity is all about. Seeing connections between things. Being bold enough to attempt those connections, even if the result is a little bit silly. It may not be the product you want, but it's the process you need.When you think of computer science pioneers, the names Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are probably some of the first that come to mind.
But both of these men owe a lot to the work of Grace Hopper.
Hopper was a mathematician, a rear admiral in the Navy during World War II and a pioneer of computer science. She’s credited with developing early programming languages such as COBOL, which is still being used today.
Thanks to the new short documentary called "The Queen of Code," Hopper’s largely unknown story is finally being told to a wider audience.
The film was directed by actress Gillian Jacobs, who is best known for her on-screen roles as Britta Perry on “Community” and Mimi-Rose Howard on “Girls.” "The Queen of Code" marks her first foray into documentary filmmaking.
When Jacobs stopped by The Frame, host John Horn asked her about Grace Hopper's unlikely journey, her status as an inspirational figure today, and the parallels between the computer science world and Hollywood.
Interview Highlights:
How did Grace Hopper go from being a math professor at Vassar to a computer science pioneer?
World War II came about, and Pearl Harbor really shook her and she wanted to help out. Her grandfather had been a Rear Admiral, so she was drawn to the Navy. The Navy rejected her, actually, several times, because she was too old — she was about 37 — and they thought she was underweight, but she persisted and she convinced Vassar and the Navy to let her join. I don't think they quite knew what to do with her initially, but then assigned her to this secret computer called Mark 1 that was at Harvard. She was the only female working on the computer, the only female coder, and initially she was met with a lot of resistance. But she was so skilled and so deft at navigating the environment of Harvard and Mark 1 that she quickly became a valued member of the team.
She passed away in 1992, but she's also a hero for so many women who are interested in computing and math. In fact, you have an interview at the end of the documentary with the Chief Technology Officer of the United States, and she's a woman who looks like she's in her mid-40s, and I suspect she was also a disciple or knew about Grace Hopper's work?
Yeah, Megan Smith is the Chief Technology Officer of the United States. [laughs] I have her business card, which is pretty great — thick stock with a wonderful, laminated seal of the United States. Megan Smith is incredibly eloquent and so inspiring to young girls. I met her at last year's Grace Hopper celebration, which is the largest gathering of women in technology, and girls and women were just flocking to her like she was Mick Jagger at an after-party. It was crazy, they just lit up and she was so personable and warm and took the time to speak to all of them. She wonderfully articulates Grace Hopper's importance in my doc.
Why do you think it's important that we remember somebody like Grace Hopper? Why isn't her story well-known?
It's an interesting paradox, because on the one hand she's the most well-known woman in technology — she does have a celebration named after her — but when I went around and asked women if they could talk about the specifics of her life, very few of them knew anything about the actual woman. So she's become a masthead, a figurehead, without any real detail about her own life and accomplishments. For every young girl out there that's being told that she can't code, that it's a man's profession, that women aren't naturally inclined towards math and science, not only Grace Hopper but a whole group of women really defined what is now thought of as coding. No girl out there should think she can't do it, because before [they were] even born, Grace Hopper was inventing COBOL.
As you're making this documentary, were you thinking about your own profession, about acting and filmmaking? Hollywood is notoriously male-driven, so are you thinking about that imbalance as well?
I hadn't really thought about this in a long time, but I went to Juilliard and they always accepted half the number of women as they did men because there were so few parts for women in plays. That was a message that was sent to us at the very beginning of our careers, that there were always going to be fewer parts for us and we'd have to fight harder to get them, and it's continued that way. Certainly that's true for female writers and directors as well. I do see some improvement in the last five years, but the numbers are still really bad.
Is there a difference between the sorts of roles you want to play and the roles you're offered?New Delhi: Delhi will be developed into a “global city" and the country’s first smart city will be set up here to decongest the national capital and facilitate it with all modern amenities, Union urban development minister M. Venkaiah Naidu said here on Saturday.
“We want to make Delhi a truly global city, having all latest and modern amenities and facilities that any other global city like London or San Francisco has. We want to have world-class entertainment venues like Disneyland or Universal Studios here," Naidu said.
The Narendra Modi-led NDA government has planned to set up 100 smart cities and Naidu said that the first such city will come up in the national capital. “Delhi is the heart of India and the first smart city would come up here. The city of Barcelona in Spain has also promised technological support to us in our effort in this direction," he said.
“I saw the city of Barcelona, and apart from modern buildings, they have also preserved their old architecture. We also want to preserve our traditional architecture, that India is so richly endowed with, even as we embrace modernity," he said during an event organized by the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) at its headquarters here.
Talking about the smart city initiative further, he said the focus would be to build global educational and health institutes and entertainment facilities.
“We also want to liberalize the industrial estate policy. An industrial space may not necessarily contain factories, but showrooms also. A committee will be formed to look into this issue as well," the minister said.
DDA’s vice-chairman Balvinder Kumar in a media briefing on Friday had outlined the plans for the smart city in the Capital. The smart city will be a complete sub-city, which would be located in an area of 20-24 hectares, zoned out of Dwarka, Rohini and Narela, and will be equipped with latest technologies and waste-management techniques. PTIRate this Commentary Sending User Review 5 ( 2 votes)
Betrayal
Commentary by Anne G
I am a registered Republican and have been for 45 years. Although I am in a territory and will not be able to vote in the Primary or the General Election, I am watching this election cycle with growing anxiety.
I must admit I am shocked and extremely disheartened by the modus oprerandi of the RNC/GOP/Republican Party in every aspect. From my perspective, the establishment is committing party suicide and will be directly responsible for the advent of a third party and the eventual demise of the Republican Party as we know it.
Is the GOP "Cutting off it's nose to spite it's face?"
It is alienating a great portion of Republicans who will eventually flee the party all because it does not want Trump. An individual that the GOP strang along from the very beginning only to want to shut him down at the eleventh hour. Th RNC has been wrong, wrong, wrong and not, so very smart. It is blatantly disregarding the will of the Republican electorate by threatening to go to a contested convention. The consequences of this move can bring dire consequences.
Where is the vision of the GOP?
There were so many qualified candidates the RNC could have encouraged from the onset that would have been much more desirable. For example, Michele Bachman. A woman, Tea Party conservative, polished, and political maverick. Respected, eloquent, soft spoken, assertive, etc.. More than qualified to take on Hillary Clinton and even more so, Bernie Sanders. It is clear the United States of America is ready to elect a woman to the Presidency and who better than another woman to challenge the preferred Democratic candidate.
The RNC is willing to destroy the GOP in order to maintain the status quo. The party of Abraham Lincoln has become indifferent to the will of it's constituents.
Listen closely to the discontent within the ranks of the people. The same people that gave the Party the House and the Senate, and what did they do? Absolutely nothing!
One would have to be blind, deaf and dumb not to realize the magnitude of the deception underfoot and that, we are not.
I beseech the powers that be within the Republican Party to listen to "The People" for if their words are not heeded the GOP's days are numbered.
Humility over hubris is demanded. Sense and sensibility, imperative.Real Madrid president Florentino Perez has ruled out a deal for David De Gea in January and suggested he expects the goalkeeper to sign a new contract at Manchester United.
Real were close to signing De Gea last month in a transfer that would have seen Keylor Navas move in the opposite direction, but the clubs were unable to complete the deal before the end of the transfer deadline on Aug. 31.
However, Perez said there was no prospect of Los Blancos making a move for De Gea in January, when the Spain international would be ineligible for Real in the knockout stages of the Champions League if he plays for his current side in the group stage.
"We will certainly not sign De Gea in January," Perez told Spanish radio station Cadena Cope.
Real were reported to have agreed to pay around €30 million to sign De Gea, despite the goalkeeper having entered the final year of his United contract.
Asked why his club were willing to pay so much for a player who would be eligible to move on a free transfer next summer, Perez replied: "They don't become free.
"The great players are never free. The ones that arrive for free and that are available are mediocre players."
Perez also said Real, who have Navas, summer signing Kiko Casilla and Ruben Yanez on the books, were not currently thinking about signing De Gea next year.
"Right now, we don't contemplate this," he said. "We have three magnificent goalkeepers."
Marca reported in July that Real had agreed to pay De Gea €5m if they failed to sign him this summer in a bid to stop the 24-year-old from signing a contract extension with United, but Perez said: "We have not told him not to renew."
Spain coach Vicente del Bosque has told De Gea it will be difficult to select him at Euro 2016 if he is not first choice with his club, and AS recently claimed the keeper was planning to sign a new deal at Old Trafford.
Perez suggested that De Gea would agree an extension, saying: "It's difficult that a player will remain a year without playing. De Gea has to do what is best for his career.
"I have not spoken to him, not now and not on the 31st [transfer deadline day]. [Real general director] Jose Angel Sanchez did."
Perez had previously blamed United's inexperience for the failure to sign De Gea and he added: "He, through his agent [Jorge Mendes], preferred not to renew and to come to Spain.
"We had to make an effort in order for the player not to feel abandoned. They [United] tried until the end to renew his deal and only decided to sell him 12 hours before [the transfer deadline].
"We had a commitment towards him, they [United] told us the cost [of the transfer] 12 hours before [the deadline] and the rest we've already spoken about.
"We did our job as best we could. We didn't get there on time because Manchester did not have the necessary experience to undertake these things on the final day, as was the case with Fabio Coentrao."
Coentrao came close to joining United on loan from Real in the summer of 2013 but the deal fell through on transfer deadline day.
United had also been keen to sign Real defender Sergio Ramos this summer but the Spain international, who was reported to have been angry with the club, eventually committed to a contract extension until 2020.
However, Perez said Real did not receive any offers for either Ramos or reported Arsenal target Karim Benzema this summer.
"There were interests," he said. "United asked two or three times for Ramos but it was impossible that he would leave.
"The possibility that Ramos would leave was zero. He never wanted to leave Real and the club knew that Ramos would never leave. It took us five minutes to reach a deal."
United were also strongly linked with Bale this summer, but his agent said this week that the Wales international was "nowhere near" a move, and Perez said: "Bale wants to win at Madrid and he has a lot of faith."So, you are invited to a dinner by extraterrestrial hosts. Do you accept the invitation? And if so, which foods and beverages would be safe to eat? And, could you actually live long term on ET food? Or the other way around, if you have an ET guest, what food could you safely serve for them to eat?
First, it's not likely that you would enjoy a dinner served in a sauce of liquid nitrogen or liquid methane :). So, let's assume that they are organic carbon based lifeforms from an Earth-like world or at least an environment with Earth type temperatures and conditions (including perhaps living in oceans of icy moons).
Also, some microbes are able to make use of just about any organics. Some indeed can manage just fine on CO 2, some minerals and sunlight - any ETs like that would be easy creatures to satisfy at dinner time :). But humans need more than that. Let's assume they are reasonably similar to Earth life. That they survive by eating other plants or animals or whatever the equivalent is on their planet, are not "prime producers".
Is this food tasty and nutritious. Or is it poisonous? Or tasteless and inedible, like trying to eat sand, goes through your body and is rejected?
(You can get this article as a kindle ebook)
This improves the situation a lot, and is not impossible. For instance if your host or guest comes from the oceans of Europa or Enceladus (we don't know enough yet to rule out the possibility of a non technological civilization in those oceans) - there is a small possibility of a shared origin, life exchanged in the early solar system.
Or if the theory that Earth originated around an earlier star turns out to be true, and you find another planet seeded by the same star, again you could have a common origin with your host or guest.
And then - for now, let's suppose that multicellular life developed in the same way in both planets - I'm not sure how you can assign a probability to that, but just let's suppose it does.
Then again, if your host is a herbivore, or has a specialist diet, or both, e.g. a koala bear who loves eucalyptus leaves and little else, or a giant panda, sloth or elephant, you'd be limited in what you can share with them.
Giant panda eating bamboo
Koala bear eating Eucalyptus
So, it would help if you are both not too specialized in your eating habits. A fructivore would be okay, since humans do quite well on a diet of just fruit at least if you don't do it for too long or mix in a few other things in your diet.
And your host may offer you some rocks on the side, to eat to help digest your food, but I imagine you could politely decline the offer :).
Gastroliths from Jurassic period dinosaurs. If your host is a bird or frog, or some such, it might well offer you some rocks on the side.
So if they are fructarian or omnivorous, or carnivores, their food could potentially be nutritious to us. But just like many Earth life, and more so, it could also be harmful.
For instance, it could cause an allergic reaction Allergy causes. Or indeed, many Earth berries are food for some animals but poisonous for humans. E.g. "deadly nightshade" or wisteria seeds.
The flowers of Atropa belladonna - photo by Tom Oates at wikipedia pheasants, thrushes and blackcaps have been seen to eat their berries
also known as deadly nightshade. Its sweet tasting berries are poisonous to humans and many animals. However,
Berries of bittersweet, or woody nightshade. Also poisonous to humans, though bitter to the taste.
Even if your host is as closely related to us as a pheasant or a blackcap, the food they eat may still be deadly for us.
If your host is gobbling down some tasty berries or seeds, even if they are an Earth species, actually evolved here on the Earth, doesn't at all mean it is safe to eat for you. Even on the Earth if, say, a parrot is gobbling down tasty seeds, it doesn't mean they won't kill you. 11 Toxic Wild Plants That Look Like Food
And the other way around, there are many foods that are edible by humans but poisonous to other animals and birds. See for instance this list of common foods that you shouldn't feed to a grey parrot, including chocolate, nutmeg, and avocado, so you'd need to take care what you offer your ET guest also.
So you'd need to take a great deal of care about what you eat. But you may be able to survive on some of the same food (the later your common ancestor with them, the better).
Unless, that is, you are both results of seeding by the extraordinarily advanced Star Trek Ancient humanoids :).
Some of this food could easily be toxic to humans, or vice versa, even if we are all biologically closely related. In the Star Trek universe then they have an underlying hypothesis that all the planets with the various humanoids on them were seeded by the Ancient humanoids, so it's reasonable that they all use the same amino acids as Earth life. That could also be the situation if the ETs and us have a common shared microbial ancestor, e.g. all our planets seeded by life around earlier stars that pass through the forming nebulae.
In Star Trek they go one step further (rather improbably) that the humanoids are so closely related they can actually interbreed (again a result of the amazing mastery of the processes of evolution of the ancient hominids, able to seed the worlds with just the right organisms to ensure that hominids would co-evolve on all these worlds pretty much simultaneously several billion years later), which would suggest that they can eat just about anything we can. Still, even then, they need to take some care. Humans vary a fair bit in their tolerance to foods and in allergic reactions that can be deadly. A Thanksgiving Look At Great Meals In Star Trek History
IF YOU ARE INDEPENDENTLY EVOLVED - WHY THEIR PROTEINS MAY NOT BE NUTIRITOUS FOR HUMANS
Humans need amino acids to stay healthy. When we digest food, any proteins are broken down first into polypeptides, then peptides, then into their component amino acids. Protein Digestion and Absorption Process - Video&Lesson Transcript | Study.com
So, it seems that what matters are what the amino acids are in the food. There are nine essential amino acids that humans need in their food. Essential amino acid
There are an estimated around 4,000 possible biologically reasonable amino acids in one computer search. Alien Life Could Use Endless Array of Building Blocks. And many of them occur in nature. Out of those, life uses 20 (or 21 or 23 depending how you count them) (Amino acid). Of course many of those won't occur in nature - but Earth life also uses some amino acids that don't occur naturally either. Also other searches might change or refine those numbers.
It's clear that there are many more amino acids than those used by life. For instance, 52 amino acids have been identified in the Murchison meteorite. Amino acids in meteorites.
So, the food is likely to be missing essential amino acids. It's also likely to include extra amino acids that our body is not used to.
And then, the amino acids are asymmetrical, and any of those amino acids can be in either its left or right form to build the proteins. We can only use it in its "left hand" form.
OTHER ESSENTIAL NUTRIENTS
Humans also have many other essential nutrients e.g. vitamins, that have to be in our food or eventually we'll die. Essential nutrient
Their equivalent of our vitamins, for instance, instead of being health giving, may be Antimetabolites for us - drugs that interfere with the normal functioning of the cell.
And vice versa, our vitamins might interfere with their metabolism equally.
And the trace elements we need might some of them be deadly to them and vice versa.
IF IT IS NOT RELATED TO EARTH LIFE
So, unless related to us, it's not going to be able to give us all the amino acids and vitamins and other essential nutrients we need to survive, bar an extraordinary coincidence.
Barring an extraordinary coincidence, it wouldn't have toxins that are targeted at humans or animals specifically. But there are many things that are poisonous for us, so it doesn't need to specifically target vulnerabilities in humans to do that.
For instance, maybe your ET just loves to eat hydrogen cyanide, or arsenic, or perchlorates. These are delicacies for them, but deadly to us.
COULD BE TASTY HOWEVER
Apart from that - well it could be tasty even if not actually nutritious. And it could have carbohydrates to give you energy.
SWEETENERS
Sugars seem quite possible.
Glucose, the form of sugar you have in fruit juice,
Seems reasonably possible they'd have something like that, simple carbohydrates that we may be able to eat
|
. Thought the joint therapeutic program run by the tribe and the Alaska Court System has been up and running since January, the program had its debut to the public Friday in Old Town Kenai. (Megan Pacer/Peninsula Clarion)Xiaomi has been knocked from the top of China's smartphone market by Huawei, according to new research, a setback for a company that was often feted as “the Apple of China.”
Research company Canalys called it a "remarkable feat" by Huawei, best known outside China for its network equipment, and one that puts Xiaomi under tremendous pressure to maintain its growth rate elsewhere in the world.
Xiaomi caught the world’s attention two years ago when it hired Hugo Barra, a former Google executive who managed the development of Android, to help it expand overseas.
Xiaomi was out-selling Apple in China at the time, and it built a cult-like following selling smartphones with high-end features at low prices.
But China’s smartphone market has matured, and local players like Huawei and ZTE, anther network vendor that once sold low-end handsets, have been moving up the food chain.
It’s the first time Huawei has led China's smartphone market. It’s shipments grew 81 percent year over year, Canalys said, while Xiaomi’s declined.
Huawei has won praise for a few new smartphones this year, including the P8 and the Mate S.
The research firm didn’t release its full market share figures, including where Apple stands in China; it said it would release its full report later this month.
China is the world’s biggest smartphone market — almost 100 million phones shipped there in the first quarter — but its growth started to slow this year for the first time in six years.
Xiaomi has often drawn comparisons to Apple, but not always in a good way. At a product launch last year, it was widely knocked for aping Apple’s marketing with a slide that read “One more thing…”
It has set itself a goal to sell 80 million phones worldwide this year. In September it said it was confident it would still reach that goal, after selling slightly less than 35 million handsets in the first half.A team from IBM is in Rochester to develop a plan to fight poverty.
Rochester was one of 16 cities chosen to participate in the IBM Smarter Cities Challenge.
It brings top experts from the technology company here for the next three weeks to develop strategies to tackle what Mayor Lovely Warren calls Rochester's greatest challenge -- poverty.
"Poverty is Rochester's most pressing challenge, and to be frank, poverty is Rochester's greatest shame."
The IBM team is led by Rochester native Martin Laird.
He says their strategy starts with getting to know all the key leaders driving the Rochester-Monroe Anti-Poverty Initiative.
"Then we'll start shaping a problem statement, be sure we understand what the opportunity is and what we're being asked to do, then we'll validate that with all the different knowledge holders. Then we'll share those recommendations with the mayor and the leadership team on how they can advance forward and make more progress."
The IBM team will work with local leaders and the Rochester-Monroe Anti-Poverty Initiative on strategies
Director Leonard Brock says they look forward to working with IBM to formulate a path forward to a more connected community.Storytelling is not what it used to be. There is a feeling that this art form falling into mediocrity. TV shows rarely strive for excellence. The success of a movie is based on it's box office draws rather than classic characters and narrative of the past. The book industry is all but dead. People roll their eyes at poetry. Of course there are exceptions to the rule, but in general the storytelling trade is on a downward spiral. Through my experiences, theatre has been near the forefront in evolving storytelling for a while now in an attempt to stop being engulfed by the film industry.
Please note that this is entirely based on my opinion of the arts, if you disagree, I'd love to hear your thoughts. I do (despite popular belief) love the arts and want the arts to succeed, and one of the steps towards the future success of the creative arts is to start a critical dialogue about the state of storytelling in our culture today.
This is how I see the future of storytelling. This is how I want to tell stories, and how I see text-based works evolving over future generations.
The first thing to acknowledge is that everything has been done before. Every story ever told falls into either one (or a number of) of Christopher Booker's Seven Basic Plot Points, or nonsense. That is not to say that these methods of storytelling are obsolete, rather that we need to take these storytelling devices and make them new. We should embrace the stories told in the past, acknowledge them, and bring them into the future.
I want to talk about two forms of storytelling that excite me, both as an artist and audience member. These styles bring us in to the future, introducing a third dimension to the storytelling experience. Most storytelling that I see is very two dimensional, creating a relationship between artist and audience, however the future of storytelling in my eyes is a conversation between 3 bodies.
Artist – Audience – Author
This is a style of storytelling which I am very excited about, and where I personally see my practice (as a writer and director) heading. The basic dynamic of the artist telling the authors story to the audience is starting to fall on deaf ears. The “new” style I see emerging is where the author has a much more active role in the presentation of the story. There is a second presentational medium, in which the author also provides commentary on the story. People may disagree with this, but complex storylines are on the way out (with a couple of obvious exceptions). What I see coming into the common theatrical vernacular is the telling of more generic, basic stories, with the artist/author's observations being the major dialogue communicated with the audience.
This is a little unusual to the average theatre/movie/television audience member, however I am seeing a trend towards character driven plots serving as a structure for a personal narration of either a critical or reflective nature. A prime example of this appears in the works of American screenwriter Max Landis. His short films, most notably The Death and Return of Superman take a generic, pre-developed, character driven plot, underwritten by personal narration and a mass media influenced approach of viral marketing. In The Death and Return of Superman, Landis plays the role of narrator, telling the story of DC Comics' infamous The Death of Superman edition, whilst action is depicted in a buffon-esque parody styling of viral video fame, all while Landis provides his own personal criticism, analysis and opinion.I argued on Monday that Vice President Joe Biden did not intend, by his remarks on Sunday, to give Israel a US go-ahead to bomb Iran.
The fall-out from such an attack on US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan would be dire, which is one reason I’m quite sure Obama does not want such a thing.
In an interview on CNN, President Obama on Tuesday clarified his stance on Iran and also denied that Vice President Biden’s remarks on ABC on Sunday were intended to give Israel a green light to bomb Iran:
‘ Obama was asked on CNN this morning, “Are you giving Israel a green light?” “Absolutely not,” the president replied. “And I think it’s very important that I’m as clear as I can be, and our administration is as consistent as we can be on this issue.” “I think Vice President Biden stated a categorical fact which is we can’t dictate to other countries what their security interests are,” Obama added. “What is also true is that it is the policy of the United States to try to resolve the issue of Iran’s nuclear capabilities in a peaceful way through diplomatic channels. That is our policy, I have been talking about this for the last two years, we are going to continue to pursue this, and you know we have said directly to the Israelis that it is important to try and solve this in an international setting in a way that does not create major conflict in the Middle East. “Now this is a tough job and nobody is under any illusions that it will be easy, and I’ve always said that we, the United States, preserve the right, and I as the commander in chief preserve the right to take whatever actions are necessary to protect the United States. But we are committed to a peaceful resolution to this conflict and I think it is still possible, but ultimately if we present an opportunity to the Iranians at some point, they’ve got to seize that opportunity.” ‘
The CNN report is here with video.
End/ (Not Continued)President Trump’s executive order on immigration could worsen the shortage of doctors in the United States, warns the Association of American Medical Colleges.
“We are deeply concerned that the Jan. 27 executive order will disrupt education and research and have a damaging long-term impact on patients and health care,” AAMC President and CEO Darrell G. Kirch said in a statement Monday.
“The AAMC strives to ensure medical education and training is accessible for students and physicians from all backgrounds.”
Trump signed an executive order on Friday barring Syrian refugees from the U.S. indefinitely and halting the resettlement of all refugees for four months as the administration reviews the vetting process.
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The order also denies entry for 90 days for all visa-holders from Syria and six other predominantly Muslim countries: Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Libya and Yemen.
Kirch said international graduates play an “important role” in U.S. healthcare, making up about 25 percent of the workforce.
According to Forbes, 260 people have applied for medical residency from the seven countries impacted by Trump’s order.
Kirch further warned that impeding U.S. immigration pathways “jeopardizes critical access to high-quality physician care for our nation’s most vulnerable populations.”
“Our ability to attract top talent from around the world also enriches the research laboratories at medical schools and teaching hospitals that are working toward cures and has helped position the U.S. as a global leader in medical research, strengthening our economy and bolstering the public's health,” Kirch said.
“The AAMC is committed to a workforce that serves all patients and urges the administration to carefully consider the health care needs of the nation.”
American Hospital Association President Rick Pollack said he is concerned that, without modification, Trump's executive order could adversely impact patient care, education and research.
"We are hopeful that the Administration will find solutions to preserve patient access to medical and nursing expertise from across the globe, ensuring care is not disrupted," he said.
"Hospitals and the patients we serve often rely on international collaboration among clinicians to advance care, and an efficient visa program is essential to their success. We rely on a diverse workforce to deliver the care patients and families need. We will work with the Administration to come to a solution that patients can continue to rely on for their care."DOE and NASA Demonstrate Fission Reactor Prototype
Press Release From: Glenn Research Center
Posted: Monday, November 26, 2012
A team of researchers, including engineers from Los Alamos National Laboratory, has demonstrated a new concept for a reliable nuclear reactor that could be used on space flights.
The research team recently demonstrated the first use of a heat pipe to cool a small nuclear reactor and power a Stirling engine at the Nevada National Security Site's Device Assembly Facility near Las Vegas. The Demonstration Using Flattop Fissions (DUFF) experiment produced 24 watts of electricity. A team of engineers from Los Alamos, the NASA Glenn Research Center and National Security Technologies LLC (NSTec) conducted the experiment.
Heat pipe technology was invented at Los Alamos in 1963. A heat pipe is a sealed tube with an internal fluid that can efficiently transfer heat produced by a reactor with no moving parts. A Stirling engine is a relatively simple closed-loop engine that converts heat energy into electrical power using a pressurized gas to move a piston. Using the two devices in tandem allowed for creation of a simple, reliable electric power supply that can be adapted for space applications.
Researchers configured DUFF on an existing experiment, known as Flattop, to allow for a water-based heat pipe to extract heat from uranium. Heat from the fission reaction was transferred to a pair of free-piston Stirling engines manufactured by Sunpower Inc., based in Athens Ohio. Engineers from NASA Glenn designed and built the heat pipe and Stirling assembly and operated the engines during the experiment. Los Alamos nuclear engineers operated the Flattop assembly under authorization from the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).
DUFF is the first demonstration of a space nuclear reactor system to produce electricity in the United States since 1965, and the experiment confirms basic nuclear reactor physics and heat transfer for a simple, reliable space power system.
"The nuclear characteristics and thermal power level of the experiment are remarkably similar to our space reactor flight concept," said Los Alamos engineer David Poston. "The biggest difference between DUFF and a possible flight system is that the Stirling input temperature would need to be hotter to attain the required efficiency and power output needed for space missions."
"The heat pipe and Stirling engine used in this test are meant to represent one module that could be used in a space system," said Marc Gibson of NASA Glenn. "A flight system might use several modules to produce approximately one kilowatt of electricity."
Current space missions typically use power supplies that generate about the same amount of electricity as one or two household light bulbs. The availability of more power could potentially boost the speed with which mission data is transmitted back to Earth, or increase the number of instruments that could be operated at the same time aboard a spacecraft.
"A small, simple, lightweight fission power system could lead to a new and enhanced capability for space science and exploration", said Los Alamos project lead Patrick McClure. "We hope that this proof of concept will soon move us from the old-frontier of Nevada to the new-frontier of outer space".
Los Alamos research on the project was made possible through Los Alamos's Laboratory-Directed Research and Development Program (LDRD), which is funded by a small percentage of the Laboratory's overall budget to invest in new or cutting-edge research. NASA Glenn and NSTec also used internal support to fund their contributions to the experiment.
"Perhaps one of the more important aspects of this experiment is that it was taken from concept to completion in 6 months for less than a million dollars," said Los Alamos engineer David Dixon. "We wanted to show that with a tightly-knit and focused team, it is possible to successfully perform practical reactor testing."
// end //
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Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.50 best VR games finally looking good now. We have good choices to begin our adventure in fantasy worlds with Oculus Rift, PlayStation VR or HTC Vive. As well, with some more affordable gadgets like Samsung Gear VR and Google’s Cardboard and its successor Daydream. And more, we have a huge selection of games to support these platforms.
Serious Sam VR: The Last Hope
(Multiplatform: HTC Vive, Oculus Rift)
Are you ready to taste the long-forgotten feelings from everybody’s favorite game Serious Sam? And then imagine that these feelings will be twice as strong. Sounds good, isn’t it? So, now you have such a possibility.
Serious Sam VR is a proud representative of the series. It has everything you would expect from it: big guns, hordes of evil enemies, intensive shooting, crazy humor. Well, the biggest difference – now it happens in VR! Sam is having another meeting with his arch-nemesis Mental and his legions.
Fans will notice that all key features from the original series are in place – blood, flesh, bone, explosions. Plus, now you can shoot enemies Macedonian style with two guns. You cannot expect series immersion from this goofy style arcade shooter, but in terms of fun, it is one step ahead of the competition in its niche.
The feedback is already very positive. The developers promise to add more content to the upcoming game: new guns, new types of enemies, and new locations. The full change log for the latest update is available on Steam forums, here.
Get Serious Sam VR: The Last Hope
The Lab
(Multiplatform: Vive, Oculus)
The game that has already become a classic of the genre. The Lab consists of various best mobile VR games with story for you to choose from. Although they might look simple, they are addictive as hell. This is why even VR veterans will find something interesting to do here. That’s why we recommend this games as an introduction to the world of Virtual Reality.
As well, mini virtual reality games in The Lab are in the form of 12 individual experiments you’re able to perform with HTC Vive. Some experiments are nothing more than visual demonstrations with passive gameplay. And, the purpose is to help newcomers and kids to orient in virtual environments.
For those who strive for a challenge, there are more difficult scenarios with active physical activity. Bow shooting, for example. It combines the gaming aspect with real training. If you prefer something less intensive, you might participate in the experiment with a robot dog. You will be able to play with him a simple «throw-a-stick» game.
The Lab on Steam
Everest VR gaming experience
(HTC Vive exclusive)
Ever dreamed about conquering Mount Everest? Now it is possible with new virtual reality game Everest. This exclusive project is a unique climbing simulator from Oculus Rift platform.
This game is built on Unreal Engine 4 which allows drawing visually stunning scenic routes. As a result, Everest VR is just like a short movie with you as the main actor. You can walk around, interact with different objects, or just admire the photo-realistic graphics.
It is not an ordinary title but an interactive experience. Finally, it allows traveling to incredibly realistic location in the world.
Everest VR experience on Steam
Lightblade VR
(HTC Vive exclusive)
This is what millions Star Wars fans across the globe have been waiting for years. In Lightblade VR your dream of becoming a Jedi swordmaster comes true! Upon arrival, you will get your personal robot instructor that will guide you through basics and introduce various training routines. For more experienced Jedi there is also a series of more difficult challenges to choose from.
Among VR games for Android, Lightblade VR is a real equivalent to sports activities as it requires good coordination, dexterity, and situational awareness. After spending 15 minutes in you will probably feel the tension in your body and hands. Less experienced players can just limit their gaming session in order to adapt to the game. Without any doubt, it makes Lightblade VR a perfect choice for beginners and pro-VR players as well.
In addition to that, Lightblade VR has incredible graphics, cool ambient audio during fights, clear, user-friendly interface. Furthermore, this game also has a progress system which rewards dedicated players with new items (e.g., different lightsaber hilts, additional colors, etc.).
Lightblade VR on Steam
The Solus Project
(Multiplatform: Vive, Oculus)
Fans of exploration games will get ecstatic with this one of the most popular VR game. The Solus Project challenges you to survive on wild ruins of unknown civilization. Perhaps, this is the most unusual attempt to recreate a hybrid survival gameplay.
As well, The Solus Project is notable for its mystical atmosphere and colorful visual aesthetics. Without any doubt, they completely change your perception of the virtual reality games, and Android VR games in particular.
Get the Solus Project for your platform
Apollo 11 VR game
(Multiplatform: Vive, Oculus, PS VR)
A truly unique project as its main goal is purely educational. The developer of Apollo 11 VR wanted to tell the story about one of the greatest achievements of humanity to date. Furthermore, with this project they want to inspire the next generation for new achievements in space. For this reason, the game is free for students.
Also, immersive VR Education company managed to create a game which carefully replicates the events of that flight. Now anybody can become one of those astronauts who made the history. The game provides you with the opportunity to enjoy the fantastic scenery from open space. As well, interact with other people on board, and perform the memorable landing on the Moon.
Apollo 11 VR game on Steam
Raw Data
(HTC Vive Exclusive)
Perhaps one the best VR titles to date; at least in action games category. Raw Data was developed from the scratch specifically for virtual reality gaming. All your actions and gameplay features are intuitive, so adaptation before the fight does not take long.
After picking one of two playable characters you are immediately thrown into battle against the robotic threat of all kinds: agile ninja swordsmen, heavy armored infantry, flying drones, etc. Your survival completely depends on your personal skills and your arsenal: pistols, futuristic shotguns, and even old-school katana! In order to overcome the onslaught of enemies you will have to rely on your agility, swift reflexes, and your partner as this games also has a duo co-op mode.
Raw Data delivers a full package of active VR combat, unique heroes with their own special abilities, and different modes to choose from. No wonder why the rating of approval for this game on Steam is so high.
Get Raw Data on Steam
Pool Nation VR
(HTC Vive exclusive)
Sometimes, you just don’t want to leave the house but still want to hang out with your pals. Pool Nation VR is made for situations like that. This online billiards simulator for VR headsets has the realistic atmosphere of your local bar.
Throwable chairs, stools, and bottles are also at your disposal. As it is an essential part of any bar visiting experience. The whole establishment is your playground, and you aren’t limited to just playing pool. So, you can even switch and play a few darts rounds or air hockey for a change.
As well, Pool Nation VR offers several billiards game modes, personal customization with loot drops, options to play against real opponents. Extremely fun and smooth VR experience.
Pool Nation VR game for your platform
Arizona Sunshine
(Multiplatform: HTC Vive, Oculus Rift)
A zombie-themed first-person virtual reality shooting games with survival elements. Apart from stunning graphics Arizona Sunshine also features a physics engine which was developed by Vertigo Games specifically for this project. Each zombie hit or strike feels realistic and does not follow simplistic patterns of 4 or 5 attack types that we often see in other games.
Players can use a wide range of firearms, but for those who prefer close quarters combat, there are also a lot of melee weapons. Arizona Sunshine was originally developed for HTC Vive and its motion controllers which allow creating realistic aiming, shooting, and reloading close enough to real life. But with the announce of the Touch controllers for Oculus Rift it has become a multi-platform game.
Arizona Sunshine on Steam
Hover Junkers
(HTC Vive Exclusive)
In Hover Junkers, you get to pilot your own ship which is going to be your private area. Now, your ship is based on the size of your room! It can be modified with scrap to be more like a flying fortress. Otherwise, you won’t last long in this crazy world against other players.
So prepare to shoot and avoid been hit just like in the real world. In Hover Junkers, you have to evade projectiles by ducking physically. There is no magic button to do it for you. The game is extremely intense but you enough time to rest between matches as they are limited to 10 minutes.
Although Hover Junkers mostly focus on multiplayer battles it also has a single campaign nevertheless. So it is a good thing to have in case you just want to relax and shoot some bots. Incredibly fun, fast-paced, and cool looking game. A «must play» for all HTC Vive users.
Get Hover Junkers for your platform
Fantastic Contraption
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(Multiplatform: HTC Vive, Oculus Rift)
Imagine a virtual reality sandbox with unlimited construction options where you can create practically anything. Colossal cruise ships, jets, cars – you name it! That would be Fantastic Contraption VR.
Finally, your main goal in this game is to deliver a small pink ball. You have an unlimited amount of spinning wheels and stretchable sticks at your disposal to get the job done. Do whatever your mind comes up with and use your fantasy. There are no wrong or flawed solutions!
The process of insane engineering is extremely entertaining, especially if you can make them work together using basic physics principles. Finally, the last part might be a little be challenging at first, but you will get used to it.
Fantastic Contraption in one click
Space Pirate Trainer VR
(Multiplatform: HTC Vive, Oculus Rift)
Space Pirate Trainer might seem too simple and dull at first glance but, after diving deeper into the process, you will understand that it requires total concentration to play. You have two laser guns and two shields to protect yourself from invaders, so use them wisely.
The defending area looks like the rooftop of a skyscraper with glowing city light can be seen in the background. There is a giant holographic board with statistics and other vital information in front of you, and a spaceship behind. You are here with a gun in each hand to stop invaders from destroying the ship.
Your weapons have several firing modes each suitable for a different scenario: single shot, triple shot, laser, and continuous firing. In order to succeed, you have to find a perfect balance between defense and attack. With every wave of enemies, the game gets harder. The harder it gets, the more points you receive. The gameplay gets increasingly intensive and becomes more like a sports training.
Space Pirate Trainer VR for your platform
Elite: Dangerous
(Multiplatform: HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Open Source VR)
This game is all about space traveling and exploration. The whole milky way is your playground, but you have to start from small beginnings. So at the beginning of your exploration career, you will get a small spaceship and limited options. But after completing missions you will get access to advanced skills.
Surely, more than 400 billion star systems are waiting for you in Elite: Dangerous. Become famous, become Elite, and make your mark in the history book. No doubt, this is your main purpose in this world. The virtual environment in Elite: Dangerous is exceedingly realistic: every star, planet, satellite, or asteroid can be seen clearly and in detail.
Apart from unprecedented space immersion Elite: Dangerous can also get your attention with the thoughtful and intricate story. This adventure game will surely engage your brain into the process.
Elite: Dangerous on Steam
Surgeon Simulator
(Multiplatform: HTC Vive, Oculus Rift)
Some games receive a second life in Virtual Reality when it would seem their lifespan is over. Surgeon Simulator is one of those «resurrected» games. Just like in the traditional Surgeon Simulator you get to perform various surgical operations.
Good old heart and brain transplants, teeth removal, eye surgery, double kidney transplantation are waiting for your incompetent hands and dark sense of humor. Originally Surgeon Simulator was an Oculus Rift exclusive, but a special Surgeon Simulator VR: Meet the Medic for HTC Vive was developed later on.
Get Surgeon Simulator on Steam
Tilt Brush
(HTC Vive exclusive)
A 3D painting tool turned into the game project in Virtual Reality. Now you can walk and view your creations from any angle. It can be barely called a «game» in the conventional sense, but we could not ignore or did not mention this title here.
With Tilt Brush, you can let your fantasy flow. This program creates amazing things in virtual reality. Even more you can draw animated characters, build constructions, house, furnish them with stuff. There are so many options, colors, types of brushes in this game.
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As well HTC Vive gives you two controllers to work with Tilt Brush: one of them turns into a universal palette for color selection, brush selection, etc. while the second one becomes your actual painting brush. Also you are free to draw as a solid color or use animated paint as well.
New perspective with Tilt Brush
Job Simulator
(Multiplatform: HTC Vive, Oculus Rift)
Various serious (and weird as well) job simulators are popular these days. Their goal was to create a game about professional routines that are far from hard working romantics. Office clerk, chef of the roadside diner, shop salesman, mechanic – that it is something you desired.
This is what makes Job Simulator an original product. In addition to that, a person playing Job Simulator in VR looks funny as hell. He waves his arms, twists, bends, and turns – it seems that the helmet on the head completely blocks you from reality.
But no matter what is going on outside of your playing space, the role of the virtual worker does not become less fun. Well, it might not be as fun as virtual sex, though you can throw donuts into robots and entertain yourself in a dozen different ways.
Job Simulator for your platform
Lucky’s Tale
(Oculus Rift exclusive)
Lucky’s Tale has everything you would expect from a classic platform: bright and friendly locations, tons of traps along the way, boss fights, and even play mini-games. Except all of this is happening in VR! The gameplay is so engaging and captivating so even old-school conservators start to believe in the VR technology.
Most VR games use the first-person view for achieving a better sense of immersion, but some titles go for the third-person view. Lucky’s Tale is one of those few and feels just right. You watch after you little furry friend from above as you’re navigating him around the obstacles. It is exactly the breath of fresh air that VR gaming needs so desperately in order to get attention from masses.
Get Lucky’s Tale right now
Final Approach
(Multiplatform: HTC Vive, Oculus Rift)
Final Approach surely makes it to the list of the unique virtual reality experiences. This is what you get after combining a strategy with a flying simulator. Airports and cities are your main point of interest as you take the role of the air control operator.
Some cool options like manual zooming for better vision during landing sequences were also introduced in this reimagine of the title. Final Approach has four large gaming zones and counts more than six hours of gameplay.
Final Approach on Steam store
Audioshield
(HTC Vive exclusive)
Audioshield arms you with two shields of the different color. So, you block giant colorful bubbles as they fly towards you to the beat of the chosen song. That’s the point of the game. But don’t believe the simplicity in these words. Especially if were are talking about Audioshield.
Every song requires a huge amount of concentration to succeed. Furthermore, the game adapts to any melody you point at, plus it throws in some tracks from the large internet music collection licensed for the game. It is great when gameplay gets adaptive and adjusts to any music genre you prefer.
Audioshield is incredibly addictive with a ton of customization options like difficulty settings, different kinds of shields, and the ability to play your music of choice.
Get Audioshield for your platform
VR Soccer Header
(Multiplatform: HTC Vive, Oculus Rift)
VR Soccer Header from the Versatile studio is a real gift for all football and soccer fans. Special sound effect and Awesome Design which energize your real Soccer game experience. The real Graphical effect that encourages you to feel high-quality ball hitting effect which adds more fun and makes it very addictive. With Virtual Reality, you can able to create new relaxation experience like reality.
To play virtual reality football moves your VR headset to look up, down & around and make perfect soccer penalty kick to goal on your target. There are two modes to play, One is simple and the other is audience mode when you hit the target, Audience will appreciate your victory.
Feel Great virtual reality experience. No need of tutorial, text or buttons. Just use your head wear cardboard to shoot the ball towards the goal.
Get it on Google play or App store
Euro Truck Simulator 2
(Multiplatform: HTC Vive, Oculus Rift)
Euro Truck Simulator 2 is the closest you can get to this profession in games. Where else could you have a detailed, almost real multi-ton truck? But developers from SCS Software decide to improve the sense of immersion by bringing full virtual reality support into to the table.
Now you can fully immerse yourself in the process. A huge truck with unbelievably realistic cockpit and enjoying beautiful sceneries passing by. All key features like completing missions, delivering stuff, or looking around the cab and out of the window are here!
Euro truck Simulator for your platform
Eagle Flight VR
(Multiplatform: HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, PlayStation VR)
First made for VR developed by Ubisoft. Originally it was an Oculus Rift exclusive but right now it supports all three main VR headsets. It is a perfect choice for those who have never seen VR gaming before but experienced players will also find it interesting.
The game is very intuitive and easy to play. It has different option to go for: from free exploration for beginner to series of hardcore solo challenges. Furthermore, it has a multiplayer element attached to it which allows up to 6 people playing together.
In Eagle Flight, you get to see the future of Paris 50 years after the complete disappearance of mankind from the face of the Earth. You can explore the area becoming one of the eagles that inhabit this place. Fly above historic sites, race wide city streets, discover secret corners, and more!
Egle Flight for your platform
The Climb
(Oculus Rift exclusive)
Exclusive climbing adventure for Oculus Rift owners which offers gorgeous ultra-detailed scenery and immersive high adrenaline thrills.
The first prototype of the game was being developed for original Oculus Rift without Touch controls. For this particular reason, the developers of The Climb were challenged to create a universal control system that would allow looking around and using virtual hands by changing the position of the headset. It is really cool to see how your VR hand moves left or right when you turn your head.
With Oculus Touch controllers available now your climbing experience might become even more realistic. You will be able to hang on virtual ledges using hands in real life. Thus you will practically feel the gameplay.
Get The Climb VR right now
ADR1FT
(Multiplatform: HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Open source VR)
The easiest way to describe ADR1FT in one sentence is to say: it is a game version of the 2013th movie Gravity. It challenges you to survive in space. It is not a trivial task when you have to navigate in zero gravity with oxygen level fading fast. Did we mention that you will also have to solve various puzzles simultaneously throughout five different areas?
ADR1FT is a good choice for creating a top-notch photo-realistic graphics. The project proves this point amply: all basic models are well-made and look as good as real. Explosions, electric discharges, gas emissions seem quite natural. Even your body behaves as it should in zero gravity conditions – you feel every change of your position in space, every hit you take, overload causes understandable glitches in the system. All in all, it is a solid space experience.
ADR1FT for your platform
Toybox
(Oculus Rift exclusive)
It is hard to call Toybox a standalone game; it is rather a demonstration of the new Touch Controllers, but it still deserves mention on this list as it clearly indicates where Facebook is trying to reach with Oculus integration.
Toybox is their experiment about social interaction and cooperation in virtual environments. What would people do if they are presented with such opportunity? How are they going to play or interact? Will they? In Toybox, you can drive in zero gravity, light fireworks, use various gadgets, play games with your friend. Think of it as your private playground but in VR.
Get ToyBox for you
Medium
(Oculus Rift exclusive)
Just like Tilt Brush, this is technically not a game but still can be classified as a sculpting simulator. When Tilt Brush caters to painters, Medium goes for sculptors. The process of creation takes place in your virtual workshop where you have all the tools needed for molding, shaping, remastering, and coloring. Typically, you see this process on flat 2D screens, but now you finally have a chance to try the real-life sculpting.
It may seem that Medium is just a fun time around, but it has enough depth and options to become a professional instrument for content creators and designers. With the ability to export meshes of your creations into traditional programs for further tinkering it is possible that this project will become a platform for talented animators or game designers.
Get Medium for your platform
Holoball
(Multiplatform: HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, PlayStation VR)
HoloBall teleports the player into the arena which immediately reminds one of the most iconic video games of all times. What are you going to do there? Play the ball, of course!
Seriously, if you want to play a tennis-like game without any unnecessary things versus AI, look no further. Strap your controllers tightly around your wrist and prepare to do some heavy exercising in VR while trying to score the ball in the gates of your opponent. This game will surely frazzle you out.
Holoball on PlaystatiRon Store
Kingspray VR game
(Multiplatform: HTC Vive, Oculus Rift)
Become a “real” street artist with Kingspray graffiti simulator! You don’t have to worry about going to the edge of nowhere or having troubles with police as you sit and enjoy the game on your sofa.
There are tons of standard colors and ability to make custom ones. Choose nozzles, drips, or whatever you like when creating street masterpieces. Using hand controllers, you can precisely control your actions just like in the real world. To make it even more realistic and closer to streets the developers added options to choose the time of day and a boombox to listen to your favorite radio while painting!
Kingspray on Steam
VR Sports Challenge
(Oculus Rift exclusive)
A collection of sports disciplines to enjoy in VR which includes football, basketball, baseball, and ice hockey.
Guys from Sanzaru Games decided to remove the most annoying element in most VR titles – moving or rather say teleporting. It is a smart decision for active sports games where you would definitely miss half the fun trying to move your character to the desired position. Teleporting is entirely automatic so you can concentrate on passing the ball and scoring.
In the basketball, for example, player’s job is all about shooting jumpers, looking for open teammates, and trying to find spots for crowd-pleasing throws in slow motion. On the defending side, the number of options is limited to occasional blocking in the form of mini-game.
P.O.L.L.E.N.
(Oculus Rift exclusive)
P.O.L.L.E.N is the game where you have to rely on your brain activity to understand what’s going on. You’re playing as a space engineer assigned to fix problems with communication on the space station on Saturn’s moon, Titan. As soon as you arrive, a space storm hits the station. You survive only to find that the station is deserted and abandoned.
One of the key features of the game is your ability to switch between two timelines. In the first dimension, the station is clean, uninhabited, and well-lit. In the second one – dark, damaged, and empty. The protagonist does not get any weapons as there are no real enemies around except the environment. The gameplay is based on
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with them over a murder in October after which a case had been registered.
"We were sleeping when they poured petrol from the window. I smelt the petrol and tried to wake up my wife but by then the fire had started. They locked the door from outside. My children died in the fire...," said an inconsolable Jitender.
"They had threatened that they will finish my family, that I should never return to the village... I won't but please give me back my children," he said.
The incident has led to tension in the area and security has been tightened. Subhash Yadav, commissioner of police of Faridabad, reached the village and is monitoring the situation.
"Sunped resident Balwant and his son Dharm Singh are among 11 persons booked under IPC sections 302 (murder), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 324 (Voluntarily causing hurt by dangerous weapons or means), 148 (Rioting, armed with deadly weapon) and 149 (Every member of unlawful assembly guilty of offence committed in prosecution of common object).
"Two persons have been arrested," the police spokesman said.
An SC/ST Commission team met the victims' family and assured them that they will get justice.
PTI
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.As shocking as the revelations about the expense claims of British MPs are, they are only in the halfpenny place in comparison with the powers that Irish politicians have to extract money from the taxpayer.
As shocking as the revelations about the expense claims of British MPs are, they are only in the halfpenny place in comparison with the powers that Irish politicians have to extract money from the taxpayer.
As an example, a sitting councillor who is elected to Dail Eireann may appoint a family member to be his secretary, thereby gifting him/her a salary in the region of €40,000 a year.
The newly-elected TD may then also pass on his council seat to the same family member.
A councillor's salary, expenses and allowances package is on average worth €33,000 a year, so this, together with the secretarial salary of €40,000, gives a gross income in the region of €70,000.
This may all be gifted to a family member who has never received a single vote.
The financial package available to our part-time councillors is so valuable that if, at some point in the future, they fail to get re-elected to office, then they have to be compensated for the loss of future earnings.
TDs don't, of course, have to submit vouchers for expenses, we simply give them lump sums for whatever amounts they think they are worth.
Gearoid O Dubhain
Rochestown, Co CorkLike many people, I first encountered Maggie Siff on Mad Men as Jewish department store heiress Rachel Menken — one of only a few characters capable of somehow, somehow, turning down Donald Draper. (Seriously, how did she do it?) Siff’s aura was persistently stylish and cool, alerting viewers they were in the presence of a rising star.
At 44, the actress (who also starred in Sons of Anarchy) is experiencing a later-in-life career renaissance that includes a leading role on SHOWTIME's Billions and the independent feature length film, A Woman, A Part. We caught up with Siff to chat about the latter, and why she's glad she found career success at an older age.
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You filmed A Woman, A Part more than a year ago — before you'd even shot the first season of Billions. What's it like revisiting the film after all this time?
The funny thing about movies, as opposed to TV, is how long they take to make. We filmed this project over a year ago, and only now are people starting to see it. As an actor, though, I find that time... incredibly helpful. It’s so easy to focus on all the little things on set... and the first time you see a film is always totally horrific. But with a little space, you can let go and enjoy the project as a whole, even if it is a bit surreal to walk back into a character after all those months. It can even be pleasurable. [Laughs]
Your character in this film, Anna, is also the star of leading TV series — although she's been somewhat mistreated by the industry. What attracted you to the part?
To be honest, I didn’t have a lot in common with Anna. And at first, I found [the script] scary because it had a lot to say about my world... about Hollywood as a whole. [Director] Elizabeth Subrin had some not entirely flattering things to convey. I was curious, though, how intimate it might feel to explore my industry in this way — to explore the intricacies of ideas that are so close to me. It was a challenge, of course, but one that excited me.
It's true: Subrin's film has a lot to say about Hollywood. Could you relate to your character's frustrations, including the stagnation of a role she plays on a long running, hit TV show?
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There are moments when every actor asks, ‘Why am I doing this?’ You're constantly turning yourself inside out, and why? For the approval? For the high? I think it’s important actors ask themselves who and what they're doing this for... If you don’t know the answer, it can tear you apart.
Have there ever been moments when you've questioned your own decision to pursue acting?
You know, I don't think anyone has ever asked me that before... My darkest moments [in Hollywood] have always coincided with the darkest moments in my personal life. How I've gotten through them is by nurturing healthy relationships with people outside the industry, which can put a certain amount of ground beneath you. I have a family — an amazing husband and daughter — and when I leave work, I’m just another mom at the playground. Psycho-spiritually, my work takes up a much smaller percentage of my life n my 20’s, even though my career is bigger now... I attribute that to my relationships.
What can you tell us about the second season of Billions?
We started filming Monday [June 27]. I actually just finished my first table read before this interview. And even though I don’t know that much — I’ve only read the first script — I'm totally sworn to secrecy. What I can tell you is that the script is great, and that we’re keeping things really complicated, fraught and fun. The way they write Wendy though — the way they dress her and the words that come out of her mouth — it's just so easy to come back... the transformation just happens.
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Catch Siff on the upcoming second season of 'Billions.' Her feature film, 'A Woman, A Part,' is still awaiting distribution.My Santa noticed I was getting a puppy, so they got me a Doggy Treats Cookbook, which I'll be trying when she's a bit older, and a 'how to train your human' for dogs. So my three cats didn't feel left out they got their own version!
I also got two Batman comics: Noel (very appropriate) and Arkham Asylum, both of which I've been dying to read. No one can ever really go wrong with getting me batman related things or comic books so Batman comic books are always a winner! It makes up for the fact that I asked for 'Batman: Silence' off my parents for Christmas without realising that it's just Hush in French. Doh.
So, all in all, a damn good haul. Took me a few days to put up photos thanks to the madness of a puppy in the house but I really do love my gifts, thanks SS!Medical and helping professionals are constantly asked to give precise estimates for the likelihood of infection. Categories like 'high risk' and 'low risk' can be perceived as evasive, unhelpful and frustrating for people in search of precise, numeric answers.
However, such precise estimates of the risk level of individual activities are hard to come by and vary widely according to many different criteria:
Whether the source was known to be HIV-positive.
If not, the prevalence of HIV in the population or among the specific risk group the person belonged to.
The stage of infection and viral load of the positive person.
Whether they were on HIV medication.
The general state of health of both partners.
The presence of sexually transmitted infections, including the presence of any ulcers or lesions in either partner.
The quantity of infectious body fluid transferred.
The virulence of the particular strain of HIV.
Whether the recipient has some degree of natural or acquired immunity to HIV…
…and many other factors.
However, people who give or receive advice have often complained that repeatedly telling someone their activity has been ‘low risk’ is no help unless some degree of quantification is attempted. Therefore, and with all the above caveats in mind, we will here list a number of estimates (or guesstimates) of the likelihood of infection per exposure for specific activities and incidents.
The figures are drawn from the most useful cohort studies and meta-analyses (which pool the data from as many studies as possible). Nonetheless, close examination of these studies often reveals methodological problems and limitations in the data. Moreover, the studies do not all follow the same methodologies, making comparisons between figures difficult.
The sources are as follows: vaginal sex;1 anal sex;2 fellatio;3 2 mother-to-child;4 other activities.5Randy Engstrom (Photo: Submitted)
A naked, armed carjacker who was shot and killed by two local law enforcement officers in Johnson Creek on July 11 has been identified as Randy Engstrom, 34, of Milwaukee.
Engstrom is connected to a shooting investigation being conducted by the city of Milwaukee Police Department.
He was shot and killed by a Waukesha County Sheriff's Department deputy and a city of Delafield police officer in the parking lot of a restaurant at a Jefferson County outlet mall.
The incident started at about 12:43 p.m. Tuesday when a witness reported a carjacking at the Interstate-94 and Meadowbrook Park & Ride.
The witness told officers that a male had gotten out of a four-door maroon Buick, took off all his clothes and, armed with a black handgun, carjacked a vehicle. The victim of the carjacking was not injured.
The suspect — still naked — fled in the stolen vehicle, westbound on I-94.
A Delafield officer spotted a vehicle near Highway 83 matching the description that had been broadcast over police radios. The vehicle got off the interstate and traveled north on Highway 83 for a short time, then did a U-turn and got back onto westbound I-94, with several sheriff's department squads and the city of Delafield squad in pursuit.
The chase continued into Jefferson County, where, with the assistance of the State Patrol, stop sticks were deployed on I-94 east of Highway F. Jefferson County Sheriff's Department and Johnson Creek Police Department squads joined the pursuit as it continued toward Johnson Creek.
Although the stop sticks deflated the tires, the suspect continued to flee. As the vehicle slowed, the suspect waved the gun out the window toward officers, on several occasions.
NEWSLETTERS Get the NewsWatch Delivered newsletter delivered to your inbox We're sorry, but something went wrong Todays top news delivered to your inbox Please try again soon, or contact Customer Service at 1-844-900-7103. Delivery: Mon - Fri Invalid email address Thank you! You're almost signed up for NewsWatch Delivered Keep an eye out for an email to confirm your newsletter registration. More newsletters
The vehicle eventually got off I-94 at Highway 26 in Johnson Creek, and pulled into the Arby's parking lot at the Johnson Creek Outlet Mall.
The suspect stopped in the middle of the parking lot, got out of the car and ran toward the restaurant with the handgun. When he ignored police orders to stop, he was shot by the deputy and officer.
Despite lifesaving measures at the scene, he succumbed to his injuries.
The Waukesha County Sheriff's deputy involved with the shooting has 19 years of experience. The Delafield police officer has 22 years of experience. As is standard procedure, both were placed on paid administrative leave.
The carjacking is under investigation by the Waukesha County Sheriff's Department. The officer-involved shooting is under investigation by the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department.
The names of those involved are not being released.
.
Read or Share this story: http://www.lakecountrynow.com/story/news/2017/07/11/pursuit-armed-naked-car-hijacker-ends-parking-lot-outlet-mall/468864001/“You have to score tries and I think we have picked a team capable of doing that.”
Ireland flanker O’Mahony, who led the Lions in the victory over the Maori All Blacks, will skipper the side at Eden Park.
Lions Head Coach Warren Gatland said: “We have picked a side based on form with a lot of players putting their hands up, especially from the Crusaders and Maori All Blacks games, and it was a lively selection meeting.
Follow the match live with our matchcentre!
DFP – In Article MPU
“The win against the Chiefs was also extremely important for the squad and some players played themselves into the side.
“We have continuously been strong at set piece and have been good defensively in the last two or three outings. But to beat the All Blacks you have to be courageous and play some rugby – you have to score tries and I think we have picked a team capable of doing that.”
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The pack is retained from the Crusaders victory, including the back row of O’Mahony, Sean O’Brien and Taulupe Faletau and Gatland added: “It’s a reward for how the back row has gone. There is a nice balance there while Peter captained the side against the Maori All Blacks and has done a good job.”
There are seven Test Lions in the starting XV with three more on the bench in a match day squad combining experience and form.
Liam Williams is selected at full back and Elliot Daly on the wing following the four-try victory against the Chiefs on Tuesday and Gatland added: “Elliot has been very accurate in the way he has played and we saw some excellent attacking play from Liam on Tuesday night. We are excited about the 15 that take the field but also the very strong and experienced bench players who will have an impact.”
British & Irish Lions (v New Zealand, 1st Test, Saturday, June 24, 7.35pm NZST, 8.35am BST)
15. Liam Williams – Scarlets, Wales, #833
14. Anthony Watson – Bath Rugby, England, #816
13. Jonathan Davies – Scarlets, Wales, #778
12. Ben Te’o – Worcester Warriors, England, #815
11. Elliot Daly – Wasps, England, #822
10. Owen Farrell – Saracens, England, #780
9. Conor Murray – Munster, Ireland, #790
1. Mako Vunipola – Saracens, England, #787
2. Jamie George – Saracens, England, #819
3. Tadhg Furlong – Leinster, Ireland, #818
4. Alun Wyn Jones – Ospreys, Wales, #761
5. George Kruis – Saracens, England, #817
6. Peter O’Mahony (capt) – Munster, Ireland, #832
7. Sean O’Brien – Leinster, Ireland, #796
8. Taulupe Faletau – Bath Rugby, Wales, #779
Replacements
16. Ken Owens – Scarlets, Wales, #829
17. Jack McGrath – Leinster, Ireland, #827
18. Kyle Sinckler – Harlequins, England, #814
19. Maro Itoje – Saracens, England, #825
20. Sam Warburton – Cardiff Blues, Wales, #800
21. Rhys Webb – Ospreys, Wales, #820
22. Johnny Sexton – Leinster, Ireland, #791
23. Leigh Halfpenny – Toulon, Wales, #775A Trip through Japan with the YWCA (ca. 1919)
Production Company: The Benjamin Brodsky Moving Picture Co. Producer: Benjamin Brodsky. Sponsor: Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA). Transfer Note: Digital file made from a 35mm negative. Running Time: 10 minutes (silent, no music).
This fragment comes from a documentary sponsored by the YWCA to celebrate its 15th anniversary of service to Japan. The film’s maker, the peripatetic Benjamin Brodsky, a Russian-born entrepreneur had traveled the world and claimed to speak 11 languages and several Asian dialects. When the 1906 Earthquake destroyed his business, he moved from San Francisco to China and set up shop as a film exhibitor. Soon, as the American representative of Variety Film Exchange, he had a hand in distribution and by 1909 branched into film production in Shanghai and Hong Kong. While juggling business interests, he filmed his travels. By 1915, he was back in the United States promoting his 10-reel epic travelogue A Trip through China, a chronicle of his decade in the country. The film opened in New York City the following May, accompanied by lecturer Harry Dean.
Ever restless, the entrepreneur moved to Japan by 1917, where he again appears to have had some behind-the-scenes role in early film circles. There he produced, under the sponsorship of the Imperial Japanese Railroad, a second travel feature, Beautiful Japan (1918). Like A Trip through China, the two-hour film was usually shown in the United States with a lecturer, often Brodsky himself, who enlivened screenings with tales from his adventures.
A Trip through Japan with the YWCA is a documentary introducing outsiders to the scenic wonders and peoples of the far-off country. But the film also had a charitable purpose. Although reusing footage from Beautiful Japan—most noticeably the scenes with the Ainu of Hokkaido—it also interjects new material more central to the sponsor, about the role of women in Japan and their special needs. Included are shots of women in traditional occupations as well as fleeting images of workers outside a textile factory. “The death toll of tuberculosis in Japanese factories,” reads one intertitle, “claims 70,000 girls yearly. More attention is now being given to sanitation.” The fragment ends abruptly with a shot of a Buddhist prayer wheel in Nikko. It is unclear how much of the film is missing.
The remainder of Brodsky’s life is clouded in mystery. There is some evidence he returned to California, where he fought to return water to Lake Elsinore (Southern California’s largest natural freshwater lake) and lived into his eighties.
About the Preservation
These sections of A Trip through Japan with the YWCA survive at the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, which generously lent the nitrate source material to make the preservation copies. George Eastman House added a concluding title card to mark the end. The new prints are available at George Eastman House and the NFSA.
More Information
Law Kar and Frank Bren’s “The Enigma of Benjamin Brodsky,” in the Hong Kong Film Archive Newsletter, no. 14 (Nov. 2000), summarizes much of what is known about Brodsky. The two authors, and collaborator Sam Ho, give a fuller account in Hong Kong Cinema: A Cross-Cultural View (Scarecrow Press, 2004).
Beautiful Japan has been preserved in a 16mm print at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. Excerpts are included in the NFPF’s DVD anthology, Treasures from American Film Archives: Encore Edition (2005).
Although the YWCA established a local office in Tokyo as early as 1880, the national organization traces its roots to 1903 when the National Council of YMCAs of Japan formed through the merger of city and student chapters. More about the YWCA’s work can be found on the Web site of World Alliance of YWCAs.Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
June 24, 2017, 6:31 PM GMT / Updated June 24, 2017, 6:59 PM GMT By Chelsea Bailey
A Texas mother faces first-degree felony charges in the deaths of her 2-year-old daughter and 1-year-old son after police say she locked them inside a sweltering car last month to teach them a lesson.
Cynthia Marie Randolph, 24, was arrested Friday on two counts of causing injury to a child. Authorities later determined that the children died from extreme heat exposure.
The incident happened on May 26, when Randolph’s 2-year-old daughter, Juliet, and 1-year-old son, Cavanaugh, were found dead in a locked car in the driveway of her home outside of Fort Worth, police said.
Cynthia Randolph was arrested in connection with the deaths of her two children from extreme heat exposure after they were found locked inside a car on May 26, 2017. Parker County Sheriff's Office
Temperatures hovered around 96 degrees that day, reported NBC Dallas-Fort Worth.
In documents released Friday, the Parker County Sheriff's Department used Randolph's alleged shifting statements about how her children died as probable cause to charge her.
Authorities said Randolph initially told officers that she had been folding laundry in the house while her children played outside. When she didn’t hear from them for nearly half an hour, Randolph said she searched for the toddlers before discovering them locked inside the car, alongside her keys and cellphone.
She then told officers that she had to break a window and rescue the children, then called 911, authorities said.
But when she was arrested Friday, police said Randolph admitted to officers that she locked the children inside the car on purpose.
"When they refused to leave the car, the defendant said she shut the door to teach Juliet a lesson, thinking she could get herself and her brother out of the car when ready," authorities said in the probable cause affidavit.
It added that Randolph told officers that she went inside the home, smoked marijuana and fell asleep for several hours.
"When she woke, the defendant found her children in her vehicle, unresponsive," authorities added. "The defendant said that she broke the car window to make it look like an accident."
Randolph was booked into the Parker County Jail. A bond had not been set and it wasn't immediately clear whether she retained an attorney, NBC Dallas-Fort Worth reported.
So far this year, 13 children have died from heat strokes after being left in hot cars, according to San Jose State University professor Jan Null. Null, who is a meteorologist that works with the National Safety Council, maintains a website that tracks trends in hot car deaths each year.
According to her research, an average 37 children die in hot cars annually in the United States.
In an effort to combat the rise in hot car deaths, Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, introduced the Hot Cars Act of 2017. If passed, the legislation would require new cars to come equipped with a system for alerting the driver if a child is left in the back seat after the car is turned off.A "psychological vaccine" of a weakened form of a piece of fake news can make people better at identifying false claims about climate change, researchers have said.
Turning one of the main tactics of fake news back on itself is an effective strategy to halt the spread of misinformation, psychologists say in a study published in the journal Global Challenges.
Exposing people to a fake "fact" with either a general warning about fake news or a specific analysis of why a claim is false can help people to dismiss fake news stories on climate change, the study of 2,000 people in the US found.
Giving no inoculation – or presenting a scientifically sound fact and a fake "fact" together – cancelled out the effects of both statements and left people with exactly the same opinion as they had had before reading the statements.
The general or specific warning weakened the power of the fake claim. This strategy is called psychological inoculation, and is one that has historically been used to generate public uncertainty on issues such as the health risks of tobacco.
Eroding the evidence
The scientifically backed claim used in the study was that 97% of climate scientists agree that anthropogenic climate change was real. The false claim was that 31,000 US scientists had signed a petition stating that anthropogenic climate change was not real.
Just the scientific claim by itself made people 20% more likely to shift their view in favour of thinking climate change is real. Showing them just the fake "fact" made them 9% more likely to reject the idea of climate change.
If they were given these two statements one after the other, the fake claim cancelled out the evidence-based claim, leaving people exactly where they were before they had read the statements.
General vs targeted inoculation
Adding a general warning that "some politically motivated groups use misleading tactics to try to convince the public that there is a lot of disagreement among scientists" made people 6.5% more likely to change their view in favour of the scientifically backed claim when they saw the two together.
A specific inoculation debunking the statement about the petition was even more effective. Here people were told that many of the 31,000 signatories to the petition were fake, with names such as Charles Darwin and members of the Spice Girls cropping up. Of the signatories that were real, living scientists, fewer than 1% had a background in climate research.
This detailed debunking of the fake claim made people 13% more likely to shift their view in favour of the scientific claim after seeing the two together. That's still not back to the 20% shift seen when the scientific claim was made alone, but it did at least as much of the damage caused by the fake claim.
"It's useful to forewarn people generally because it makes them more cautious about the information that they encounter," study author Sander van der Linden of the University of Cambridge told IBTimes UK. "But if you arm people will actual arguments – because it's often the problem that people don't feel confident in their arguments – then that can help inoculate people against misinformation."
Beyond climate change
The idea of psychological inoculation is not a new one. It's been used historically by the tobacco industry to counter scientific evidence of the health risks associated with smoking. Industries such as this have had an "intuitive understanding" that questioning the idea of consensus is very persuasive, van der Linden said.
"Generally it's easy to create a sense of doubt in the public consciousness, that's essentially their strategy. Sow these seeds of doubt by pre-emptively telling people that there's a lot of disagreement among scientists on a given topic."
This is a general aspect of human cognition and can be applied to many areas besides climate change. For example, inoculation could have been used to moderate the effect of claims about Brexit before the UK's EU referendum, many of which lacked a foundation in fact, van der Linden said.
"When it comes to fake news and false information – whether in the UK, US or another part of the world – people use simple rules of thumb to accept information because we're not deeply thinking about it.
"If you think about Brexit, a lot of the information that circulated was not accurate or based on fact, but lots of people believed it because they weren't consciously engaging with the issue. Would it have been beneficial to try to inoculate people? Probably."One of the most common and misplaced fears about Russia in the minds of foreign visitors is of violence on the streets. Thankfully, most visitors have stopped associating the country with the mafia and no longer believe that they could get shot in a crossfire on the streets, but stereotypes about xenophobic violence and streets hooligans persist.
Anyone who has visited Moscow in the last few years would easily be able to certify that the Russian capital is generally a safe place, unless of course one is drunk at 3 am and roaming around in one of the city’s distant suburbs.
As for the rest of the country, it’s hard to classify a town as safe or unsafe as local conditions vary greatly. A friend of mine compared Khabarovsk and Vladivostok with Moscow and St Petersburg respectively and said the two cities by the sea tend to be less safe than the Russian capital and the city by the Amur.
I’ve never personally encountered any problems in any of the four places but would be inclined to agree with my friend’s assessment. Even in central Russia, some cities are just better administered than others and by extension safer.
Having travelled extensively across the country, I did manage to pick up some pointers on how to feel safer in some of the dodgier places. Rule number one was having the right body language.
In a country like Japan, walking around with a non-aggressive posture and being as meek and humble-looking would endear many a local. This is something that could easily lead to an uncomfortable situation in a Russian city that doesn’t have a good reputation when it comes to street crime.
Walking with confidence and shoulders up is a surefire way of deterring a potential street-thug. Meekness is not a virtue that is appreciated by what Russians call gopniks (small-time criminals).
In the case of an unfortunate encounter, there is nothing like the power of a long conversation. On an autumn evening in the Siberian city of Irkutsk, I personally witnessed how talking things through could avoid a flare-up.
While walking on the streets with a German and two locals, we encountered two young men smoking outside a building. They were obviously in the mood for a fight and called us gays. I was willing to ignore that and walk ahead, but one Russian friend, who doesn’t exactly hold homosexuals in high esteem, fired back an insult that isn’t fit for publication. Within a minute the two managed to get reinforcements, and the four of us were surrounded by more than 10 people.
The German in our group didn’t understand Russian and was petrified, but things did not get ugly. A long discussion ensued where the blame game was traded and the conversation lasted about an hour. At the end of the talks, our “foes” shook our hands and we parted as friends. This shocked the German who was sure that we were going to get badly bruised after a fight.
Talking has a magical way of getting one out of trouble in the country, and this isn’t just with hooligans. When I was a student in Russia, I went home for a small vacation and forgot to take my university identification card with me.
When I came back to the country, the immigration officer at the airport saw my student visa and asked for the very ID, which I didn’t have with me at that moment. When she asked me why, I gave her a long list of circumstances that led to me forgetting to take my card before with me before going on vacation.
She could clearly see that I was a genuine student and the long line of impatient passengers behind me made her shake her head and stamp my passport. I did continue with the monologue until she gave me my passport back. She was close to asking me to shut up and frowned throughout the whole encounter.
When it comes to safety though, those who are “visible foreigners” need to be on guard when travelling to some of the more distant parts of the country. Often in the smaller cities and towns, there is a perception that someone from abroad must be rich by default (such attitudes are widely prevalent in India as well).
On the other hand, it’s also in the smaller cities that people will be more forthcoming and helpful if the need ever arises. The same goes for the law-enforcement authorities in the regions, who are a lot less stressed out than their counterparts in Moscow.
Over the last decade, a combination of general prosperity in Russia and an active anti-alcohol campaign has made the country a whole lot safer. Common sense and normal international precautions would go a long way in staying out of harm’s way.
All rights reserved by Rossiyskaya Gazeta.Where to next? Many refugees and migrants at the sprawling makeshift camp in the Greek border town of Idomeni are at a loss as to what to do now.
It's like we're drowning. We're living in an open prison, and we don't know how to get out
The Greek government has told them that the Macedonian border will not re-open, and is urging them to take the buses being provided to transport them to official reception centres elsewhere in Greece.
But on Monday, the camp is buzzing with rumours of another option. Leaflets are circulating that suggest a route to northern Europe through Albania.
“We want to know who posted these leaflets, so we can decide what to do. If it’s not a credible source, how can we move?” says Abdelrahman, from Mosul, Iraq.
“It’s like we’re drowning. We’re living in an open prison, and we don’t know how to get out.”
The UN refugee agency is trying to inform camp residents that they should not believe the misleading leaflets.
You can close borders, but you will not be able to destroy their hope on a better future. #Idomeni#refugeesGrpic.twitter.com/qeWqeTAM3W — Erik Marquardt (@ErikMarquardt) March 28, 2016
There are many people who would rather stay in Idomeni than risk the unknown.
Since the buses started arriving on Friday to take the refugees and migrants to the reception centres, fewer than 1,000 people have boarded them – a small fraction of the estimated 11,500 camp residents.
Inas, a refugee from Syria, says she went to one of the reception centres elsewhere in Greece, but made the decision to return to Idomeni.
“It was a military camp, we were surrounded by army officials. You can’t move freely and if you want to leave you need paperwork and other complications. It was really bad there.”
Refugees and migrants have been staging daily protests at Idomeni demanding that the Macedonian border be reopened.The Supreme Court of Canada has ordered the Chippewas of the Thames, a community of 3,000, to pay energy giant Enbridge's legal fees after an unsuccessful attempt by the First Nation to stop the company's ambitions on its controversial Line 9 pipeline.
The pipeline, built 40 years ago, runs through Chippewas territory, and this week's top court decision allows the company to not only reverse the flow of heavy crude, but also increase capacity along Line 9.
The Chippewas believe the aging pipeline could rupture and cause an oil spill that would create an environmental catastrophe.
Chief Myeengun Henry, right, said the First Nation will continue to fight to protect the Thames River from the pipeline he worries is old and at risk of rupturing. (Kate Dubinksi/ CBC News)
"The ruling said that Enbridge wins court costs, so that means we have to pay them," said Myeengun Henry, newly elected Chippewas of the Thames First Nation chief.
The Chippewas' legal bills total $600,000, Henry said.
Enbridge has not indicated what its costs will be, said spokesperson Suzanne Wilton, noting in a statement that it is still reviewing the decision.
"There has been no determination by the court regarding fees, which would require an application where none has been made," Wilton said.
Relationship building
Following the Supreme Court's decision, Enbridge said it was committed to building a strong relationship with the First Nation.
That may be difficult if the financial burden of the energy giant's legal bills are too steep for the Chippewas of the Thames.
"It's clear that Enbridge wants to develop a stronger relationship with Chippewas of the Thames," said Trevord McLeod, director of the Natural Resources Centre at the Canada West Foundation.
"But it looks like it's going to be a rough road."
The Chippewas have said they will continue to fight against the pipeline, which could include acts of civil disobedience.The east side of the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Karen Bleier, AFP/Getty Images) Story Highlights Spending on health care, Social Security could double relative to economy in 25 years, CBO says
Current tax and spending policies 'unsustainable,' report warns
Report comes as Congress and Obama grapple with debt limit, budget
WASHINGTON — The government could run out of cash to pay its bills in full and on time sometime between the end of October and the middle of November if lawmakers fail to increase its $16.7 trillion borrowing cap, Congressional Budget Office Director Doug Elmendorf said on Tuesday.
Elmendorf told reporters that the Treasury Department's assessment that it'll run out of borrowing authority and have just $50 billion cash on hand in mid-October "sounds plausible."
The government has never defaulted on its obligations and Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew warned Tuesday that Congress needs to act to increase the debt limit by mid-October but he warned Republicans that President Barack Obama will never go along with their demand to derail implementation of the new health care law as part of a measure to fund the government or increase the debt limit.
"Efforts to either defund or delay the Affordable Care Act are unacceptable," Lew told the Economic Club of Washington. "That is not a path towards something that can ultimately be signed into law."
Elmendorf also said that CBO's estimate in May that the government will run a $642 billion deficit this year is proving a little too optimistic. CBO Director Doug Elmendorf said that slightly weaker revenues than expected will likely push that figure higher but that the final deficit tally for the 2013 budget year ending Sept. 30 will still register below $700 billion.
Elmendorf made his remarks as the agency released an updated study of the government's long-term budget ills. It says that federal health care and retirement programs threaten to overwhelm the federal budget and harm the economy in coming decades unless Washington finds the political will to restrain their inexorable growth. The long-term pressures promise to quickly reverse recent improvements in the deficit.
Tuesday's Congressional Budget Office report says that government spending on health care and Social Security would double relative to the size of the economy in 25 years and that spending on other programs like defense, transportation and education would decline to its smallest level by the same measure since the Great Depression.
The share of federal spending devoted to health care would rise from 4.6% of gross domestic product today to 8% in 2038; spending on Social Security would rise as well, as the number of people receiving benefits rises to more than 100 million in 25 years, compared with 57 million people taking benefits now.
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seems counterintuitive.
An additional point – Pronman has the Leafs taking Bracco even with Yevgeni Svechnikov – a big winger having a great year in the QMJHL – still on the board. Svechnikov is a guy I’d love to draft if he’s still available, but he’s a hard guy to pinpoint. He has the skill and size combination that teams covet, but the Russian factor always makes a player’s stock fall.
Mock drafts are fun. But a mock draft from someone like Pronman is a bigger deal than you or I. Again, click here for the full article. Well worth becoming an Insider for, and there were some other picks that really took me by surprise.Hundreds of people are expected to march on The 606 Tuesday night. View Full Caption Flickr/Payton Chung
LOGAN SQUARE — More than 500 people are expected to march along The 606 on Tuesday night with a message that "gentrification destroys communities."
The march is part of the Logan Square Neighborhood Association's annual Congress and will focus on three main issues: immigration rights, housing and education.
Six aldermen from the neighborhood and surrounding areas are expected to participate: Ald. Roberto Maldonado (26th), Ald. Proco Joe Moreno (1st), Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35th), Ald. Milly Santiago (31st), Ald. Deb Mell (33rd) and Ald. Ariel Reboyras (30th).
Neighborhood association leaders will ask the aldermen to commit to developing two new ordinances during a meeting before the march, one focused on property tax rebates and one on a teardown fee in the area near The 606.
Participants at the LSNA Congress plan to hang banners from The 606 at overpasses Tuesday. View Full Caption LSNA
Reporter Paul Biasco on the issues Logan Square residents want addressed.
The group hopes its message denouncing displacement over rising housing costs will be loudly heard as members march along the elevated trail about 6 p.m. Tuesday, a regularly busy time.
The group will be handing out fliers to joggers and other trail users explaining the cause and will be hanging banners over intersections along The 606.
The 606 Pilot District Teardown Fee Ordinance, which the group will ask aldermen to commit to during the Congress meeting ahead of the march, would force developers to pay a higher demolition fee in a specific zone around the trail.
The tentative boundaries would be from Hirsch to Palmer and from Western to Kostner.
The fee to demolish a single family home is being floated at $25,000.
Those fees would be placed in a fund that would be spent in the community for repair grants, rental subsidies, affordable housing development and job creation.
The neighborhood association plans to call on Moreno and Maldonado specifically to develop the ordinance, as the trail falls in their wards and they supported its construction, according to Brian Perea, a youth organizer with the association.
"We are asking them to agree to this publicly so that we can hold them accountable," Perea said.
The group will also ask the aldermen to commit to a moratorium on any new charter schools in the ward.
"This is not a new commitment that they haven’t made before, but we want them to be vocalizing this in front of a couple hundred people," said Bridget Murphy, an education organizer with the neighborhood association. “Our schools enrollment are declining due to displacement and due to new schools opening and its really hurting the schools and really hurting families."
Tuesday night's annual Congress will be the 54th hosted by the group.
There will be a 30-minute presentation explaining the group's efforts on education, housing and immigration at 5 p.m. followed by the march.
The meeting will be held at in the auditorium at Stowe Elementary, 3444 W. Wabansia Ave.
Marchers will enter The 606 at Spaulding Avenue and march to Humboldt Boulevard before heading back to the school.
"I want our new neighbors to know I’m here," said Ana Centeno, a Logan Square resident with two children at Mozart Elementary School. "It’s not only you. I’m here.”
For more neighborhood news, listen to DNAinfo Radio here:Some news just puts the fear of Cod into you. For example, there’s an interesting study from earlier this year which suggests that rising sea levels in the Alaskan middle Holocene (in the study: roughly 7,000 to 4,000 years ago) released methyl mercury compounds into the nearshore environment (Open Source paper by Maribeth Murray et al., 2015). These then accumulated in fish, specifically Pacific Cod, Gadus macrocephalus, and presumably also in other species which predate upon these cod, such as humans. It’s an interesting preliminary study, but before you think, “Oh My Gadus, Ancient Alaskans were Mad Hatters running amok with mercury-induced neuropathy”, there are some important details to consider.
The study in question is based on archaeological remains at the XMK-064 site on the south side of the Alaskan Peninsula, in Amalik Bay within Katmai National Park.
The cod remains samples showed mercury concentrations up to 50% greater than the modern levels, which themselves are elevated by anthropogenic (human-origin) mercury released since the industrial revolution. The concentrations are around 700% of the later Holocene bone samples, which might be taken as a sort of non-polluted local baseline.
So, a few thoughts about this study:
1. The sample size is pretty small. For each level, usually only one or two bones were analyzed for their mercury content. While the pattern appears robust enough, I guess I am just barely enough of a social science type to want to beef up the number of samples tested.
2. As noted in this commentary on the article, the comparison of the archaeological bone is to modern cod muscle mercury levels, and the relationship between the muscle and the bone concentrations is unknown. This is a little mystifying to me, given that modern cod bones are not exactly unobtainable! Maybe they used previously-gathered data for their comparative sample (likely), maybe there was budgetary constraint (even more likely). All the same, if for some reason bone concentrations are higher than in muscle, then the apparent danger to people consuming the fish goes down or perhaps their results are even not significant.
3. However, there is some suggestive evidence that the opposite is true. A single modern sea otter sample, for example, had
” a mercury level of 9 parts per billion in its bones, but the level was more than six times as high — 58 parts per billion — in the animal’s muscle tissue, Duffy said. If the ancient cod muscle similarly held six times the level of mercury found in bones, he said, eating that fish would have posed health risks for the people inhabiting the area 4,000 to 5,000 years ago, especially the youngest inhabitants, whose brains were just developing and were thus most vulnerable to contaminants, [Duffy] said.”
So, it seems possible the bone mercury concentrations are seriously underestimating the muscle mercury content of the living fish. According to this table, you shouldn’t eat fish with concentrations of mercury greater than 0.09 parts per million more than six times a month, a concentration the archaeological bone samples approach. This document says greater than 1 part per million in fish makes it actionable as a poisonous substance. The bone concentrations in the table above peak at about 0.7 parts per million (math credit: Sharkie), and if indeed the muscle concentration is higher than the bone then these may have been fairly dangerous fish to gorge on. Add this to the likelihood that the inhabitants were eating not only cod, but a variety of high level predators like seals, and the human mercury loading might have been quite high indeed. Anyway, I’m not a real doctor, so it’s frustrating that it is hard to put together the derived archaeological values to the modern safe consumption guidelines.
4. Of course, a more direct way to access this would be to test actual human remains. However, not only is this fraught with ethical concerns needing community collaboration and consensus, but there may not be many, or even any, such remains to test. In a similar situation on the Central Coast of BC, Aubrey Cannon argued convincingly that dog remains were a useful proxy for human remains for understanding bone chemistry signatures of diet. I wonder if coastal Alaskan dog remains might not be more abundant and accessible as a follow up to this study and be close to a direct measurement of concentrations in ancient humans.
Anyway, archaeologists are sometimes contorting themselves to fit into current research priorities like climate change. This is a different take on the matter which I had never heard of and might be a serious concern for the future if the already increased amount of mercury in the nearshore waters is further enriched by sea level rise. Does this apply to seaweed? To shellfish? Does the mercury rising mean rising mercury? I really don’t know. Certainly in Haida Gwaii we see very rapid sea level rise in the terminal Pleistocene and at Kilgii Gwaay the diet is rich in species similar to Pacific cod. The first step is, I think, to replicate this study more robustly and perhaps across a larger region and really nail down the size of the effect. If it’s real, then it’s a cool piece of Historical Ecology! I wouldn’t mind hearing from more knowledgeable people if this is a real thing, or for other examples of measuring mercury in local archaeological remains. There’s no shortage of samples for the fishboners to get to work on!“I had a papa who painted,” Maya Widmaier-Picasso once said when she exhibited some of her father’s paintings, drawings, and watercolors that she inherited after he died, in 1973. Her papa was Pablo Picasso. Her mother was Marie-Thérèse Walter, whom Picasso met one evening in 1927, when she was 17 and he was 45. Nine years before, Picasso had married Olga Khokhlova, one of Diaghilev’s dancers, with whom he had a son, Paulo, but the marriage was collapsing. Maya’s mother later confided that Picasso had seen her leaving the Paris Métro and said, “You have an interesting face. I would like to do a portrait of you.” She had no idea who Picasso was, so he took her to a bookstore to show her a book about himself. Maya’s parents had split up when she was about eight, but she spent a great deal of time with her father. Now 80 years old, she lives in Paris, has three children, and is one of Picasso’s five surviving heirs, all of whom have become multi-millionaires. The other heirs are Claude Picasso and his sister, Paloma, the children of Pablo and his mistress Françoise Gilot, the only woman who ever left him; and Marina and Bernard Picasso, the children of Paulo, who died in 1975. Since one of Picasso’s paintings, Les Femmes d’Alger (Version O) (Maya had watched him paint it), set a record last year for a work sold at auction ($179.4 million), the five Picasso heirs—who control the art world’s richest dynasty—are likely to become even richer. They’re also likely to find themselves embroiled in the occasional public drama. In January, Maya emerged as the star, if you can call it that, of an unfolding court saga whose cast includes various super dealers at the highest levels of the art market—Larry Gagosian, Guy Bennett, and the now disbanded art-advisory firm of Connery, Pissarro, Seydoux. The dispute centers upon Picasso’s 1931 plaster bust of Marie-Thérèse Walter, a highlight of the Museum of Modern Art’s recent “Picasso Sculpture” exhibition. There are allegations that the piece, titled Bust of a Woman, was sold nearly simultaneously by Maya’s representatives to two buyers: once, in November 2014, to Qatar’s Sheikh Jassim bin Abdulaziz al-Thani for $42 million, and then, a few months later, to Gagosian for $105.8 million. Courts in New York, Switzerland, and France are trying to unravel Bustgate and determine the sculpture’s rightful owner. By Mark Shaw/MPTVImages.com. When Picasso died, 43 years ago at the age of 91, he left an astounding number of works—more than 45,000 in all. (“We’d have to rent the Empire State Building to house all the works,” Claude Picasso said when the inventory was completed.) There were 1,885 paintings, 1,228 sculptures, 7,089 drawings, 30,000 prints, 150 sketchbooks, and 3,222 ceramic works. There were vast numbers of illustrated books, copperplates, and tapestries. And then there were the two châteaux and three other homes. (Picasso lived in and worked in about 20 places from 1900 to 1973.) According to one person familiar with the estate, there was $4.5 million in cash and $1.3 million in gold. There were also stocks and bonds, the value of which was never made public. In 1980 the Picasso estate was appraised at $250 million, but experts have said the true value was actually in the billions. Picasso did not leave a will. The division of his holdings took six years, with often bitter negotiations among the heirs. (There were seven then.) The settlement cost $30 million and produced what has been described as a saga worthy of Balzac. The family, writer Deborah Trustman noted at the time, “resembles one of Picasso’s Cubist constructions—wives, mistresses, legitimate and illegitimate children (his youngest born 28 years after his oldest), and grandchildren—all strung on an axis like the backbone of a figure with unmatched parts.” Today, the market for Picasso’s art is strong and getting stronger, with the emergence of collectors from China, Indonesia, the Middle East, and Russia. Most prefer the late work, from the 1950s and 1960s. The Russians have a thing for Picasso’s Blue and Rose Periods. “If Picasso were alive today,” Marc Blondeau, a prominent Geneva dealer and former head of Sotheby’s France, told me, “he would be one of the 10 wealthiest men in the world.” In 1996, Claude Picasso, who had been named legal administrator of Picasso’s estate by a French court, created the Picasso Administration, a Paris-based organization that manages the heirs’ jointly owned interests, controls the rights to Picasso reproductions and exhibitions, issues merchandising licenses for everything from dishes and fountain pens to ties and automobiles, and pursues forgeries, stolen works, and illegal use of Picasso’s name. During his lifetime, Picasso was the world’s most prolific and most photographed artist. In 2016 he is the most reproduced, most widely exhibited, most faked, most stolen, and most pirated artist in the world, one of the hottest commodities in a white-hot art market. “Everyone wants a piece of Picasso,” said Eric Mourlot, a dealer whose father and grandfather printed hundreds of Picasso’s lithographs. Or, as Claudia Andrieu, the Picasso Administration’s head of legal affairs, told me, “Picasso is everywhere.” © 2016 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (A.R.S.), New York; From Rex/Shutterstock. Picasso Inc.
Consider: There were 34 Picasso exhibitions last year, in Bulgaria, France, Germany, Japan, Spain, and the United States. There are Picasso Museums in Paris, Barcelona, Antibes, and Málaga, where the artist was born. Companies in Paris and Lyon—with branches in many countries—hold licenses to sell Picasso carpets, trays, handbags, pillows, and other items. Citroën, the French car manufacturer, which acquired the rights to use Picasso’s name and signature for a reported $20 million, says it has sold nearly 3.5 million Picasso cars in more than 30 countries since 1999. Citroën pays royalties annually to the Picasso Administration, which retained the right, as it does with all licenses, to control the advertising campaigns. In 2012, Montblanc received a license to produce limited-edition Picasso fountain pens engraved with comments and sketches from a 1936 Picasso painting, Portrait de Jeune Fille (Portrait of a Young Girl). One pen, in an edition of 39, was partly solid gold with a cut diamond and sold for $54,500. Another, in an edition of 91, was partly solid gold and sold for $33,500. (One of them recently showed up on eBay for $80,000.) Another major source of income for the Administration is the Droit de Suite, a royalty on auction and gallery sales of works by artists who are still living or have been dead less than 70 years. Although the Administration does not disclose its annual revenues, the figure, according to some estimates, is around $8 million. Then there’s the Picasso black market, which the Picasso Administration tries to keep up with, often in vain. There are possibly hundreds of illegal brands called “Picasso” around the world, selling everything from fishing hooks and pizza to coffee mugs, shoes, T-shirts, inflatable dolls, and mobile homes, and more seem to pop up every day. For example, the Lane Bryant women’s clothing chain, until recently, offered an unlicensed Picasso bra, with matching “boyshort” pantie, but they have since sold out. “We are pursuing the matter,” said Theodore Feder, president of the Artists Rights Society, which represents the Administration in the United States. Some years ago, a Spanish company illegally attached Picasso’s name to products such as coffee, tea, ice cream, pasta, rice, and toothpaste. It is no longer in business. But a company in Taiwan that sells unauthorized Picasso scarves, watches, socks, and umbrellas still is. “From a legal standpoint,” Andrieu said, “it is difficult in many countries to oppose an unauthorized Picasso trademark registration.” Movies have been using Picasso reproductions for years. Most are conscientious about getting rights, but there have been exceptions. When Titanic was being filmed, in 1996, James Cameron wanted to show a reproduction of Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon in a scene in which Kate Winslet is seen unpacking it. When the ship goes down, the painting is shown sinking below the waves. The Picasso Administration decided that it could not authorize the inclusion of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon in the film “because the painting has been on display at the Museum of Modern Art for well over 60 years and certainly did not go down with the ship when the Titanic sank,” said Feder, who, in addition to his work with the Artists Rights Society, is an art historian who has taught at Columbia University and Queens College. “When I viewed the film several weeks after its opening, I was surprised to discover that the scene depicting the submersion of Les Demoiselles was still in it. We negotiated a fee after the fact, which, as one could imagine, included a substantial penalty.” For all its efforts, though, the Administration, which now employs a staff of eight people, gets mixed reviews in the art world. Critics complain that responses to authentication requests are slow, that neither Claude Picasso nor the other heirs are scholars, and that they have not created an advisory committee or made any plans to publish a catalogue raisonné. “It’s a pity that one of the world’s greatest artists doesn’t have a team of experts doing this research,” one dealer told me. Claude, for his part, points out that he has been immersed in Picasso since birth. “The heirs have decided not to publish for the time being a catalogue raisonné as objects surface still which were not catalogued,” he wrote in an e-mail. Regarding authentication, he said, “the requests are very often not professionally formulated. On the average 900 requests are filed yearly. Verifications of the information provided sometimes can be labor-intensive. Artworks need often to be examined in the flesh.” There have also been complaints about the Administration’s licensing policy. When the Citroën deal was announced, in 1998, Jean Clair, then the director of the Picasso Museum in Paris, was outraged, writing in Libération that Picasso “has become a brand that can be applied at will to anything produced by contemporary technology.” The late photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, a great friend of the artist’s, was also incensed about the car deal. He wrote to Claude and accused him of having “betrayed” Picasso. By Edward Quinn/© EdwardQuinn.com.
That sense of betrayal has also been felt inside the family. “I cannot tolerate that the name of my grandfather … be used to sell something as banal as a car,” Marina Picasso said at the time. “He was a genius who is now being exploited outrageously.” (Marina sold reproduction rights to 1,000 works from her inheritance and agreed to a merchandising plan that sold scarves, ties, dinnerware, and other products to support charity.) The car naming was the idea of Olivier Widmaier Picasso, Maya’s son, who has made documentaries about his grandfather and has advised the Administration on licensing matters. Twenty-five years ago, the major auction houses usually consulted only Maya, a former Christie’s official told me. “Then it became confusing,” he said. “Claude began to authenticate, and at one time authentication required two signatures. We shuddered at the idea that opinions would differ.” Opinions did differ. On a few occasions, one would say a work was original and the other would declare it a forgery. PICASSO “HAS BECOME A BRAND THAT CAN BE APPLIED AT WILL TO ANYTHING.” It became an almost impossible situation that had to be adjusted. In 2012, four of the heirs—Claude, Paloma, Marina, and Bernard—announced, in a letter circulated on the Internet, the creation of a new procedure for authenticating works by Picasso: the letter stated that only Claude’s opinions “shall be fully and officially acknowledged by the undersigned.” After the announcement, Maya declined to comment as to why her name was missing. “I only found out when a friend told me,” she said to George Stolz, of ARTnews. “I nearly died.” Claudia Andrieu told me that “Maya is not part of the authentication process, but that does not mean that there is no collaboration between Claude and Maya.” She would not elaborate further. Olivier Widmaier Picasso told me that “Maya has shown her active support to the organization on several occasions this year by attending the quarterly meeting with her brother Claude and nephew Bernard and discussing all matters with them.” He added that Maya collaborated “on many authentication files and requests” and that she provided “significant information to the Picasso Administration.” But a dealer close to the Administration described the current relationship between Claude and Maya as “strained.” Another was more blunt. “It’s a serious problem between them,” he said. I first met Maya, who is married to a retired French naval officer, at the Pont Royal Hotel, in Paris, in 2004. She was accompanied by her daughter, Diana. A warm, ebullient woman, Maya said she didn’t want an article written about her but agreed to tell me some stories about her father. “In 1944,” she said, “I was nine years old and my father would pick me up at school and we would walk along the Seine, and he’d pick up little pebbles and make little dolls for me.” Picasso had been designated by the Nazis as a “degenerate artist” in the late 1930s, but he was able to sit out the occupation, near his art, in his studio at Rue des Grands Augustins. “One day,” Maya told me, “two weeks after the liberation of Paris, I went to his studio, and he said to me, ‘I paint, you paint.’ We both painted, and when we stopped, he hung them up next to one another on a clothesline in the studio. So you had Pablo, Maya, Pablo, Maya, Pablo, Maya. Two United States Army colonels came to the studio—they wanted to meet Picasso, and they talked. When they were leaving they saw the watercolors, and one of them asked Picasso if it was all right to take a photograph. Picasso said it was all right, but he didn’t say it was ‘Pablo, Maya, Pablo, Maya, Pablo, Maya.’ A few weeks later, a United States newspaper published a photo with the caption ‘This is an exclusive photo of the first works by Pablo Picasso since the liberation.’ ” © The Richard Avedon Foundation. This kind of casual misattribution is an example of what the Picasso Administration—which has offices in a five-story building next to a bistro not far from the Place Vendôme—is up against every day. Quarterly meetings are held with the heirs or their representatives. There is an annual report that usually runs about 300 pages—100 pages of text and 200 pages of documents about court cases that have been settled or are still pending. Profits are distributed twice a year. Occasionally, the heirs will consign some of the Picassos they inherited to auction houses and dealers. “Everything about the Picasso Administration is complicated,” Andrieu said when I met her at the Administration office in Paris not long ago. “We have many issues—the works, the rights, the authentication, protecting the reputation of the artist. In a way, the Administration is a fighting machine protecting Picasso.” The Algerian-born Andrieu, who is in her mid-50s, has been working for the Administration since it started, in 1996. “We have representatives in about 20 countries that handle copyrights and licenses that allow the use of Picasso’s name, signature, and artworks,” she went on. “We have granted about 30 licenses but have never had more than 10 licenses at a time. When you have people violating the rights every minute of the day you have to fight them and put them out of business. You have to make people know that if they want to use Picasso’s name they have to ask permission. You have to fight, but to fight is very expensive. Our legal bills are sometimes more than a million dollars a year. You can’t open thousands of court suits—only in your dreams. You would need a thousand lawyers.” And then there are the requests for authentication, which come from all over the world. “In the last five years,” Andrieu said, “we have seen a lot of works—about 500—that are unknown, undocumented, never exhibited, never listed, coming from the United States, Spain, Switzerland, France, and other countries. We’re hoping to get the truth someday.” Andrieu found the truth about a lithograph hanging on a wall near her desk. It is a small rendition of Picasso’s painting Le Rêve (The Dream). “This is an unauthorized reproduction,” she said with a smile. The story of the actual painting is a saga in itself. Steve Wynn, the Las Vegas casino mogul, bought it in 2001 from an anonymous collector who had bought it at auction in 1997 for $48.4 million. In 2006, Wynn was showing the 1932 painting of Marie-Thérèse Walter to several friends in his office when he accidentally poked a hole in the canvas with his elbow. (Wynn suffers from an eye disease that affects his peripheral vision.) He had agreed to sell the painting to hedge-fund manager Steve Cohen for $139 million but then changed his mind. He finally sold it to Cohen in 2013 for a reported $155 million—one of the most lucrative private art sales ever made—after repairing it at a cost of $85,000. A few days after Wynn damaged the painting, Diana Widmaier Picasso, Maya’s daughter, sent me an e-mail. She is an art historian, is working on a catalogue raisonné of her grandfather’s sculptures, and was one of the curators of the recent “Picasso Mania” show at the Grand Palais, in Paris. “I wish my mother Maya owned Le Rêve today,” she wrote, saying that Maya had tried desperately to get the painting back into the family, even offering the owner, Victor Ganz, who had bought the painting in 1941 for $7,000, a magnificent Picasso from 1939 in exchange, to no avail. “My mother loved Le Rêve so much,” Diana told me, “not only, I think, because it represents her mother, Marie-Thérèse, in all her beauty and in her happiest days with Pablo, but also because it is such an iconic picture about love. With her wonderful sense of humor, she suggested that Victor and herself would both get a divorce and marry each other so that they can live together with the two paintings.” From Art Resource, N.Y; © 2016 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (A.R.S.), New York.
The Le Rêve reproduction is one tiny part of the Administration’s fakes problem. There are entire categories of fakes: outright copies, reworkings of Picasso’s themes in his style, works whose provenance is questionable, and reproductions. Jean-Jacques Neuer, the Administration’s attorney, said that there has been a significant rise in forgeries in recent years as the price for authentic Picassos continues to skyrocket. He also mentioned another issue the Administration has to cope with: theft. One recent case involved a retired electrician and his wife, who hid 271 Picasso works in their garage. Occasionally, authentic Picassos can cause headaches, too, as in the recent sale of the bust of Maya’s mother, Marie-Thérèse Walter. Gagosian claims in court papers that he bought the sculpture from Maya for $105.8 million last May. He then sold it to the New York collector Leon Black. But Pelham Holdings, an advisory firm owned by the former Christie’s powerhouse Guy Bennett, says it secured an agreement in November 2014 to buy the sculpture from Maya for about $42 million for Sheikh al-Thani. The sheikh is the husband of the 33-year-old Sheikha al-Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, the sister of the emir of Qatar, the chairwoman of the Qatar Museums (which have reportedly spent billions on art), and, according to Forbes, “the undisputed queen of the art world.” The now disbanded (and short-lived) advisory firm of Connery, Pissarro, Seydoux acted as intermediary for Pelham. When the firm was formed, in 2012, it was viewed as a jaw-dropping development for the international art market since it involved veterans of the rival auction houses. Stephane C. Connery, the son of the actor Sean Connery, had been the head of Impressionist and modern-art private sales at Sotheby’s. Thomas Seydoux had the same job at Christie’s, where he worked with Bennett. Connery and Seydoux were joined by Lionel Pissarro, a great-grandson of the artist Camille Pissarro, along with his wife, Sandrine. The Qataris had paid about $6.5 million toward the sale, but before they could take delivery, Maya’s daughter, Diana, appointed by her mother and two brothers to pursue the sale to Gagosian, stepped in. According to Gagosian’s papers, Diana alerted her mother to other offers in excess of $100 million. Maya then contested the Qatari sale as “null and void” and returned the $6.5 million. (Traditionally, most art sales are considered final when payment is made in full.) Gagosian, in court papers, questioned how Pelham Holdings—which named Gagosian, Diana, and Leon Black in its counterclaim—was able to get Maya’s “supposed consent to such an unreasonably low price,” a point reiterated in a statement from Maya and Diana’s lawyer, which slammed Pelham’s attempt “to obtain a Picasso masterpiece from an elderly and convalescent Maya Widmaier Picasso for only $40 million, when its real value is over $106 million.” In response to what they claim to have been intimations, from Diana’s representatives, about Maya’s alleged mental incapacity, Pelham stated that the Qatari purchase was, in fact, negotiated by Maya’s son, Olivier, “whom no one contends was ever cognitively impaired or had any interest other than negotiating a fair market value for the sculpture.” As of this writing, Gagosian claims to have paid 75 percent of the purchase price for the bust. Both parties have agreed that the bust will go to one of Gagosian’s New York galleries when “Picasso Sculpture” closes and remain there until the case is settled. By Edward Quinn/© EdwardQuinn.com. Family ValuesThe Unthinkable Thought
"Jesus said, 'It is to those who are worthy of my Mysteries that I tell my Mysteries.'" ~ The Gospel of Thomas
On the site where the Vatican now stands there once stood a Pagan temple. Here Pagan priests observed sacred ceremonies which early Christians found so disturbing that they tried to erase all evidence of them ever having been practiced. What were these shocking Pagan rites? Gruesome sacrifices or obscene orgies perhaps. This is what we have been led to believe. But the truth is far stranger than this fiction.
Where today the gathered faithful revere their Lord Jesus Christ, the ancients worshipped another godman who, like Jesus, had been miraculously born on 25 December before three shepherds. In this ancient sanctuary Pagan congregations once glorified a Pagan redeemer who, like Jesus, was said to have ascended to heaven and to have promised to come again at the end of time to judge the quick and the dead. On the same spot where the Pope celebrates the Catholic mass, Pagan priests also celebrated a symbolic meal of bread and wine in memory of their savior who, just like Jesus, had declared:
"He who will not eat of my body and drink of my blood, so that he will be made one with me and I with him, the same shall not know salvation."
When we began to uncover such extraordinary similarities between the story of Jesus and Pagan myth we were stunned. We had been brought up in a culture which portrays Paganism and Christianity as entirely antagonistic religious perspectives. How could such astonishing resemblances be explained? We were intrigued and began to search further. The more we looked, the more resemblances we found. To account for the wealth of evidence we were unearthing we felt compelled to completely review our understanding of the relationship between Paganism and Christianity, to question beliefs that we previously regarded as unquestionable and to imagine possibilities which at first seemed impossible. Some readers will find our conclusions shocking and others heretical, but for us they are merely the simplest and most obvious way of accounting for the evidence we have amassed.
We have become convinced that the story of Jesus is not the biography of an historical Messiah, but a myth based on perennial Pagan stories. Christianity was not a new and unique revelation but actually a Jewish adaptation of the ancient Pagan Mystery religion. This is what we have called 'the Jesus Mysteries Thesis.' It may sound farfetched at first, just as it did initially to us. There is, after all, a great deal of unsubstantiated nonsense written about the'real' Jesus, so any revolutionary theory should be approached with a healthy dose of skepticism. But although this book makes extraordinary claims, it is not just entertaining fantasy or sensational speculation. It is firmly based upon the available historical sources and the latest scholarly research. Whilst we hope to have made it accessible to the general reader, we have also included copious notes giving sources, references and greater detail for those who wish to analyze our arguments more thoroughly.
Although still radical and challenging today, many of the ideas we explore are actually far from new. As long ago as the Renaissance, mystics and scholars saw the origins of Christianity in the ancient Egyptian religion. Visionary scholars at the turn of the nineteenth century also made com-paxable conjectures to our own. In recent decades, modern academics have repeatedly pointed towards the possibilities we consider. Yet few have dared to boldly state the obvious conclusions which we have drawn. Why? Because to do so is taboo.
For 2,000 years the West has been dominated by the idea that Christianity is sacred and unique, whilst Paganism is primitive and the work of the Devil. To even consider that they could be parts of the same tradition has been simply unthinkable. Therefore, although the true origins of Christianity have been obvious all along, few have been able to see them, because to do so requires a radical break with the conditioning of our culture. Our contribution has been to dare to think the unthinkable and to present our conclusions in a popular book rather than some dry academic tome. This is certainly not the last word on this complex subject, but we hope it may be a significant call for a complete reappraisal of the origins of Christianity.
THE PAGAN MYSTERIES
In Greek tragedies the chorus reveals the fate of the protagonists before the play begins. Sometimes it is easier to understand the journey if one is already aware of the destination and the terrain to be covered. Before diving deeper into detail, therefore, we would like to retrace our process of discovery and so provide a brief overview of the book.
We had shared an obsession with world mysticism all our lives which recently had led us to explore spirituality in the ancient world. Popular understanding inevitably lags a long way behind the cutting edge of scholarly research and, like most people, we initially had an inaccurate and out-dated view of Paganism. We had been taught to imagine a primitive superstition which indulged in idol worship and bloody sacrifice, and dry philosophers wearing togas stumbling blindly towards what we today call'science.' We were familiar with various Greek myths which showed the partisan and capricious nature of the Olympian gods and goddesses. All in all, Paganism seemed primitive and fundamentally alien. After many years of study, however, our understanding has been transformed.
Pagan spirituality was actually the sophisticated product of a highly developed culture. The state religions, such as the Greek worship of the Olympian gods, were little more than outer pomp and ceremony. The real spirituality of the people expressed itself through the vibrant and mystical 'Mystery religions.' At first underground and heretical movements, these Mysteries spread and flourished throughout the ancient Mediterranean, inspiring the greatest minds of the Pagan world, who regarded them as the very source of civilization.
Each Mystery tradition had exoteric Outer Mysteries, consisting of myths which were common knowledge and rituals which were open to anyone who wanted to participate. There were also esoteric Inner Mysteries, which were a sacred secret only known to those who had undergone a powerful process of initiation. Initiates of the Inner Mysteries had the mystical meaning of the rituals and myths of the Outer Mysteries revealed to them, a process which brought about personal transformation and spiritual enlightenment.
The philosophers of
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from the BMV on organizational license plates]
This has been in the works since last spring. By the first of April, the Pacers had to file an application with the General Assembly’s Roads and Transportation Committee. According to a Bureau of Motor Vehicles spokesman, the committee considered eight applications and granted approval to five — the maximum allowed — including the Pacers Foundation.
The plates won’t be available anytime soon. The Pacers have not yet submitted a design for approval. They were given parameters to follow, including certain colors they are allowed to use.
UPDATE: Nov. 1 — The Pacers’ design has been approved by the Indiana BMV and can be seen at the top of the page.
The plan is for this specialty plate — expected to be available on January 1, 2017 — to feature a Pacers logo, plus the text “Pacers Foundation” at the bottom.
The Pacers Foundation’s two primary fundraising events are the annual golf outing, which took place on Wednesday, and the Masquerade, where Quinn Buckner will be honored at this year’s event on Oct. 21.
Examples of other sports plates available in Indiana:
[Photos via Indiana BMV]
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PrintThe makers of the darn-near invincible Toughbooks are taking on the tablet world. Today Panasonic announced the "Toughpad" family. There are 2 versions, the A1, a 10.1 incher; and the B1, a forthcoming 7 inch.
The A1 has a 10.1 inch, 4:3, XGA (1024x768), daylight viewable screen. It has capacitive touch and "offers" a stylus for handwriting recognition. The main feature though, is its ability to take your abuse. Get it wet, hot, cold, sandy, or drop it, and the Toughpad will keep on working. Your wallet is going to have to be pretty tough too, the 10 inch version will run you $1300 -- more than twice the price of a more delicate tablet.
The hardware's not the only tough part, as your data will be protected too. Panasonic added "hardware and software encryption, enhanced VPN, dual factor authentication, trusted boot and device management." That's right, hardware encryption. Scary. They've also added some remote management features to help out the enterprise minded. You can push applications to your fleet of tablets, "secure devices from unauthorized use" and there are "many other granular features not found in consumer-grade Android-powered tablets."
An Android device wouldn't be complete without some crapware. Panasonic created yet another app store, the "Business AppPortal" which is "an enterprise-focused app store offering best-of-breed vertical market specific solutions as well as applications addressing broad enterprise concerns, including Mobile Device Management, security and virtualization."
As far as availability goes, the A1 can be yours in spring 2012, and the B1 will arrive in the fall.
Not much is known about the 7 inch B1, but we have a full spec list for the 10 inch version:
Operating System: Honeycomb 3.2
Honeycomb 3.2 Processor: Marvell 1.2 GHz Dual-Core Processor
Marvell 1.2 GHz Dual-Core Processor Storage: 16GB
16GB Optional Storage: MicroSD optional up to 32GB
MicroSD optional up to 32GB RAM: 1GB LP-DDR2
1GB LP-DDR2 Display: 500 nit, daylight readable, 10.1" XGA (4:3), capacitive multi-touch with anti-reflective and anti-glare treatment and built in ambient light sensor
500 nit, daylight readable, 10.1" XGA (4:3), capacitive multi-touch with anti-reflective and anti-glare treatment and built in ambient light sensor Battery Life: 10 hours (serviceable battery)
10 hours (serviceable battery) Camera: 5MP rear, 2MP front
5MP rear, 2MP front Weight: 2.13lbs (without pen)
2.13lbs (without pen) Dimensions: 10.5 x 8.3 x 0.67 in.
10.5 x 8.3 x 0.67 in. Connectivity: (LTE or WiMAX), 802.11 a/b/g/n, Wi-Fi Hotspot, Bluetooth v2.1 + EDR, Satellite GPS
(LTE or WiMAX), 802.11 a/b/g/n, Wi-Fi Hotspot, Bluetooth v2.1 + EDR, Satellite GPS Drop Rating: 4 ft.
4 ft. Temperature rating: 14F to 122F (operational)
14F to 122F (operational) Inputs: Micro-USB, microSDHC, micro HDMI
Micro-USB, microSDHC, micro HDMI Security Features: Hardware-level security, FIPS 140-X and HIPPA compliant, cable lock slot
Hardware-level security, FIPS 140-X and HIPPA compliant, cable lock slot Ingress Protection: IP65
And Panasonic has thoughtfully created a video of the tablet being abused. It's awesome.
There's full website up and running over at PanasonicToughpad.com. Go check it out.
Source: Panasonic via MarketwatchLONDON (Reuters) - The background in the new series of U.S. TV hit “Homeland” is supposed to look like a Syrian refugee camp, but one of the graffiti slogans that CIA agent Carrie Mathison walks past declares, in Arabic: “Homeland is racist”.
Cast member Claire Danes gestures next to co-star Damian Lewis at a panel for the television series "Homeland" during the Showtime portion of the Television Critics Association Summer press tour in Beverly Hills, California July 29, 2013. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni (UNITED STATES - Tags: ENTERTAINMENT) - RTX124CW
Other scenes in the show, which aired in the United States this week, had walls covered with similarly pointed Arabic messages: “There is no Homeland”, “Homeland is not a show” and “Black lives matter”.
The graffiti were planted on the set of the show, which was filmed in Berlin this summer, by a German-based trio who call themselves the “Arabian Street Artists”.
Hired to make an area on the outskirts of Berlin look like a refugee camp in Lebanon, they took the opportunity to make a statement about the show’s depiction of U.S. intelligence efforts to thwart Middle Eastern terrorist plots.
After the show was aired on the Showtime network in the United States on Sunday, and their subterfuge passed undetected, the artists made public what they had done.
“The series has garnered the reputation of being the most bigoted show on television for its inaccurate, undifferentiated and highly biased depiction of Arabs, Pakistanis, and Afghanistan, as well as its gross misrepresentations of the cities of Beirut, Islamabad — and the so-called Muslim world in general,” the artists, Heba Amin, Caram Kapp and one who uses only the name Stone, said in a post on Amin’s website.
“For four seasons, and entering its fifth, ‘Homeland’ has maintained the dichotomy of the photogenic, mainly white, mostly American protector versus the evil and backwards Muslim threat.”
Alex Gansa, co-creator of “Homeland”, said in a statement distributed by Showtime: “We wish we’d caught these images before they made it to air.”
But he added: “As ‘Homeland’ always strives to be subversive in its own right and a stimulus for conversation, we can’t help but admire this act of artistic sabotage.”
Claire Danes has won two Emmys and two Golden Globes for her portrayal of agent Mathison, who struggles to do her job while afflicted with bi-polar disorder, but the show has been criticized for inaccuracies and accused of stereotyping in its depiction of the Middle East and Islamic culture.It was just last week that we were extolling the virtues of Mike Trout. How quickly things can change. How quickly the hammer of fate can smite those who dare tempt it. How quickly things can go so very wrong.
When Trout stole second base in the fifth inning on Sunday, he came up wagging his hand and in pain. He eventually left the game, and we now know that he tore a ligament in his thumb when he accidentally jammed his hand into the bag while sliding. Trout’s elected to have surgery to repair the ligament and has a six- to eight-week timetable to return.
First and foremost, this sucks. Trout was well on his way to the best season of his career and possibly one of the best campaigns ever. He was staring his third MVP award in the face. Trout makes the game better. He’s already got the credentials of a Hall of Famer, minus that whole 10-year thing, and he single-handedly makes the Angels watchable. The game is going to be without its brightest star for a couple of months, and that’s awful.
This likely also officially puts the Angels to bed for the year. They’re currently in second place, while being two games under.500, which speaks to just how unsightly the non-Houston teams in the AL West are. Trout was basically doing as good of a LeBron James impression as a baseball player can possibly do to keep the Angels out of the basement. Without him, their roster more closely resembles the likes of the Padres. They’re without any notable starting pitching, and Kole Calhoun is probably their best player. We may be living in a world in which Bud Norris is the Angels’ representative at the All-Star Game. There was some interest in this team over the winter due to their establishment of a baseline of competency with which to surround Trout, and how that could punch their tickets to a Wild Card berth. That’s all meaningless without Trout being there pretty much every day.
There’s also the matter of what this means for Trout himself. Hand injuries can be a bit worrisome for hitters. The damage being in Trout’s left thumb could be particularly troubling. Take a second to pantomime being a right-handed hitter. Notice where your left thumb is? It’s wrapped around the back of the handle of the bat, and when you swing, it’s part of what’s driving your hands forward. Now imagine that your imaginary bat just made contact with a fastball. If you’ve ever played ball or been to the batting cages, you know that you’re going to feel that contact in your hands. Trout’s surgically repaired thumb is going to be feeling a lot of that.
That could have an effect on his hitting, and his ability to hit for power. Or, he could be fine. Here’s a handy-dandy table of everyone who’s had the same procedure as Trout since 2010 and how it impacted their offensive output.
It’s hard to draw a lot of conclusions from this, given the size of the data set and that some of these injuries lasted into the offseason. There’s definitely a chance that Trout is going to be rusty when he comes back, though, and that he may not be the same until next season once he’s had the winter to hit the reset button. Or he could pull a Harper and not miss a beat.
And if he does the latter, Trout might pull off his best trick yet, missing two months of the season and still leading the AL in WAR once again. His presence at the top of the leaderboards has become an annual tradition, and the gaps have generally been large enough that he didn’t just squeak by. He was set to enter June up by +1 WAR over Miguel Sano and Aaron Judge, both of whom are unlikely to keep hitting this well and, as bat-first sluggers, don’t have an easy path to a 7-plus WAR season. Carlos Correa and Francisco Lindor have the all-around games to make a run to that kind of level, but at just +2 WAR through the first two months, both will have to play better than they have in order to get up to that level.
Trout racked up +3.6 WAR in two months. If he comes back at 100%, and his early-season improvements carry over, +7 WAR isn’t out of the question for him this season. And it’s not out of the question he runs another +3.5 WAR over the final two months of the season. Mike Trout might take the summer off and still have a better 2017 than anyone else.
But, of course, the human body is a funky thing. Every injury is unique in its own way, as well. We’re not going to know how Trout’s thumb is going to respond to the surgery until he comes back and starts swinging at big-league pitching again. That day can’t come soon enough, because Trout is one of the best shows in the game. The game is worse off because of this, and the Angels have just had what little hope was left blow up in their faces.Party cadres in southwestern China will soon be scored on their ideological correctness and job performance by a cloud-based artificial intelligence system that tracks everything from their attendance at Party events to comments they post on social media.
The Party school of Sichuan province is collaborating with the platform, whose name translates to “Smart Red Cloud,” state newspaper Science and Technology Daily reported Friday. The platform promises to make the selection, assessment, and education of Party cadres “smarter.”
The platform has been in development since 2012 by Yunshu Weilai, a tech startup under the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, located in the provincial capital of Chengdu.
Liang Lihua, the company’s marketing head, said one “innovative” function, called “Portrait of Cadres,” uses the evaluation of cadres’ past performance to predict their ideas and behaviors in the future. He said this feature will be a good supplement to the current personnel system.
“Normally, the selection and appointment of Party cadres is conducted in the form of group discussions by leaders who mainly study candidates’ resumes, but one problem is that this lacks sufficient and accurate data for analysis,” Liang told Sixth Tone by phone.
“This function, however, will include a couple of criteria for analysis, such as [cadres’] working capacities, their attendance rates at Party activities, and education,” said Liang, who added that external information such as online comments, marital status, and homeownership details are also included.
Besides tracking cadres, the platform includes an app that provides information on new policies, as well as activities and training events that Party members can attend. Liang said the platform hopes to reach 2 million users by August.
Zheng Changzhong, an associate professor in the School of International Relations and Public Affairs at Fudan University in Shanghai, told Sixth Tone that technologies like AI and big data will “definitely” impact China’s politics. “Such technologies should be used as new methods to strengthen the internal management of the Communist Party, promoting mutual understanding and connection between cadres and the general public so that the needs of the public can be better and more effectively served,” he said.
So far, the platform has been adopted by more than 50 Party organizations across the country, including the Communist Youth League, the Ministry of Education, and Party-affiliated organizations, municipal governments, and universities in Sichuan.
Editor: Kevin Schoenmakers.
(Header image: A group of young people take photos of the Chinese Communist Party flag at a museum in Jiaxing, Zhejiang province, Jan. 2, 2016. Yan Zhi/VCG)Update: It seems all three games discussed below are now back up on the US Steam store, though they are still unavailable in the UK. We'll continue to monitor the situation and reach out for comment from Ubisoft and Valve.
Original Story
PC gamers who want to download upcoming Ubisoft titles like Far Cry 4, The Crew, and Assassin's Creed: Unity won't be able to go through Valve's Steam service, it seems. The Steam store pages for all three of those holiday titles have been taken down, being pulled in the UK early yesterday and disappearing in the US and other countries over last night and into this morning.
"We've been in discussions with Valve about Assassin's Creed Unity but for the time being the game is not available via Steam in the UK," a Ubisoft spokesperson told PCGamesN after the game was removed from the UK version of the store yesterday. "In the meantime, UK customers wishing to purchase the game digitally can do so by visiting the Uplay store, our retail partners, or other digital distributors."
Dozens of older Ubisoft-published titles are still available on Valve's digital download service, so it seems the company has not pulled out of Steam completely. The upcoming games are still available on EA's Origin store, and through third-party services like Green Man Gaming and GamersGate, which resell codes usable on Ubisoft's own Uplay download service. Oddly enough, the Steam Community pages for Ubisoft's holiday titles are still up as of this writing and are quickly filling up with threads from concerned and confused customers.
It's possible that the Steam removal is simply a technical snafu, but Ubisoft's statement and the history of competition between Uplay and Steam in the digital download space suggests it probably isn't. After launching Uplay exclusively with Ubisoft-published games in 2009, Ubisoft began competing with Steam more directly by selling games from rival publishers on the service early last year.
Pulling these titles off of Steam mere weeks before their release is a pretty unexpected move, considering that all three games have been available for pre-purchase on Steam for months. It's unclear how Valve will handle refunds for those who have already put money down on the games that have gone missing; both Ubisoft and Valve have yet to respond to a request for comment from Ars.
Back in 2011, EA removed Battlefield 3 from Steam over what it termed "restrictive terms of service" regarding distribution of patches and other content. Since then, EA has limited its Steam offerings to DLC packs for existing games, while selling its new titles on its own Origin distribution service.
Uplay has not exactly endeared itself to the PC gaming community, having had a string of technical errors and intrusive DRM snafus that eroded many players' trust in the service. That hasn't stopped Ubisoft from pushing tighter integration with the Uplay client in its games—even Ubisoft titles launched through Steam often require users to log in with a Uplay account. Yet the latest Uplay client update also increased the service's integration with Steam, showing all of a player's Steam-bought Ubisoft titles in the Uplay interface.by John Raven, Ph.B.
"Learning to cook on an open fire with a Dutch oven is a trial and error business."
Due to many request from my readers, I'm going to tell you what I know about cooking in a Dutch oven.
Dutch oven is the term that refers to a cast iron pot with tight fitting lid. (There are a few aluminum Dutch ovens around, but they are not all that popular). The Dutch oven is sort of squatty. Even with the largest models, the lid is no more than six or eight inches above the bottom. There is a reason for this. Coals are meant to be placed on the top of the oven for baking operations, and the distance must be kept to a minimum for the heat to radiate down. The Dutch oven has what's known as a coal top; that is, the top is nearly flat and has a raised lip all around the edge to keep the coals from falling off. If it does not have a coal top, it's a stew pot. The Dutch oven will also have feet on it to keep the bottom off the ground and above the coals. A skillet with feet is called a spider.
Dutch ovens come in a variety of sizes ranging from eight inches in diameter, which holds two quarts, to sixteen inches in diameter, which holds fourteen quarts. A twelve-inch oven is about right for the novice. It will hold a main dish for twelve to fourteen people and is also suitable for baking bread and biscuits.
In purchasing a Dutch oven, you want to make sure the lid is a tight fit. If the lid jiggles or wiggles it will not work right. Look for a better fit. The Lodge Manufacturing Company makes a good line of cast iron products. If you find a used Dutch oven at a tag sale it will probably be okay as long as there are no deep rust pits on the inside. You can buy a new Dutch oven these days cheaper than you can get one at a lot of so-called antique stores. Your new Dutch oven will come with instructions for seasoning it. Read and follow them. (See How To Love Your Cast Iron Skillet.)
Dutch Oven Cooking
Learning to cook on an open fire with a Dutch oven is a trial and error business. You just have to learn by doing. Don't worry; you can't ruin your oven. About the worst you can do is burn something and have to clean and reseason the Dutch oven.
For cooking with your Dutch oven, you are going to need some coals in the form of either real coals or charcoal briquettes. Real coals are much more authentic than the briquettes. You'll need a place to build a fairly large fire in a safe place and keep the kids away from it. Clumsy adults, too. Hardwoods make the best coals. Mesquite will make the hottest coals, and oak and hickory also make dandy coals. You will need a sturdy long handled shovel for handling the coals. One with a square end is best.
You start the fire on three or four logs of decent size, say about six inches in diameter and two feet long. When the flames have died down and the logs are just glowing you chip off some coals with your shovel and place them where you need them. If you are using charcoal, you light the briquettes in a safe container and don't use them until they have turned gray all over.
You will want to put your oven(s) in a level spot. If you are in your backyard or somewhere else where you don't want to kill the grass, put down a cushion of three or four inches of dry sand. You can save and reuse it if you wish.
Most recipes call for preheating your oven. To do this, simply place about four or five hot briquettes or an equal amount of coals on the ground and spread them to about the size of the bottom of your oven. Set the oven on top and just wait a while. If the lid needs preheating, as for baking, just slap it in place and put about four briquettes on it.
Now's the time to talk about special tools you will need. That cast iron gets really hot, and it doesn't have an insulated handle on it. First thing you need is a pot mover. This is simply a hook with a handle on it that you slip under the bail of the oven to move it. Next you need a lid lifter, that is, a device to let you pick up the lid. There are several such devices on the market. You can get by with a stout pair of pliers if you are careful. Using pliers means you have to get your hands close to the hot iron. Get a pair of insulated welder's gloves from the welding supply store. They are not expensive and will save you lots of blisters and singes.
Something else you will find handy is an inexpensive soft bristle brush for dusting ashes off the lid and anywhere else they land. Get a cheap brush because the heat of the iron will ruin one in short order. No, the sponge brush on a stick won't work.
You will need a clean, heatproof, flat surface or two to set your oven and lid when you have them off the coals. A couple of concrete paving blocks of appropriate size or a couple of bricks will work just fine.
Heat Control
The starting point for cooking in your Dutch oven is to keep the temperature on the low side. You can wait a little longer for something to get done, but you can't repair something you've burned. For a twelve-inch Dutch oven, start with about six briquettes underneath and about eight on top or equivalent amounts of real coals. It won't take long for you to learn when to add or subtract from the bottom or top. Soon it will come natural to you, and you will be the envy of all your friends who can only warm up pizza in the microwave.
Again, before we leave, BE CAREFUL. The cast iron gets very hot and holds its heat for a long time. The pots and lids will be hot enough to cause second- and third-degree burns in an instant. Also, remember little things like if you leave your lid lifter on the lid in the coals, it will be red hot when you reach down to pick it up. Get those gloves and don't take chances.
We just don't have room to go into any recipes here. You can find them all over the Internet. Perhaps in a future column I can get some of my favorite Dutch oven recipes for you.
Happy Halloween. Boooo!Patrick Cassidy, the composer for the 2014 film Calvary, jokes about the film’s grimness: “It’s not exactly a date movie.” He’s right: The film follows a lonely Irish priest as he shepherds a cold and bitter village. Its harsh realism is profoundly humbling. Heavy as the film is, it is lifted by Cassidy’s classical score.
Cassidy got his start outside film, composing Irish semi-liturgical pieces. In 1993, he wrote The Children of Lir, becoming the first to write a cantata in the Irish language, and in 1996 he wrote Famine Remembrance, a setting of Irish prayers and liturgical texts for the 150th commemoration of the Irish Famine. Yet John McDonough, the film’s director, didn’t want excessive Irishness to rob Calvary of its universality, a choice reflected in Cassidy’s score. Cassidy recalls, “I remember I did a cue early on and I put in an Irish instrument and he didn’t want it. He was very adamant. And he was right.”
Cassidy sees The Children of Lir as evidence of an historical dynamic in Ireland, where Christianity transformed Paganism but retained much of its symbolism. It retells the Irish legend of children bewitched into swans, the spell only broken when St. Patrick comes nine hundred years later. “It seems to me like the story predates Christianity in Ireland but later became Christianized. A lot of Irish culture is like that.” His work on Calvary bears a similar tone: Ireland, moving past its Catholic identity to modern secularism, lingers in the past through its Catholic symbols and habits.
Throughout, Cassidy’s score bears a deep nostalgia for home - both for Ireland’s past and a lost Catholicism. “When I was growing up, there would have been universal respect and reverence for priests, you know? And, especially in the cities, like Dublin and Limerick, I just don’t see that anymore.”
Now, Cassidy says, priests tend to go out in their “civvies” rather than wearing their collar because they don’t want to be spat upon or cursed. “In one generation, Ireland went from being quite a poor country to being a quite wealthy country, and people with money are not as religiousthat’s just a fact, you know? And also the abuse scandalthe two things together caused Ireland to change in a very, very rapid way. What might of taken a few generations in other countries, took one generation in Ireland. That in a sense is what Calvary is about.”
Cassidy thinks the Irish who reject the Church do so ambivalently: “People still love this Church, this cultureyet at the same time they’re rejecting it. Calvary’s villagers push Fr. Lavelle constantly, but the last thing they wanted was for him to break. Yet they couldn’t help themselves in trying to break him and mock him. I think that’s kind of accurate to Ireland in a sense, you know?” Though it might signal a loss of faith, John McDonough uses Ireland’s detachment to narrate Calvary with black humor and irony. When the prospective murderer meets Fr. Lavelle on the beach, he asks him to reflect on his life, “Do you have any regrets?” Fr. Lavelle cavalierly replies, “I have, yah. Never got to finish Moby Dick.”
Cassidy thinks music can bridge this divide: “The music of the Church is one of the great attractions that the Church still has for people. It’s hard to see that classical music could have happened without the Church. I think it’s a direct result of Church tradition and culture.” Patrick hesitates and then ventures a thought, “Maybe that’s one of the reasons why classical music has been so poor in the twentieth century. This was the century when composers moved away from the liturgical forms.”
For Cassidy, art and faith are inseparable: “It would seem kind of pointless in a sense, you know? The reason I wanted to be a composer was to write pieces like the Mass and the opera. Yes, I love film music but the opportunity and challenge of writing a Mass is just on a different level. For me, it’s a more profound experience, absolutely.” In fact, Cassidy has written such a Mass for Ave Maria University, though it may be some months before it is published.Canada: Judge rules the return of political refugees to the US illegal
By Guy Charron
18 December 2007
This article first appeared in French on December 12, 2007.
Judge Michael Phelan of the Federal Court of Canada ruled on November 29 that the Safe Third Country Agreement between Canada and the United States dealing with political refugees is illegal.
The purpose of this agreement, signed by the Liberal government of Jean Chretien and the Bush administration in late 2002 and put into effect in December 2004, is to prevent thousands of potential refugees from claiming asylum in Canada. It is estimated, for example, that since January 2005, some 2,500 people fleeing Columbia have been unable to secure refugee status in Canada on account of the Safe Third Country Agreement.
Under the Treaty, a claimant can request political asylum only in that country in which he/she first arrives. [Canada and the US are the sole signatories of the agreement.] Prior to its implementation, some 30 to 40 percent of requests for political refugee status in Canada came from refugees entering the country from the US. Due to the fact that they are poor and/or fear the generally more heavy surveillance at airports, many persons fleeing political persecution in Latin America travel overland, meaning they must first pass through the US to reach Canada. Consequently, the flow of refugees has historically been much greater from the US into Canada, than from Canada into the US.
Phelan’s ruling is a condemnation of the treatment of political refugees by both the United States and Canada.
In justifying his decision, Phelan wrote that the United States does not adhere to international treaties on refugees or on torture.
He argued that the US could not be considered a “Safe Country” because claimants may be sent back to their original country even if they risk being tortured there. As an example, Phelan cited the case of Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian, who was arrested at New York’s JFK Airport while in transit to Canada, under false suspicion of terrorism. Arar was “rendered” to Syria, where he was jailed and savagely tortured for ten months.
Phelan’s ruling is silent, however, on Canada’s complicity in US torture practices. A public enquiry has already exposed the close collaboration between the governments of the two countries, with Canada arranging, through the medium of the American state machine, to have its citizens tortured, based on weak or false suspicions of terrorism.
The Canadian government is virtually alone among western governments in failing to condemn the US practice of torture, especially in Guantanamo Bay where a young Canadian has been held for the past five years, that is, since he was 15 years old. The Canadian army, which is engaged in counter-insurgency warfare in southern Afghanistan, regularly turns over its prisoners to Afghan security forces well known for their brutality.
Phelan wrote in his decision that “it is difficult to imagine how the governor in council could have reasonably concluded that the US complies with the Refugee Convention when the law allows the exclusion of claimants who involuntarily provided support to terrorist groups. The terrorist exclusions are extremely harsh and cast a wide net which will catch many who never pose a threat.”
Under Canada’s own anti-terrorist laws, the government specifically criminalizes involuntary support of government-designated “terrorist groups,” not only for political refugee claimants but also for all Canadian citizens. The law is so broad that an anti-government demonstration or protest movement could be defined as a terrorist act.
In ruling the Agreement illegal, Phelan also took into account the US refusal to allow claims of political asylum made one year after arrival in the country, as well as the incarceration of a significant percentage of refugee claimants.
The US Ambassador to Canada David Wilkins expressed outrage at the decision, stating that the US “has a proud record of accepting and protecting refugees, defending human rights and adhering to our treaty obligations.”
Negotiations on the Canada-US agreement on political refugees began in the late 1980s, after the then Conservative government of Brian Mulroney introduced a clause into the country’s immigration law that made it legal for the government to strip persons who entered into Canada from a “safe” third country of their right to claim refugee status. But as this would have had the effect of increasing the number of refugee claimants in the US, Washington balked and the two governments were unable to reach a deal. In the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks and with greatly increased border control and security cooperation between the two countries, the Third Party negotiations were revived and an entente concluded in December 2002.
The agreement is part and parcel of measures being introduced by ruling classes around the world to restrict the right of political asylum. Everything possible is done so that refugees never reach the target country’s border, for example by strengthening controls over who can embark on an airplane or by building walls to keep people out. Refugees who succeed in getting into a “safe” country are often arrested and held in special detention centers, as is the case in the United States, Great Britain, and Australia.
The impact of these policies has been so great that, although the number of refugees has increased by over 50 percent since 2003, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the number of refugee claims has fallen in half during the same period, including those in Canada and the United States.
It is remarkable that the two countries that have produced the greatest number of refugees, Iraq and Afghanistan (3.5 million and 2.8 million respectively by the end of 2006, according to UNHCR figures), largely owing to American invasions which Canada is supporting, are the source of only a tiny fraction of the refugees accepted by Canada and the United States.
Judge Phelan’s decision has been largely denounced by the Canadian press. A Globe and Mail editorial of November 30, 2007 is typical: “The claim by a Federal Court judge that the United States is not a safe country for refugees is on the face of it outrageous... The decision should be appealed, and the effect of the judgment suspended until the appeal is heard.”
The social-democratic New Democratic Party has expressed its concern that the Canadian bourgeoisie is being too candid about its predatory aims and its repudiation of democratic rights. The NDP has demanded that the government repudiate the Canada-US pact. “The Safe Third Country Agreement has stripped Canada of its ability to exercise good judgment, and does not reflect Canadian values,” said Olivia Chow, the NDP critic on immigration.
It is certain that the Conservative government will appeal this judgment, not only because it seeks at all costs to avoid displeasing Washington, but also because its policy is to continuously restrict the entry of political refugees. Recently Canada’s Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal by “war resisters”—that is, US soldiers who refused to participate in the illegal war in Iraq—of the Canadian government’s refusal to accord them refugee status. (See “Canada’s Supreme Court opens door to deportation of US ‘war resisters’”)Space Spuds to the Rescue
At left: Marble-sized Quantum Tubers were used to grow the potatoes in the background. Credit: NASA.
At right: Astronaut Catherine G. Coleman, mission specialist, checks out an Astroculture sample on the mid-deck of the Earth-orbiting Space Shuttle Columbia during STS-73 in October 1995. Five small potatoes were grown on-orbit from tubers in the Astroculture plant growth facility. Credit: NASA.
Courtesy of the NASA Innovative Partnerships Program
NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center and Spinoff On-Line
Cheryl L. Mansfield, KSC Staff Writer
What could NASA, potatoes and China possibly have in common? The answer might be as close as your next order of fries. Using NASA technology and a Chinese technique for growing seed potatoes, Quantum Tubers are a Space Age answer to growing more and better potatoes worldwide.Since many countries depend heavily on potatoes for their basic dietary needs, they must have an adequate, dependable supply. That's where the space spuds can help, since their high-tech growth methods overcome many of the normal limitations of seed potato production. By combining an agricultural technique from China with controlled environment technologies originally developed by the University of Wisconsin-Madison for plant growth in space, American Ag-Tec International, Ltd., of Delavan, Wisc., produced the Quantum Tubers.To understand how the process works, it's important to know how the potatoes destined for your order of fries first begin. Tiny, marble-sized seed potatoes (minitubers) are typically grown from plantlets inside traditional greenhouses. In these greenhouses, there is little control over environmental conditions such as light and temperature. That means only one small crop of seed potatoes can be produced each year.In an attempt to improve these conditions, researchers in China tried moving the small plants to different locations in the greenhouse in an attempt to create the best growing conditions possible.That's where high-tech met Asian agricultural techniques. NASA's growth chambers -- used aboard the International Space Station for conducting cutting-edge research -- provided an improved solution to the potato problem. The computer-controlled chambers use unique lighting technology, high-efficiency temperature and humidity controls, and automation technology. That makes generating the minitubers in one closed facility possible, without the labor-intensive handling employed by the Chinese method. The self-sustaining chambers also brought production indoors, removing the growers' dependence on weather. Thus, the seed potatoes can be grown year-round in extreme environmental settings, such as deserts or excessively cold regions.Growers using this advanced method can produce a new, virus-free crop of minitubers every 40 to 50 days instead of the previous yearly crop. One facility can now produce as many as 10 to 20 million minitubers per year -- a huge benefit to countries that, in the past, have been forced to depend almost entirely upon imported seed potatoes
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exams etc… Well, this chapter was translated by Nul at first, but I had to change a lot of stuff and almost changed everything, also Guest4 dealt with some of the editing and translated a little.
The retired old man’s rhapsody
Several days after meeting Fia, I came to the Adroad continent again.
I came back since I didn’t get to do my exploration last time because of the troubles I had with Fia. Well, despite that, I guess I did learn some useful stuff from her. If we do meet again, I’ll just think of her as a lover I left and neglected or something like that. It’s ridiculous to worry now about an uncertain future
Because I went east last time, this time I’ll try going west. It would be nice if there is just a simple village in that direction. I already got my share of elf troubles with Fia.
While the east side is only flat forests, this side has a mountainous terrain. There seems to be a lot of demons, so there probably won’t be any human villages. Still, I fly around while searching, yet I don’t see anything. Is this also a miss?
In order for my actions not to go to waste, I have to remember to do some mapping during breaks. While I’m writing on the map as I wonder where I should go next, my ears unexpectedly catch on some sound. I raise my face from the map and confirm that I’m really hearing something. However, looking around, I can’t see the origin of the sound. It has a certain rhythm, and sounds like it’s coming from the other side of the mountain. This can’t be ignored.
Hurrying, I close the map and fly towards the source of the noise.
As I make a detour around the mountain, I find a solitary house built in a carved out tree.
It’s pretty far but, I can see smoke coming from something that looks like a chimney, there has to be someone living there. Even so, for someone to reside in a private house in the midst of this forest… it must be fun to live this eccentrically.
I could just go through the sky and land there but it smells like trouble, so I get off at a nearby place and switch to going on foot for the rest of the way. I travel through the dense forest then, at last, I arrive at the house down the road by following something that looks like an animal’s trail.
A man twice my height is chopping a tree there. The origins of the noise that led me here seems to be the sound of wood-chopping.
He’s wearing a simple black shirt and a pair of trousers. His short hair is completely gray and a scar runs over his left eye. He’s probably pretty old, but his well trained muscles and his sharp eyes make him look like a veteran warrior.
He swings his axe down in a steady way. Though it’s just mere wood-splitting, I think that his refined movements are beautiful. He would look better swinging a sword on a battlefield’s front rather than merely cutting wood.
【 “……Who’s there? Stop hiding and come out.”】(???)
(EDN:He speaks in a dialect, a “ho-gen”, like an old man)
He noticed me even though I’m hiding my presence? Those muscles aren’t just there for show.
As I come out obediently since I don’t really have a reason to hide, his threatening look settles down a little.
【 “Hmm, did you get lost or something?”】(???)
【 “Nice to meet you, I am Sirius. I’m sorry to bother you, I accidentally found this place while taking a walk.”】(Sirius)
【 “…… What the hell are you saying? Are you from the demon race? I won’t hold back if you’re hostile.”】(???)
He turns his axe towards me like he’s ready to hit me at any moment, I can feel bloodthirst coming from him. Wait a minute, no matter how suspicious I am, isn’t he losing his temper a little too fast? I haven’t done anything but talk.
【 “No no no, I’m normal… well, not really, but I’m a child of the human tribe. I’m not hostile at all.”】
I raise both of my hands and I put them in evidence to show that I’m not hostile and he cautiously lowers his axe. Then, without saying a thing, he resumes his wood chopping, disregarding me. It’s rather refreshing to meet someone that blunt.
However, my coming here would all be pointless if I’m going to get ignored. Should I start the conversation from here?
【 “I’m sorry, but why do you live in such a place?”】(Sirius)
【 “I don’t want to converse with an aristocrat. I don’t know how you found me, but we have nothing to talk about. Leave quickly and take your bodyguard with you.”】(???)
I got strongly rejected and spat on. Isn’t this old man misunderstanding something? I get that he hates nobles, but I don’t know who he is. First of all, I should make something clear.
【 “It seems like you’re misunderstanding something, I just came here by chance, I wasn’t looking for you. And I’m not an aristocrat, so I don’t have any bodyguard. You probably already noticed that there is no one else around besides me since you’ve got sharp senses.”】(Sirius)
【 “… There is no one else, indeed. Boy, how did you get here? This isn’t a place where a child can come by himself.”】(???)
【 “Because I have some special magic. I’ll say it again, I found you by accident.”】(Sirius)
【 “Boy, do you know me?”】(???)
【 “I don’t know you, but I do think that you have a lot of skill.”】(Sirius)
This old man’s atmosphere is different from Dee’s. Yesterday’s bandits are like trash when compared to this. Was my answer good? The old man finally stops being cautious of me.
【 “Hmm, you do seem different from those foolish nobles, boy.”】(???)
【 “Please don’t compare me to them. It’s unpleasant.”】(Sirius)
【 “Hoho, you said it. Well, you’re a guest so, I’ll serve you some tea. Come with me.”】(???)
Speaking of aristocrats, the only one I know is my father. That’s why it’s just like I said to the old-man, I don’t want to be considered as one of them. Is he satisfied with this? The old man puts down his axe and invites me to his house.
It’s a handmade log-house.
It’s made of neatly processed wood, something similar to the stuff done in my previous world. There is a desk and a chair in the middle of the room, a carpet and futons made of demon fur and a stone oven (EDN: The ones used for pizza etc…). It’s quite surprising since it seems that the old man made all of these by himself.
【 “Although I am an amateur, I try to use my strength and my extra time in various ways.”】(???)
【 “No, no, what you did here isn’t something that an amatuer can do. Actually, don’t you think you have a talent for this?”】(Sirius)
【 “I don’t like putting it as a talent. Oh well, I’m glad to be complimented anyway.”】(???)
I wasn’t flattering him. To think that he made all of this by himself despite being isolated… This place is definitely more remote than my house. I wonder what reason he has for living here.
As I sit down on a chair while pondering on my questions, the old man prepares some tea and sits in a chair facing mine.
【 “Unfortunately, there are no other drinks for children. It’s fine to stop drinking it if this doesn’t suit your taste.”】(???)
【 “Oh, I don’t mind.”】(Sirius)
He pours a green liquid into a wooden cup for me. I don’t sense anything suspicious in it even after smelling it but… the smell seems familiar. The old man drinks it while gurgling so I take a breath and do the same even though it’s still steamy.
【 “Mmmh…Delicious.”】(Sirius)
【 “Huh? You understand this taste?”】(???)
【 “I understand it. The bitterness that stays in the throat and the heat that numbs the tongue. Isn’t it most suitable after a meal?”】(Sirius)
It’s a little heavy, but there is no doubt. This is japanese tea, isn’t it? Because I drink it quickly, I nearly burn myself, but it has a nostalgic taste. The old man becomes more and more cheerful from seeing my reactions.
【 “Umu, you understand, don’t you boy? For a child to understand the deliciousness, you’re quite the smart fellow.”】(???)
【 “Could you allow me to take some of this with me? I’d also like to know the raw ingredients if you don’t mind.”】(Sirius)
【 “All right, I’ll give you some later.”】(???)
Such a generous old man. It was worth coming here if only for this.
【 “No one else in this country gets it. Not understanding something like this… they’re just unworthy of it.”】(???)
【 “Exactly. By the way, may I ask for your name?”】(Sirius)
He lives alone in this kind of place. He could also be a criminal but, at least I know that he’s not a person who’d try to poison me. I’m just someone who wants to learn various things, I never change my attitude no matter who I talk to.
【 “Lior. Are you familiar with the name?”】(Lior)
【 “Lior? It heard it somewhere… hmm?”】(Sirius)
If I remember correctly, it appeared in a book. The source: Alberto’s travel diary.
The great swordsman who cuts everything down and turns it to ashes with his large sword of fire, said to come from the strongest family.
Capable of crushing a rock with one hit of his mighty sword which he even used to slay a dragon, according to the rumors.
All the people call him by the same name, that is,【Goutsurugi Lior】. (TLN:Literally, “Lior, the strong sword”, but it sounds lame so I’ll keep it as Goutsurugi)
【 “Could it be that, you’re Goutsurugi Lior?”】(Sirius)
【 “That’s an old story. I’m just a retired old man now.”】(Lior)
Oh, I thought he seemed strong but, but I didn’t think he was that high tier. I want to fight him by all means.
However, as powerful as he may be, I can’t feel any will to fight from him. He released some killing intent when he thought I was a suspicious person but he went back to being a simple retired old man as soon as he figured that I was harmless. There might be a reason for that which involves his hate for aristocrats.
【 “You don’t look like someone in his retirement days to me. If it’s alright, can you tell me the reason behind your situation?”】(Sirius)
【 “Hmph, you impudent boy. Well, I don’t have anything else to do so I’ll tell you but, it’s a long story.”】(Lior)
He pours a second helping of tea into our respective cups and gradually starts talking.
【 “I always liked training. I trained and trained, I defeated various opponents and, before I knew it, I got labeled as the strongest. I also got labeled as master swordsman and strong flame but I didn’t really care for these trivial titles. However, after becoming the strongest, I couldn’t find an opponent to match me. Then an idea came to me like a flash, seeing how things were, I could just train someone and turn him into an opponent capable to face me, therefore I took some pupils. I easily managed to gather a lot of disciples at the center of the country after declaring openly that I was looking for one.”】(Lior)
He’s the strongest after all. He’d likely be able to gather as many disciples as he wants even after advertising for just a moment.
【 “However, I’d say that most of the proposals I received were from aristocrats who wanted to show off as my pupils. Though the guys I taught were hungry for strength, they were just gutless idiots. Whenever a situation got tough, they’d run away, and if I didn’t go easy enough on them, they’d find it unacceptable and start whining. I have even been reported several times to the king, there was no end to those idiots’ proposals that I turned down. Since it couldn’t be helped, I decided to look by myself for suitable apprentices that I could eventually fight eye to eye with. I found a few fitting pupils but, they were all natives of the slums and commoners which made those dumb aristocrats make a commotion. From their point of view, I neglected them even though their position was better as nobles so they started whining again, yet it felt pretty good this time.
However, several of the nobles got jealous and envious and aimed for the right time when I was absent to surround and attack my disciples, preventing them of even swinging their swords. Though the pupils had some good skills, one of them ended up dying. In a fit of rage I looked for those nobles and chopped off the arms of the fools and humiliated them in front of the king and the other aristocrats. After that, things just got ridiculous so, I retired here, I didn’t want to get involved with the aristocrats anymore.”】(Lior)
After finishing the long explanation, the old man quenches his thirst with some tea.
I now understand well the reason behind his hate for nobles and his lack of vigor.
However…. For now, I’ll just give him my thoughts on that.
【 “So halfhearted!”】(Sirius)
【 “Come again?”】(Lior)
【 “You revenge against the nobles was too halfhearted! What you did to those aristocrats only hindered the country, you should have destroyed their family name and honor instead!”】(Sirius)
【 “……hmm”】(Lior)
【 “You were reported to the king several times before, right? This whole thing is just a consequence of that. You didn’t try to justify yourself properly and you carelessly took risks instead, didn’t you just get too excited?”】(Sirius)
【 “Certainly so. However it would have been useless to justify myself because there were too many aristocrats blaming me, it’s my first time being told that I acted halfheartedly.”】(Lior)
【 “A student shouldn’t die before his teacher, that’s why It’s very important to improve the pupils’ environment and make it suitable.”】(Sirius)
Though it’s just my opinion, I think that creating an appropriate training environment is also the teacher’s duty. The aristocrats are certainly bad, but the old-man who ignored them and looked down on them is bad as well. He didn’t just have to guide his students, he also had to watch their back while they were still inexperienced. That applies even more when there are only a few of them.
As a former teacher, it should be alright for me to make a sermon or two, right?
【 “Hmph, that’s difficult to hear. You’re just a boy, how would you understand?”】(Lior)
【 “I certainly am a child. Still, I’m aiming to become a teacher. You should admit your mistakes as the one standing on top.”】(Sirius)
【 “You want to try to become a teacher at your age? Though you have some wonderful ambition, you’re not likely to become one with your half-baked ideas.”】(Lior)
【 “Then, maybe you should give it a try yourself?”】(Sirius) (TLN:if you didn’t get it, he’s insinuating that what he did in the past wasn’t worth being called teaching)
I provoke him while letting out a small overpowering feeling. Even I think that I’m being too blunt but, the old-man squints his eyes and his mouth gets just slightly distorted.
【 “Good, I knew that you weren’t an ordinary fellow, you’re finally showing your true colors.”】(Lior)
Somehow, there is a fight-like atmosphere and the old-man is fired up now, excellent.
Let’s have him show me the abilities of the one called the strongest.
After leaving the house, we’re now facing each other with wooden swords in our hands.
Putting aside the old-man’s sword, the other seem to be suited for children and probably belonged to the dead apprentice. Though it looks like it hasn’t been used in a long time, he probably cherishes it because it has been treated with great care. I think that it’s likely to break if it’s used for a serious fight, but the material of this wooden sword seems very strong and best suited for training nonetheless. The grandpa is beaming with confidence and not worrying at all.
Though he’s an old man, he’s happily doing practice swings to warm up. The opponent I’m facing this time is like a demon, I’m glad to be able to fight against such a person. I actually craved for meeting someone like that, so there is no way I’m letting this old man retire.
【 “If you hit me even once, it’s your win boy. But don’t worry, I’ll hold back.”】(Lior)
【 “Why, thanks. But this handicap you’re giving me will be your downfall.”】(Sirius)(TLN:It’s a japanese expression so I just put the closest meaning)
【 “Cut it out, boy. Show me with actions, not words.”】(Lior)
Well, now that my plan is a success, I don’t need to badmouth him to provoke him anymore. However, I didn’t plan the rest of this, what should I do?
I’ll just try to make the first move for now.
I slowly walk toward him, then when I get two steps away from the old man, I focus all the power of my upper body to my feet and I dash at him. From a slow motion to a fast one, although he’s surprised, the old man responds to the unexpected attack and moves over instantly. As expected of the one titled as the strongest, he easily managed to read and dodge my move and trajectory. While he dodges, I slash the wooden sword down from his shoulder with my right hand, and I go aside. I then take some distance and as we pass each other by the side, I notice that the left hand I hit him on is shaking.
【 “Say, what if this was actually a knife?”】(Sirius)
【 “It would have been a fatal injury on a battlefield. My retirement made me grow dull, how shameful of me.”】(Lior)
He finally notices his negligence and smiles wryly while shaking his head. This should make things get serious. Looking at the old-man, a ferocious smile appears on his face and his muscles start inflating.
【 “I’m sorry. Yet, I’m thankful as well, boy. My heart almost got rotten! Wouaaaaah!”】(Lior)
The shock wave made by his roar shakes all the trees around.
Hey wait, Isn’t that too big of a change? He was just a lazy retired man a few minutes ago. Yet now, the strong pressure resulting from him just standing there is making all the demons and animals in the area run away in all directions.
This tension reminds me of the training with my teacher. I want to cry every time I recall the kumite in that hell, but I’ll put that aside for now. The preparations are complete. The old man finally got serious, from here on we’ll have a real fight.(EDN: Kumite is one of the three main sections of Karate, similar to sparring.)
【 “I’ve never seen this stance before. What school is it from?”】(Lior)
The old-man is holding his sword vertically pointing upright, it’s quite similar to the style called Jigen-ryū from my previous life.
The Jigen-ryū style is said to allow one to cut anything with a single blow. I think that it really fits this old-man.
【 “It’s not from any school in particular, it’s self-taught.”】(Sirius)
As for me, I’m hiding one hand behind my back and I’m holding my sword with the other, a peculiar stance that protects the body.
Though I was trained by teacher, she didn’t follow any school. However, she shined by nothing but her experience and changed her moves to suit each case. A style that changes depending on the situation. It’s a style that is quite convenient for me.
【 “Is that so? In that case, from here on, let’s go at it boy!”】(Lior) (TLN: For those who get it, he said “Ikuzo!”)
The old-man dashes at me by stepping only his tendons on the ground, and I activate my【(Boost)】in order to fast Guotsurugi.
Thus… a switch got turned on.
――― Lior ―――
Boring.
I always liked training and fighting, I kept getting stronger just because I liked it, and eventually, I became the strongest.
However, I also became empty.
Though there was no end to the people challenging me to get my title, they all sunk with a blow or two.
Too weak.
How long was it since my thirst for fighting had faded?
So boring.
Fire won’t burn without any firewood.
And like the fire wood, I kept waiting for a meeting with a worthy opponent.
And then one day, I realised that instead of waiting for it I could just make it happen.
Training disciples and raising them to fight against me. That was way more significant than just waiting. Though I immediately found some recruits, I only gathered noble brats losers who didn’t even know how to swing a sword. Even when there was some pupils that were somewhat better, they were removed by the other aristocrats’ influence. Some people even tried to bribe me to give them a student title but I shut those guys up with a single blow.
I decided that I shouldn’t wait for apprentices either and that I should look for some myself. I searched all over the world and kept looking for pupils in thirst for strenght. I was delighted when I finally gathered enough students. They got stronger and stronger every day. It was the first time I felt that happy besides when I fought.
However… the aristocrats destroyed all that.
I cut the right arm of the main culprits for revenge, but my mind didn’t clear at all. Even simple seeing aristocrats felt unpleasant.
I left the country in despair and I retired in a secluded sea of trees. I built a house, I fought with some demons, and spent my everyday life in a calm and peaceful way. However, I couldn’t fill the empty hole in my heart.
When the mind becomes weak, the body becomes weak as well. Even my favorite sword gradually started to feel heavy, I grew weaker because of the lack of any sense of danger.
And my empty days continued.
And then, I met a boy.
It was a confusing and nonsensical child. (TLN: From this point on, I just rushed the translation)
Even experienced adventurers rarely set foot in this forest, yet he casually passed by here with a light attire like he was just going to the neighboring town. I thought he was a new variety of demon at first so I gave off some bloodthirst, then I thought he was some idiot noble who came to visit me. It’s rare to meet someone who doesn’t know me on this continent, I was quite interested in that boy who didn’t recognize me even after seeing me, though he understood who I was after I revealed my name to him.
The boy was quite mature for his age and he had good taste in tea, too. It was my first time meeting someone after so long as well so, I became quite talkative.
However, I actually ended up getting preached. I noticed that he was provoking me and I answered to his provocation in order to educate that impertinent boy. I thought I could just wait for an attack, dodge it and hit the the kid lightly on his head, however, he was just leisurely walking for some reason. It was my first time seeing that kind of action.
I absentmindedly watched the boy leisurely approaching me then he suddenly appeared in front of me and got into my range. I almost fell down on the ground from the surprise and my heart was pounding strongly. If it was the old me, I would never have let him get this close. I was surprised by my weakness, but I managed to barely move away. I dodged that attack but the boy hit me at my side right after and then took some distance.
【 “Say, what if this was actually a knife?”】(Sirius)
Those words made me angry. Not towards the boy but towards myself.
What on earth am I doing? This arrogance, it’s the same as those fools’ from the past. Though he didn’t actually stab me, that blow woke me up. This fellow is not a simple child, he’s a strong person worthy of being my opponent, I now understand that. I disappear and a blazing fire takes my stead, my body starts to pulse with heat.
This sensation…… I missed it.
I apologized to him, thanked him and we then took a fresh start. This boy…. no, this guy, it’s someone I can get serious with. He doesn’t belong to any school either, he’s holding a stance that I’ve never seen before. He should join my school【(Tsuyoshi Yabu Itto-Ryu)】.
“Tsuyoshi Yabu Itto style” “First technique: Heaven’s strenght”
It’s a basic technique that consist on raising the sword and then swinging it down with all one’s strength
It’s nothing but a simple downward string, but it can easily slice and cut iron once studied thoroughly. Though its trajectory is easy to read, it’s difficult to avoid it because of its speed and the overpowering feeling given off by the full-out blow.
It can’t be avoided because of its simplicity.
In fact, most of my opponents were beaten by this. But, what about this fellow? I step cautiously because of the fissures on the ground and I use heaven’s strength…it’s dodged. Moreover, he avoids it at the very last moment by merely shifting half of his body to the side. I leak out a smile over his ability to surely dodge that kind of strikes reflexively.
Immediately after, I aim for the opponent and slice at him with a downward swing, I’m using the “Ninoken Tsuyoshi-Shō”. He twists his body and avoids this on as well. Though he tries to use the momentum of the evasion to attack me, I raise back my sword and use it to defend myself
Not only he avoided both of my attacks but now, my chances of losing are bigger since I also have to watch out for counterattacks.
My blood is boiling more than I thought. The opponent surely made me give him my best. The fellow is using the【(Boost)】magic to compensate for the difference in physical strength. Though I had an opponent who used that in the past, It’s my first time seeing a complete use of【(Boost)】. No, this doesn’t matter for now. (TLN: The boost is generally used partially, like, on one hand or one arm)
I’ll go all out now and give the best I can.
(TLN: From here on, I rushed the translation, I’ll correct that tomorrow)
“Eight Slashes Breath” “Rannoken-Chiyabu.”
He blocks half of the slashes with his sword and he dodges the remaining ones.
I plunge mana in the sword and create an extensive shock wave, “Yabuno-kenshōha”.
I use this chance to pass him by the side, I try to attack him but he moves back outside the reach of the impact. I swing down forward and he dodges by jumping backwards.
Oh…… It doesn’t connect, none of my techniques connect.
Haha, splendid! I can’t stop my heart from dancing. This is incredibly fun.
A competition using both power and skill, a fight to the extreme with both parties clashing at full strenght. Power is returning to my weakened body, and being able to sharpen my senses and use my techniques is so pleasant. The strong man I longed for for so long has appeared at last.
What Goutsurugi? What strongest? Isn’t there someone clearly superior to me right here?
I want to fight with my beloved sword, not with some wooden one.
I don’t want us to withdraw after one hit, I want us to fight until we attain a clear victory or defeat.
I want to put on my armor, I want to fight desperately with life and death at sake.
I want to keep fighting forever.
My revived heart spits out desires one after another, but this old body hits it’s limit. My breath is ragged, and I am clearly on the defensive side. This body is far past its prime, but because I did not neglect my daily training, I should be able to fight a little longer. It seems to by the price to pay for the time I spent rotting away.
If only I had met him sooner… No, it’s too late to say that isn’t it?
He attempts a strong attack aimed at my neck but he stops, jumps backward and puts a lot of distance between us. Strange, he could have struck me with his sword using that momentum. As I establish a steady breath while questioning his actions, he also just stands there, exhaling deep breath and he raises a single finger.
【 “We’re both at our limit. Let’s put an end to this.”】(Sirius)
【 “…… All right”】(Lior)
Is that so? Is this fellow at his limit?
Though his appearance didn’t change, I can see that his breath is getting rough little by little and his arm is slightly shaking, showing that he’s indeed at his limit. And I only noticed it just now, even his skill for concealing tiredness is wonderful.
The thing is that, if we keep fighting like this, I’ll get exhausted and he’ll win just from his tenacity. Nevertheless, he took some distance and declared that we’re ending this. I’m really thankful. Then, I’ll honor that graceful gesture.
I fix my disordered breath, I take a Heaven’s Strength stance again and grasp the sword. All right, here I come. I will show him the strongest blow I can pull off in my current state.
The fellow accelerates at a dash in a frontal way without trying to pull any petty tricks. Though I surpas him in power, I don’t know what will happen against this opponent whose movements I can’t read. He uses his momentum from running and swings his sword as if he’s scooping something up, while I just naively swing mine from the top to the bottom.
A crushing sound echoes throughout the area, and our wooden swords crumble to pieces. Could they not withstand our attacks any longer? Whether that’s it or not, I just leak out a sigh and enjoy this time of supreme bliss.
But I was foolish. This fight… isn’t over yet.
The moment I look at the pieces of wood flying about, the guy’s foot catches my jaw.
Ha ha…..
There was no reason for the fight to end when the weapons broke.
I see his foot move slightly and at that moment, my consciousness fades away.
AdvertisementsBuy Photo The Springfield School District's early childhood special education center at 2525 West College Street. (Photo: Valerie Mosley/News-Leader)Buy Photo
Of the $1.9 million Missouri spends annually to reimburse school districts to lease certain buildings across the state, 85 percent — or just over $1.6 million — goes to Springfield and Nixa.
That, the state now says, is out of whack.
The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education wants to rein in costs by capping the reimbursement rate for such leases.
"It got my attention," said Deputy Education Commissioner Ron Lankford, who has proposed placing a limit on the annual amount. "I did not view this as a sustainable model. It is a lot of money."
In the early 1990s, the state mandated districts provide early childhood special education to eligible children, ages 3 and 4. But, as the result of a lawsuit, the state was required to fully reimburse districts for that cost.
Districts could also seek state reimbursement to buy or build facilities for the program and the amount was based on a formula that took into consideration the number of children served and the square footage. However, when assistance was sought to lease space for the program, there was no funding cap in place.
"I became concerned that there weren't really similar parameters on what was paid," Lankford said. "It was more 'Send the bill and we'll pay it.'"
Nearly two dozen districts currently receive reimbursement to lease space for the program, and those annual amounts — if you take out Nixa and Springfield — range from $7,000 in Fair Play to $106,000 in Columbia. Most leases are less than $25,000.
Annually, Nixa is reimbursed $875,000 for a new building located behind the Faught Administration Center and Springfield is reimbursed a total of nearly $830,000 for two buildings.
Springfield's leases include $687,729 for the Shining Stars Early Childhood Center, a renovated grocery store at 2525 W. College St., and $150,000 for the Bright Stars Early Childhood Center, a renovated church at 3447 W. Farm Road 168 in southwest Springfield.
"They are the outliers," Lankford said.
Springfield was the trailblazer. In late 2010, the district worked with Wheeler Enterprises, Inc., a company owned by developer Curtis Jared, to find a space that could serve as the headquarters for its early childhood special education program. It touted the ability to bring a wide range of resources and staff — previously scattered around the city — under one roof.
A couple of years ago, Springfield entered the second lease with Wheeler Enterprises, Inc. At roughly the same time, Nixa was working with the same developer to build a new facility on school property.
Springfield and Nixa school officials contacted by the News-Leader stressed that each of the three leases went through an extensive vetting process at the state level and were ultimately approved.
"There were no red lights along the way whatsoever," said Nixa Superintendent Stephen Kleinsmith, who gave the News-Leader copies of Nixa's correspondence with the state regarding the lease. "At no point were there words of caution."
Officials in both districts expressed frustration that changes are now being suggested — long after the leasing deals were made — that are expected to dramatically reduce the state's reimbursement amounts and force districts to make difficult decisions.
State education officials, led by Lankford, crafted a proposed "rule" to reimburse districts for "a reasonable amount" to lease space for the early childhood special education programs.
So what is a reasonable amount? Just over $11 per square foot, Lankford said.
If that change is approved, annual reimbursement would drop to $62,000 for Nixa and a total of $170,000, to cover both leases, for Springfield.
So what will happen to those leases?
"That is all a local decision," Lankford said, acknowledging that districts are facing quite a dilemma. "Each district will have to determine how they are going to react."
Carol Embree, Springfield's chief financial and operations officer, said at this point all options are on the table. The district could break its leases, try to renegotiate lease amounts, come up with local dollars to cover the leases or attempt to buy the buildings.
"One option would be that we'd explore a purchase proposal," she said.
Nixa has an extra complication because the early childhood special education center it leases was constructed on school property. The building, paid for by the company, is leased back to the district.
Kleinsmith said providing services to these children will continue, one way or another. He remains hopeful the state-approved lease for the Nixa facility will be grandfathered in, even if the reimbursement rate changes for the rest of the state.
"I have no problem with (the state) making the rule change, but I have a problem with them bringing us down in the process," he said.
Any proposed state "rule" is required to go through a lengthy public comment period before it can be submitted to the state Board of Education for approval. The proposal is now being revised, based on those comments, and is expected to go to the state board as early as May.
But, even if a change is approved soon, it isn't expected to take effect until July 1, 2016.
"It gives us a little bit of time," Embree said "I'm not in panic mode about that. I appreciate that we have time."
Developer Curtis Jared, president and CEO of Jared Enterprises, Inc. and Wheeler Enterprises, Inc., said he is watching closely to see how the state revises the rule and will work with both districts to explore options based on the outcome.
"We will have well over a year before we do anything," said Jared, confirming the districts have the option of breaking the leases.
He said the work the company put into preparing or building the centers is "something we have done to benefit early childhood special education programs and the children in them."
"It's one of those tough situations," he said.
Read or Share this story: http://sgfnow.co/1GnBFsCThe turbulent priest is back to cause more trouble for the government. In his initial statement on the St Paul's protest, Rowan Williams pointedly noted that "the urgent larger issues raised by the protesters... remain very much on the table". His thoughtful article in today's Financial Times is an attempt to address them.
Lamenting that there has been "little visible change in banking practices" since the crisis, the Archbishop calls for a Tobin tax on financial transactions as a part of a series of measures to reflect "the moral agenda" of the protesters. It is a welcome and long overdue recognition that, whether or not one agrees with their tactics, the protesters' cause is just. As Williams writes, their protest has been welcomed "by an unexpectedly large number of people as the expression of a widespread and deep exasperation with the financial establishment that shows no sign of diminishing". At the same
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unveiled for the first time in July, senior naval officer Captain Simon Petitt said: 'What we will get as the United Kingdom is the most amazing piece of military capability that really will be flexible and be able to provide our politicians and our military planners with choice, depending on what comes in the future.
'They provide a real joint defence asset to deliver air power using the freedom of the world’s oceans to influence what happens on land.'
HMS Queen Elizabeth in all her glory: An artists impression reveals the decks of new 65,000-ton Royal Navy warship that will be able to carry 2,300 crew and enough space to transport 36 F-35 Lightning fighter jets
The massive vessel will be as long as twenty eight London buses which is three times bigger than Britain's previous biggest aircraft carriers
Since work began in 2007, an estimated 10,000 shipyard workers and engineers have been employed in building the ship which will employ a crew of fewer than 700 once complete
Reflecting on the construction work carried out to this point, he added: 'It’s just fantastic. I arrived here over a year ago and there was one relatively small block in the dock.
'The ship now is structurally complete and it’s been really exciting watching her come together. My crew are just as excited and proud as I am.'
The Queen Elizabeth Class Carriers are part of the Aircraft Carrier Alliance, a joint venture between BAE Systems, Thales UK, Babcock and the UK Ministry of Defence.
Project manager Steven Carroll, the systems delivery director for the Alliance, said: 'It’s a huge undertaking, a UK-wide national endeavour involving up to 10,000 people, including multiple companies within the alliance and the supply chain.
'It really has been a long journey, a fantastic journey, to get to this point and there is a lot more work to be done as we get ready for the second ship, Prince of Wales.'
Six shipyards around the UK have been involved in the project to build the HMS Queen Elizabeth which is currently based at huge Rosyth Docks in Scotland
Last summer 80,000 tons of steel, 3.4million yards of cabling and 90,000 pipe spools had already been used in the construction of the ship and work is still underway to bring the project in on its estimated £6.2billion budget
The queen unveils HMS Queen Elizabeth with Prince Philip in a ceremony on the Firth of Forth in July. The ship will be launched for sea trials in 2016Rush Limbaugh speculated on his show this week that President Trump could eventually be the end of CNN. Their animosity for his is so great that they’ve destroyed whatever credibility they once had.
Limbaugh: Could Donald Trump Be The End Of CNN?
RUSH LIMBAUGH: Could Donald Trump be the end of CNN? What a legacy that would be…
Three CNN members of the new investigative unit have resigned, i.e., been fired. One of them is a guy named Thomas Frank. This for the fake news, the bogus story on Anthony Scaramucci supposedly having a link to a Russian bank system, colluding with them to help Trump doing whatever. It turned out to be total BS, like everything else that CNN has reported with this Russian story.
Eric Lichtblau, who, they got this guy from the New York Times, a Pulitzer Prize winner. He leaves the New York Times going from print to the big screen of TV and is now out. I’m sure the Times will take him back with open arms.
Thomas Frank, who wrote the story — the name might ring a bell. This guy wrote a book way back when called What’s the Matter With Kansas or What’s Wrong With Kansas? He is an active, uber-leftist. He despises conservatism, and his book about What’s the Matter with Kansas, What’s Wrong With Kansas, was his befuddlement over how middle class Americans in Kansas would vote Republican and thereby vote against their own self-interest…
Listen to the whole thing below:
Rush knows politics and media better than almost anyone. Could he be right?
By Mike LaChance Posted on June 28, 2017Ordinary investors don’t stand much chance of beating the market. It moves way too fast and efficiently. Or it behaves in ways that make no sense at all.
Three Americans won the Nobel prize in economics Monday for their sometimes-contradictory insights into the complexities of investing.
Eugene Fama and Lars Peter Hansen of the University of Chicago and Robert Shiller of Yale University were honored for shedding light on the forces that move stock, bond and home prices — findings that have transformed how people invest.
Fama’s research revealed the efficiency of financial markets: They absorb information so fast that individual investors can’t outperform the markets as a whole. His work helped popularize index funds, which reflect an entire market of assets, such as the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index.
Shiller’s research examined asset prices from a contrasting angle. He showed that in the long run, stock and bond markets can behave irrationally, reaching prices that are out of whack with economic fundamentals.
Shiller, 67, predicted the dot-com crash of the early 2000s and the implosion of home prices in 2007.
Hansen has focused on statistical models, creating ways to test competing theories of why asset prices move as they do.A fraudster who pretended he was in a coma was caught by police (Picture: WALES NEWS SERVICE)
A fraudster claimed he was a quadriplegic and faked being in a vegetative state for two years.
Alan Knight, 47, of Swansea, conned his elderly neighbour out of £40,000 and claimed he was unable to move from the neck down in a bid to avoid being punished for the crime.
He was caught out when doctors watching his hospital room spotted him eating, wiping his face and even writing.
Caught out (Picture: WALES NEWS SERVICE)
He was also caught on CCTV pushing a shopping trolley around a Tesco store and driving.
The father-of-three’s wife, Helen, kept up the act by being pictured ‘caring’ for her ‘comatose’ husband.
Det Con Paul Harry, from South Wales Police, said: ‘In my entire career this is the most calculated, long-term deception of a vulnerable, elderly neighbour I have ever seen.’
Even his wife played along (Picture: WALES NEWS SERVICE)
Knight had been due to stand trial but admitted the 19 counts of theft and forgery.
He was warned he faced a jail sentence next month.Recently, in an interview with BBC News, Stephen Hawking warned that artificial intelligence could soon end mankind, stating "Humans, who by slow biological evolution, couldn't compete and would be superseded" (feel free to jump to the bottom of the article if you're interested in watching the video interview).
It seems concerns over artificial intelligence and robots have increased over the last year, as there have been discussions and real life examples which warrant such debate. While this claim of impending doom is still theoretical at this point, a more sensible concern is the impact of robots taking our jobs, which one can argue may be the beginning of such a fate. Below are just a few discussions and examples that prove this point:
Back in March, Bill Gates spoke with the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in a recorded interview, stating:
"Software substitution, whether it's for drivers or waiters or nurses … it's progressing.... Technology over time will reduce demand for jobs, particularly at the lower end of skill set.... 20 years from now, labor demand for lots of skill sets will be substantially lower. I don’t think people have that in their mental model." Source: Business Insider
The Economist also wrote a story on the future of jobs and described a future where robots have replaced human workers in many different fields. Based on the information provided from the article, Business Insider posted an article showing a chart with the likelihood that robots will take your job in the next 20 years. You can see the chart below:
The other side of the discussion is the idea that while robots may take over repetitive jobs and procedures, somebody has got to make sure they are working and oversee them. That would surely create more jobs, right? But how many people do we really need to watch or maintain well designed machines that don't need to eat, make mistakes (by design anyhow), or threaten to go on strike? Over time these machines/robots will need less oversight as they will be able to handle things themselves and correct their own mistakes.
Aside from the discussions, we have already had real accounts of robots replacing human workers. In fact, Jett Goldsmith from Neowin wrote an article about 10,000 robots being deployed on assembly lines for Foxconn, a Chinese company, to replace jobs held by average every day people. According to an article posted 3 years ago, Foxconn plans on extending that to up to one million robots. Given the history of employee suicides at Foxconn, those plans may be a very real possibility.
Last but not least, the online retailer giant Amazon is also fascinated with robot workers, deploying as many as 10,000 robots in its warehouses for efficient stocking and inventory retrieval, and also famous for their attempts at delivering packages via drones. It looks like Amazon will keep following this trend as they've had great success in their efficiency using these machines.
For your convenience, here are the video interviews discussed in the article above:
Stephen Hawking Interview: "AI could spell end of the human race"
Bill Gates Interview: "From poverty to prosperity: A conversation with Bill Gates"
What will the future hold for our jobs when the next generation robots and intelligent machines appear? Discuss in the comments below!
Source: Business Insider | BBC News | AEI | Image credits: Business Insider (chart) | Betaboston.com (leading image)Texans suffered greatly under the Hurricane Harvey’s aggressive landfall, with many people being left homeless, stranded or left with no basic necessities, such as food and/or water.
To aid the victims was a woman who brought a total of 400 hamburgers to the site and divided them to locals isolated from the rest.
This, however, didn’t seem appealing to the Red Cross, which decided to call the woman out on bringing the food there in the first place, and what they did next represents a pure absurdity at its best.
Lindsay Scott was able to bring 400 hamburgers to those affected by the heavy floods with a little help from a pilot, who volunteered to help out.
Scott, a Texas-born, was appalled to learn what the Red Cross had in store for her, saying their treatment was hostile, to say the least.
My sister says I can use her FB page to get something off my chest if I identify myself lol. This is Lindsey Scott, and… Posted by Jamie Mitchell Matuska on Saturday, September 2, 2017
‘I’m astonished at the behavior of the Red Cross husband/wife team at the mid-county Jack Brooks airport yesterday. Who together accosted me and took turns berating me because I was trying to bring 400 warm hamburgers to our hungry evacuees, who according to them did not need the food because they had “already had a sandwich.” Yes, they had 1sandwichh in 24 hours. They were desperate for a hot meal! The Red Cross proceeded to try and load the warm, ready to eat burgers into an ice chest.
The pilot, who had donated his time, fuel, money, plane and arranged the delivery of the burgers was horrified at not being able to serve them (he actually came to volunteer as well). I confess I just stood there with my mouth gaping open, fighting back tears while they told me that I did not know what I was doing and they had not even seen me volunteering. This is not a normal reaction for me but either exhaustion or pregnancy hormones got the best of me because I simply couldn’t find the words to fight back…,’ she said.
‘The Red Cross was not there at 6:30 am when we got there to find we had no food to serve the 100s of evacuees who had sat on a bus all night and some who had not eaten in 24 hours. They were not there when the sun came up and they woke up hungry, angry, tired, scared, and frustrated. They did not see them fighting over donuts that OUR friends and family answered the call to bring at 7:00 am. They did not see the tears over dehydrated babies while we worked to arrange the delivery of Pedialyte and formula.
They showed up HOURS later…. when we had already coordinated the delivery of food and supplies with our LOCAL community members (who came out in droves) and The Sky Hope Network through our wonderful State Representative Dade Phelan after just a single phone call. And the reason they didn’t see me (sweating and sunburned) is because I spent most of the day on the aviation side of the airport on the tarmac coordinating the landing, unloading, and transport of supplies the Sky Hope Network was flying in all day. (which was no easy feat considering the insane, chaotic state of the Jerry Ware terminal).
I do not care they weren’t there (I understand the vast, severe, damage that ranges from Corpus, Rockport, Houston all the way to Louisiana). I do, however, care how they treated the people of our community when they arrived!’ she continued.
‘These supplies/donations were made by OUR LOCAL community members and the Sky Hope Network (not the Red Cross) and the Red Cross wanted them all shipped to their warehouse for processing and distribution. Apparently, they don’t do “local distribution.” Say what?! We need these things here, locally, NOW. And while we refused to turn away anyone who came on foot or by other means (evacuee or not) or any other church, group, or organization asking for supplies…the Red Cross tried to prevent us from sharing OUR donations (contributed by our community for our community and surrounding areas). The kids that are barefoot, need shoes NOW, not two weeks from now…and we had more than enough to share.’
‘And the way, these two representatives of Red Cross treated local people who were donating their time (many in the wake of having lost everything of their own) and spending countless hours away from their kids and families in the wake of such tragedy hurts my heart. I pray this is not representative of the Red Cross organization as a whole.
People who donate their money would be horrified. I’m thankful for our local volunteers who continued to fight with them (when I could not) and saw that the burgers and supplies were distributed to ALL those that needed them. As OUR motto was, we turn no one away,’ she explained.
The Red Cross was called out on numerous occasions about not doing enough or obstructing what other were doing to help Texans during the crisis.
Also, many reports suggested the Red Cross does not use all aid received during a particular crisis but sets aside monetary funds, which go to the organization’s personal benefit.
This goes to show that we do, indeed, live a semi-crooked society, ran by liberals. I wonder, doesn’t humanity strike them as necessary at times?A man who police say was driving a stolen pickup truck left a trail of damaged vehicles and shaken witnesses in Ottawa's Alta Vista neighbourhood on Wednesday before he was arrested about six kilometres away.
Batool Hussein was driving near the intersection of Bank Street and Johnston Road when she saw an orange pickup truck approaching quickly from behind. She said the driver attempted to squeeze between northbound and southbound traffic, ramming into her car.
When the driver refused to stop, Hussein said she followed, honking her horn and trying to get a picture of the truck's licence plate.
"My adrenaline kicked in so bad, I had to follow him. Because if I stop, he's taking off, no witnesses," she said.
Hussein said an off-duty police officer noticed what was going on and began tailing the pickup. Other police cars joined the chase, eventually cornering the truck around 11:40 a.m. behind an apartment building on Rockingham Avenue in Alta Vista.
<a href="https://twitter.com/Ottawa_Traffic">@Ottawa_Traffic</a> hey- what's going on??? Almost got hit by a orange runaway truck! Full police chase on now! <a href="https://t.co/8yKE1eaYdx">pic.twitter.com/8yKE1eaYdx</a> —@theresaeellwood
'I thought it was a nightmare'
Kait Shannon and Hayden Murphy were awakened by crashing sounds outside their first-floor apartment window at 1166 Rockingham Ave.
"I thought it was a nightmare. It felt like one," Shannon said. "We just heard all this smashing back and forth. It was like this guy was playing ping pong between the car and the building. It was crazy."
Murphy said he saw a police officer trying to pull the driver from the truck, then back away as the driver made his escape, smashing into parked cars and the building's basement laundry room window.
Resident Ryan Burt said he watched as the truck slammed into a black police SUV that had blocked its exit.
"The truck threw it into reverse, backed into the police vehicle, and then the police came out of the vehicle, telling him to stop, put the vehicle off," Burt said.
"And then the guy threw it into drive, then he [came] up over the grass," Burt said.
Officer's gun drawn, witness said
Another witness, Kevin Sawatsky, said the police officer in the black SUV had his gun drawn when he ordered the driver out of the truck.
"He was shouting, 'Get out of the vehicle! Get out of the vehicle!'" Sawatsky said, before the pickup truck jumped a curb and sped away through an adjacent parking lot, with the police SUV in close pursuit.
Residents say at least half a dozen other police vehicles joined the chase at that point.
"Six or seven cop cars must have shot by" on Rockingham Avenue, Shannon said. "It was a high-speed, intense chase."
Ottawa police take statements from witnesses after a stolen truck crashed into several vehicles on Wednesday. (Stu Mills/CBC)
The truck was eventually found abandoned near the intersection of St. Laurent Boulevard and Lancaster Road, close to the Elmvale Acres Shopping Centre, about a 10-minute drive northeast of Rockingham Avenue, Ottawa police Const. Marc Soucy said.
The suspect was arrested nearby at about 12:40 p.m.
Cornwall police said the pickup truck was reported stolen from a residential area of Cornwall, and described the vehicle as a "company truck."
Soucy said Cornwall police were able to track the vehicle because of its GPS. He said that information was sent to Ottawa police and officers converged on the area where the vehicle was supposed to be travelling.
"Every time he'd spot a cruiser or see a cruiser approaching him, he'd do whatever he can to evade that police car — either pushing another car aside or going through an intersection or red light," Const. Soucy said.
Ottawa police say they aren't releasing details on the suspect's identity, pending charges.
They say no police vehicles were damaged in the pursuit. Police are still assessing the damage to property and are asking any witnesses to call investigators at 613-236-1222, ext. 3566, or phone Crime Stoppers at 613-233- 8477 (TIPS); toll free at 1-800-222-8477.
There have been no reports of injuries.Third Ashes Test: Australia v England
Venue: Perth Dates: 16-20 December Start time: 0230 GMT
Coverage: Listen live on Test Match Special on BBC Radio 4 LW, 5 live sports extra and online; live highlights (UK only) and day's review on the TMS podcast; text commentary on BBC Sport website and mobiles; live on Sky Sports 1
Beer: 16 first-class wickets at an average of 39.93 for Western Australia Left-arm spinner Michael Beer was a surprise selection as Australia dropped Marcus North, Doug Bollinger and Xavier Doherty for the third Ashes Test. Beer, who has made only five first-class appearances, is joined by leg-spinner Steve Smith in a squad of 12. Pacemen Ben Hilfenhaus and Mitchell Johnson, who played at Brisbane but were dropped for the defeat by England in Adelaide, are back in the reckoning. And left-handed opener Phillip Hughes comes in for the injured Simon Katich. Smith, viewed as a genuine all-rounder in some quarters, seems certain to start the Perth Test, which begins on 16 December, since no batsman has been picked to replace North, Australia's misfiring number six from Brisbane and Adelaide. Beer will also play, unless Australia - desperate to win at Perth to get back on to level terms in the Ashes - pick four specialist seamers. Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. He came into first-class cricket in his mid-20s and has only 16 first-class wickets at an average of 39.93, five of which came in England's tour match against Western Australia. He had won the backing of Australia's greatest ever spinner Shane Warne, but it is not clear whether the selectors were swayed by his opinions. Australia's chairman of selectors, Andrew Hilditch, said. "Michael is a left-arm orthodox spinner who has been very impressive at domestic level this year. He took wickets against England in the tour match earlier this summer and we expect he will bowl very well against the English on his home ground." Beer, 26, plied his trade in Melbourne club cricket until the end of last season, when he moved to Western Australia in an attempt to launch his domestic career. He said: "I'm very much stoked and surprised. I don't think it really sank in until I rang my parents and blurted it out myself and thought, hang on, what's going on here?" WA coach Mickey Arthur said: "I'd certainly like to see the selectors pick one spinner now and stick with him. Oliver Brett's blog It's a schizophrenic selection. We cannot say it is a bad one, because Australia could win at Perth, and then it would be one of the great selections
"I think he'll probably get an extended run now. He's got a way to go, he's young in the game, but in a year's time he'll be sensational. He'll be able to handle anything that international cricket throws at him." One man who will definitely play at the Waca is Hughes, who made four and zero in his most recent first-class match but was always favourite to replace Katich. The veteran left-hander will miss the rest of the series with an Achilles tendon injury. Smith has played two Tests, against Pakistan in England in July, when he was chosen as a leg-spinner in the absence of the injured Nathan Hauritz. Hilditch said of his decision to drop North, following scores of 1, 26 and 22 in the first two Tests: "This is obviously disappointing for Marcus who has played some outstanding Test innings for Australia. "But it was felt to be the right time to bring the exciting prospect Steve Smith into the Test team. Steve has already had success at international level and will also add to the bowling depth with his leg-spin bowling and dynamic fielding." Hilditch added: "Johnson and Hilfenhaus will be strongly considered for selection in Perth, where conditions will suit them." Nathan Hauritz has been left out in the cold by Australia's selectors Former Australia fast bowler Geoff Lawson was critical of the selectors' thinking, labelling Beer as "just a fledgling". Lawson told BBC Radio 5 live: "There are a lot of respectable spinners around in Australian cricket. Last week Hauritz played in Perth, took five wickets and bowled really well. "Two leg-spinners, Jason Krejza and Bryce McGain, don't seem to be in favour. There are a number of other decent bowlers but the national selectors don't want to persevere with them." Looking at the return of Johnson and Hilfenhaus just one match after being dropped, Lawson added: "In his last six or seven Tests Johnson has been poor, but he wasn't even allowed to play for Queensland against Western Australia in the match starting on Saturday. "It is bizarre thinking from the coaching staff and selectors to put him back in the team when he has been bowling poorly for some time and has only had net work, whereas someone like Doug Bollinger has been Australia's best bowler for the past 12 months. "He had a poor game in Adelaide but so did quite a few others and they have discarded him on the evidence of one Test match. So it is quite confusing. There is a lack of consistency, a lack of clear process and you can only believe that come next Thursday in Perth there will still be a lot of confusion." Australia squad: Ricky Ponting (captain), Michael Clarke (vice-captain), Shane Watson, Phil Hughes, Mike Hussey, Steve Smith, Brad Haddin, Michael Beer, Ryan Harris, Mitchell Johnson, Peter Siddle, Ben Hilfenhaus.
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Ben Affleck testified before the Senate on Thursday about his philanthropic efforts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo — but during the serious testimony, he also hinted that Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy has a role in his upcoming “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.”
“I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge my co-star in ‘Batman,’” Affleck told the Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs, referencing Leahy. “[Your] role is marginally smaller than mine, but I understand that you are quite good.”
Leahy’s a major Batman fan who’s appeared in three of the superhero films, including “Batman & Robin” with George Clooney and “The Dark Knight Rises” with Christian Bale. (The pol’s tiny roles included “Board Member #2,” and he’s even voiced a character in an animated Batman series.)
Affleck was at the Senate along with Bill Gates to testify about public-private partnerships benefitting the Congo. He founded Eastern Congo Initiative, which is about to launch a program to aid 15,000 farm families there.British consumers admit that they are confused about exactly what household waste they can recycle, a new poll reveals, with plastic wrapping, mobile phones and disposable coffee cups at the top of their list.
Frustrated by what they can and can’t recycle, 63% of householders are puzzled that different councils collect waste in different ways - for example, using different colour bins - while 43% say they are not sure which days to put their bins out.
Nearly three-quarters (73%) said they would welcome more transparency about what happens to their waste, according to the survey of 1,500 adults, by waste management company Viridor. It found there was generally low public trust in local authorities which oversee collection facilities.
Dan Cooke, director of external affairs at Viridor, said: “People across the UK want to recycle more, and recognise the importance of doing so, but they need better systems and support to ensure the right stuff goes in the right bin every time.
“We believe that greater transparency in the recycling and waste sector is crucial to rebuilding confidence with UK consumers to support them with recycling.”
The poll revealed that UK consumers believe that in five years’ time up to 64% of household waste can be recycled, compared with current recycling levels of around 44.3% in England.
Consumers said they were generally confused about whether they could recycle thin plastic wrapping (56%), mobile phones (52%) and disposable coffee cups (51%) although crisp packets and lightbulbs also ranked highly among their concerns.
It emerged earlier this year that only around one in 400 coffee cups are recycled, with the rest sent to landfill. The BBC recently reported on a huge rise in the amount of material put out for recycling being rejected because it is contaminated.
The British Retail Consortium, the trade body for UK retailers, said new labelling would help consumers work out what could be recycled and what cannot.
“Encouraging householders to put packaging in the right bin is fundamental to maximising recycling and minimising costly contamination” said Lee Marshall, board member of the On-Pack Recycling Label. “The labels give people the right nudge as they dispose of packaging. Linking local collection services to the labels people see on packaging will help councils increase recycling rates, avoid costly landfill taxes and reduce rejection rates at recycling plants.”
Cooke said the UK’s recycling policy remained “largely based on outdated assumptions” and called on the government and local authorities to come up with new and ambitious thinking “that moves recycling, recovery and resource management closer to the needs of consumers and to a more productive economy.”
A spokesman for the Local Government Association said: “In the past decade, councils and residents have worked together to radically increase recycling and divert millions of tonnes of waste from landfill.
“The problem is there is widespread confusion over what can and cannot be recycled. If just one non-recyclable item is included with recyclable items, the whole bin is effectively contaminated. Councils then have to re-sort it, which is time consuming and very expensive.
“There is no one-size-fits-all solution to waste collection. What works in an inner-city suburb won’t necessarily work in the countryside.”Izvor: N1
- Kakva je to veličanstvena kultura bila, ta Hrvatska! – uzdahnut će stari neki Jacques Cousteau kad jednoga dana za petsto godina, ili hiljadu, roneći uz srednjodalmatinsku obalu iznenada na dnu ugleda morskom florom obrasle impozantne skulptorske kompozicije drevnog kulta Isusa Krista i Majke mu Marije.
- Možemo samo zamišljati – ponovit će zadivljeni doajen kad se vrati na istraživački brod – kako je ta fantastična civilizacija morala izgledati pred petsto ili hiljadu godina, prije nego je uslijed otapanja ledenjaka završila na morskom dnu!
- Zapravo – nakašljat će se na to mlađi jedan profesor kasnokršćanske arheologije, oprezno ispravljajući uglednog kolegu - ovo je oduvijek i bilo na dnu.
- Kako mislite, oduvijek?
- Ovo je zamišljeno da bude na morskom dnu, i sagrađeno je na dnu – odgovorit će ovaj, pokazujući vrijedan arheološki artefakt pronađen na obali, razmjerno dobro sačuvan komad papira s kojega će naglas pročitati na drevnom hrvatskom: - „Prvi i jedini u svijetu projekt 'Križni put pod morem'! U nedjelju 27. kolovoza 2017. godine u Općini Marina u uvali Jelinek, pod visokim pokroviteljstvom Hrvatskog sabora, upriličit će se svečano otvaranje prve postaje Križnog puta na morskom dnu, s početkom u 11 sati.“
- Sereš! – otet će se starome Jacquesu.
- Evo, pogledajte i sami – bit će ga profesoru malo i žao.
- Zašto bi, za boga miloga, itko normalan gradio Križni put na morskom dnu?! – nemoćno će se zaprepastiti ovaj.
- Nemamo nikakvu ideju – nemoćno će ramenima slegnuti profesor. – O drevnoj Hrvatskoj do sad nismo znali ništa.
- Do sad?
- Da. Sad barem znamo zašto je propala.
Tako je, učit će se na katedrama kasnokršćanske arheologije, drevna hrvatska katolička kultura u svojoj terminalnoj fazi dotakla dno. A kad profesori povijesti i arheologije studentima budu tumačili kako je dotakla dno, mislit će baš na fizičko, morsko dno, najdublju egzaktno izmjerenu točku opće hrvatske propasti.
Zašto bi, za boga miloga, itko normalan gradio Križni put na morskom dnu, sve otada pitat će se nemoćna svjetska arheologija, jednako kako se pitamo i mi danas, u nemoćnoj tuposti gledajući kako se potpredsjednik Sabora Milijan Vaso Brkić s jahte „Gold Digger“ – što je engleski izraz za ono što mi zovemo „sponzoruša“ – sapet u ronilačko odijelo spušta u deset metara duboko more i pod visokim, hm, gold-diggingom hrvatske države na dnu uvale Jelinak kraj Trogira svečano pušta u rad Županijski sud u Jeruzalemu, sa sve impozantnim betonskim figurama Poncija Pilata, Sina Božjeg i ostalih iz kompozicije „Suđenje Kristovo“, prve od četrnaest epizoda „Križnog puta pod morem“.
Već na sljedećoj postaji senzacionalnog hrvatskog „prvog i jedinog u svijetu 'Križnog puta pod morem'“, kao u kakvom Coppolinom kadru - već ga vidim negdje u podmorju Velog Drvenika – golemi će betonski Ponzio Pilato u nekoj pizzeriji u talijanskoj četvrti Gerusalemmea prići golemom betonskom kralju Herodu Velikom, zloglasnom judejskom bossu Erodeu Ascaloniti zvanome „Il Grande“, što za betonskim stolom prekrivenim kockastim stolnjakom, okružen golemim betonskim mafijašima zalizane kose, u potkošulji jede betonske špagete bolonjeze.
- Šta je na kraju bilo s onim Isusom? – tobož nezainteresirano pitat će betonski Erode.
- Tutto bene - odgovorit će betonski Ponzio, pa se nagnuti bossu nad uho. – In Sicilia dicono, dorme con i fisci.
„Isus spava s ribama“, tako je u tumačenju hrvatskoga podvodnog bogoslovlja – shvatit će na kraju svjetska historiografija - riba postala simbol kršćanstva. „Isus Krist spava s ribama“, zvat će se valjda posljednja, četrnaesta postaja jedinstvenog „prvog i jedinog u svijetu 'Križnog puta pod morem'“. Čim se, jasno, razjasne sitni neki nesporazumi između prve i posljednje postaje, poput „Veronikinog apsurda“, teološkog problema kojega je iznio moj drug Ivica Đikić, pitajući se kako bi i zašto uopće na šestoj postaji Križnog puta pod morem Veronika rupcem brisala Kristu znoj s lica.
Ako je, naime, „projekt Križni put pod morem“ zaista „prvi i jedini u svijetu“, ako u svih dvije hiljade godina kršćanstva nikome nigdje i nikada nije pala na pamet takva kolosalna budalaština – a govorimo o kulturi kojoj je padalo na pamet i ukazivanje Isusa u mortadeli, i Gospa koja svijetli u mraku, i svetački kipovi što plaču krvavim suzama – ako se dakle takva jedna idolatrijska kultura nikad u cjelokupnoj svojoj povijesti nije dosjetila postaje Kristova Križnog puta složiti na dnu mora, onda je, jebiga, vjerojatno postojao dobar razlog za to.
Svašta su drugo Hrvati mogli „prvi i jedini u svijetu“. Mogli su, štajaznam, „prvi i jedini u svijetu“ osloboditi kulturu svih poreza. Mogli su „prvi i jedini u svijetu“ cijelu državu pokriti besplatnim bežičnim internetom. Ako im je pak bilo baš do Križnog puta, mogli su ga „prvi i jedini u svijetu“ složiti u svemiru, ili ga sagraditi nanostrukturama od atoma ugljika. Nekidan, baš istog onog dana kad je potpredsjednik Sabora u ronilačkom odijelu otvarao podvodni Križni put, novine su javile o riječkom neurokirurgu koji je „prvi i jedini u svijetu“ pacijentu ugradio 3D printani kralježnjak i premosnice na krvnim žilama mozga, pa ipak nismo vidjeli hrvatsku državu kao visokog pokrovitelja, ni Vasu Brkića kako sapet
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before assuming you know more about their life than you actually do.
2. Gay pride is why Sodom fried.
I once read about a group of Christians who protested a gay pride parade. One of the protestors held a sign that said, “Gay pride is why Sodom fried.” The message assumed a particular understanding of Genesis 19, where God destroyed the city of Sodom. According to this protestor — and according to many Christians — God destroyed Sodom because its residents were gay.
But they weren’t. There’s nothing in Genesis 19 that talks about gay people. The main sin committed in Genesis 19 was attempted gang rape. And I don’t know any gay person who’s trying to justify gang rape. In fact, whenever Sodom is mentioned elsewhere in the Bible, the city is usually described as being inhospitable and not caring for the poor — an ironic description of many straight Christians.
Sodom has been associated with homosexuality since the beginning of Christian history. For years, the term sodomite referred to men who had sex with other men. But there’s nothing in the Bible that says the people of Sodom were having sex with other men. While it’s true that they attempted to have sex with other men in Genesis 19, this was an act of domination, not attraction, like when one male prisoner may rape another male prisoner as a display of power.
Inhospitality and not caring for the poor is why Sodom fried.
3. The gay lifestyle is wrong.
Too often, the terms gay (or homosexual) are quickly followed by the word lifestyle. We need to be careful with this term. Lifestyle. Does every gay person have the same lifestyle?
Think about it. How would you feel if someone talked about the straight lifestyle and then lumped you into a category with every other straight person who walks the planet? I think you’d probably resist such a label, since you are a unique person, not some clone cut out of straightness.
I think what people really mean by lifestyle is sex. After all, gay and lesbian people live the same lives as straight people. They work, they play, they eat and sleep. Both gay and straight people have gay and straight friends. So when people talk about the gay lifestyle what they may really mean is gay sex. But how do you know that gay people are having sex? Are you peeking in their window? Should someone call the cops?
The discussion about homosexuality is much more complex than just a conversation about sex. So let’s drop the lifestyle lingo.
4. We need to stand against homosexuality.
Much of what evangelicals get wrong about homosexuality has to do with our language. There’s an old saying that goes, “Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me.” This is a terrible lie. Words have the power to heal and to hurt, to comfort and to kill, to push someone off the edge of a 20-story building. Or in the words of Albus Dumbledore: “Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic. Capable of both inflicting injury, and remedying it.” Just ask your gay or lesbian friends if they’ve ever been hurt by words hurled at them by other people. And then ask them if those people were Christians.
This is why broad-brushed phrases like “the sin of homosexuality” or even worse “the abomination of homosexuality” can be so damaging. If you’re a 13-year-old kid who’s wrestling with same-sex attraction, and you hear that “Jesus is against homosexuality,” you will very easily conclude that Jesus is against you. Unfortunately, this is the conclusion of many gay teens who grow up in the church.
As Christians, we need to be much more careful and precise with our language. Again, the Bible prohibits same-sex behavior. And as Christians, we should be clear about this. But the Bible also — and much more pervasively — prohibits withholding Christ’s love from those who don’t agree with us.
5. Quoting the Bible settles the issue.
Twenty years ago, a debate about the Christian view of homosexual behavior could be settled by simply quoting the Bible. But this is no longer true. You may find this shocking, but most books written about what the Bible says about same-sex relations conclude that the Bible does not prohibit consensual, monogamous, same-sex relations. This doesn’t mean they’re right. (I don’t believe they are.) What it means is that many scholars and writers are affirming same-sex relations by studying the Bible.
Today, the debate is not about what the Bible says but about what it means. Christians need to do the hard work of interpretation and not sluggishly rely on quotation if we are going to truly understand what God says about same-sex relations.
Preston Sprinkle is the author of People to Be Loved: Why Homosexuality Is not Just an Issue.
Image courtesy of Shutterstock.From swinging rocks to kangaroo mating rituals, let the Grasshopper guide you past the myths and into turns like this in 2017. Image:: Provided
Australian Seasonal Snow Outlook | The Grasshopper
It’s that time of the year again. The sun is getting weaker and our minds are starting to wonder if this year will be THE ONE. Parts of the Northern Hemisphere are still enjoying some epic spring skiing after a bumper winter. This is my first forecast of the season giving you a taste of what is to come. Will we be able to replicate Western North America’s winning streak and make our Aussie Season Great Again, or are we in for another almost-but-not-quite season? Dust off your old ski gear, take a long hard look in the mirror and prepare yourselves for another emotional rollercoaster of a season.
Myths and Chairlift Gossip
Before I get into the nitty gritty part of my analysis I thought it’d be fun to look at some weather myths and uniquely Aussie tall tales. There are as many weather myths out there as there are wannabe pros on the Kosciuszko express. One guy that I’ve talked about before and that you hear quite a bit about on the slopes is Ullr – the god of snow. We pray to Ullr in desperate times. In Breckenridge, Colorado, they will be celebrating their 55th annual Ullr fest in January next year. In fact, after a bit of further investigation it seems that Ullr is the god of hunting and married Skadi – the goddess of winter and mountains! They say that behind every successful man there is a woman, in this case, it turns out to be true.
Another common phrase you are likely to hear in the resorts is “Australia never gets powder”. This is untrue. Admittedly this isn’t the “Greatest Snow on Earth” but we do get the odd beaut’ of a day. The most crucial factors needed to form good powder are cold temperatures and dry air. The Aussie Alps proximity to the ocean often hampers cold dry air formation such as in the Rockies but we do occasionally get the right combination of conditions to give us a great powder day. I could write a book on this subject but to find out more check out this past article and get the lowdown from a pro.
Forget forecasting science, this emu knows something we don’t about the upcoming season. You can see it in her oh so pretty eyes. Image:: Bernadette Camus, Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary.
Some of the more uniquely Australian weather myths relating to the winter season are that female Kangaroos ‘present’ early if it is going to be a cold snowy winter or that if the snow gums are really pink it means we are in for a bumper season. Some of the roos sure do look hella angry when they get caught in the snow but what do you think? The jury is out. Jumping from myth to hard science let’s see what some of the big climate drivers are looking like for the upcoming season…
El Nino Hanging in the Balance
The first thing to know about this upcoming season is that we have about a 50% chance of an El Nino developing. I know, I know, it’s like you’ve just got through Christmas and you find out the mother-in-law is also visiting for Easter (no offense to you lovely mother-in-laws!). Merely uttering the words ‘El Nino’ sends shudders down my thorax. But we still have plenty of reasons for hope. Most international climate models have us reaching the El Nino threshold at some point during the winter. Classic El Nino events are not great news for the Aussie Alps, they are associated with nasty highs parking their fat arse over the region blocking off all the juicy snow-bearing fronts to the south.
The bad hombre himself – A classic El Nino strangling an Aussie season to death causes higher than average pressure to settle in SE Australia (large image). Typical SST anomalies associated with El Nino Conditions in 2015 (inset). From shock to anger – Very, very bad. Image:: NCEP
Double Trouble
Sometimes we get a double dose of ass-whopping. The Indian Nino (or the Indian Dipole as it is more commonly known) is the see-saw in sea surface temperature anomalies between the Arabian Sea and the South of Indonesia. Generally speaking, a negative IOD gives us wetter than average conditions in South Australia while a positive IOD does the opposite. While the IOD is currently neutral most international climate models (not BOM) forecast it to turn positive for the second half of winter possibly increasing the chances of a drier than average period reinforcing the effects of a developing El Nino.
Reasons for Hope – Pray to Skadi anyone?
We are currently still hanging onto neutral ENSO (El Nino Southern Oscillation) conditions. That means that the Pacific Ocean is doing what you’d expect during a normal state (what is normal anyways?).
SST Anomalies – Water temperatures near the South American coastline are well above average but we are still experiencing neutral ENSO conditions as evidenced by the expanse of beige in the Central Pacific compared to the inset image shown earlier. Image:: BOM
It is entirely possible that neutral ENSO conditions prevail throughout the entire winter. Neutral years register on average 20cm more snow than either La Nina or El Nino years. Even if an El Nino does develop it is likely to be weaker than the bully we saw in 2015. No two El Nino’s are the same. We have our “classics” and then the “wrong’uns”. Wrong’uns deliver much more snow than you’d expect compared with a normal El Nino year. During a wrong’un the juicy lows to the south cosy up to the Aussie Alps and westerly winds blow our worries away resulting in huge grins all around and a happy Reggae Ellis. 1992 and 2004 are good examples, they registered 316 cm and 216 cm of snow respectively.
Even if our worst fears do come true and we end up with a classic El Nino re-enforced by a positive IOD then we can expect plenty of clear cold nights which will be good for snowmaking. In any typical winter, we can still expect a few storms to roll up and give us decent 20cm+ dumps of snow.
At the very worst atleast we’ll have prime snow making conditions, something Australian Resorts know how to do very well. Image:: Provided
My Final Thoughts…
Long range forecasting is a dark art and every season is different so don’t go expecting black and white answers. However… I am going to forecast a slightly worse than average season this year based on the initial climate model forecasts which hint at a developing El Nino going hand in hand with a positive IOD event. Time will tell if this materialises. The models are notoriously fickle at this time of year and the picture should become clearer in the next couple of months. Let’s go for 160cm peak snow depth against a long term median of 176cm. It’s still definitely going to be worth getting the season pass as we are bound to get our fair share of epic days,. There is still a lot of uncertainty in the forecast and snowmaking is coming of age. To end on a more serious note, I have done a brief analysis of peak snow depths from 1971 to 2016 and we can see that there is a slight downward trend in peak snow depth. This is perhaps the subject for another post entirely but it shows the worrying effects of climate change. Be sure to check back in on next month’s forecast when the climate models will have a firmer grip on El Nino, the surf will be up and all will be well with the World.
That’s all from the Grasshopper. We’ll update this outlook at the beginning of May as the excitement builds. If you’ve got a different theory on what’s going to happen this winter, or just want to provide feedback, then please hit me up on the discussion below. Or you can follow me on Facebook.
Plotting the peak snow depth’s from 1971 to 2016, although there is wide variation from year to year the trendline shows a steady decline. Image:: Snowy Hydro
Perisher forecasts,
snow reports and
live snow cams.
Falls Creek forecasts,
snow reports and
live snow cams.
Mount Buller forecasts,
snow reports and
live snow cams.
Charlotte Pass forecasts,
snow reports and
live snow cams.
Thredbo forecasts,
snow reports and
live snow cams.
Mount Baw Baw forecasts,
snow reports and
live snow cams.Last year, I redesigned the S&P+ ratings to both incorporate more factors (primarily those related to the Five Factors) and snap more properly onto a bell curve. The results were pretty good -- the opponent adjustments are more sound, win probability projections were outstanding, and S&P+'s performance against the spread was about as good as always (~52%). As I am a tinkerer, I've already got a couple more ideas to try, so I might be updating the updates soon. At some point, I should probably try to stop doing that.
One of the things I wasn't happy with when it came to this year's S&P+ ratings was that I ran out of time in the offseason and couldn't tease out special teams ratings as I wanted to. As it stands, factors like field position (which obviously draws from kicks and returns) and finishing drives (place-kicking) are incorporated into the offensive and defensive ratings, even though that isn't a perfect fit.
Well, this isn't a perfect fit either, but it's a start: Below you can find what I'll call a beta version of Special Teams S&P+ ratings. They don't actually fit into the overall formulas yet, and it will probably take quite a bit of tinkering to get to that point, but I finally found a moment to go down this road a bit.
What should special teams efficiency ratings measure?
Let's start with that question. We can get a pretty good feel for special teams by using the go-to measures -- punting and kicking averages (and maybe touchback rates), return averages, FG percentages, etc. And if you want to go further than that, you've already got Brian Fremeau's ratings to fall back on; I've referenced them frequently through the years.
I had a vision of my own that I wanted to pursue, however, and it revolves around the same success rate concept that make up such a large portion of my offensive and defensive ratings.
Special teams is the ultimate small-sample exercise.
Kickoffs
We determine good and bad kick or return teams based on just a handful of samples. For instance, the five worst teams in the country by opponent kick return average were Texas State, Arizona State, Georgia State, Hawaii, and Missouri. These five each allowed at least 26.5 yards per return, which is quite bad. But the five also covered an average of just 22.6 returns in 2015, fewer than two per game. The top three rushers in college football averaged more than 22.6 carries per game.
With such a small sample, just one or two big returns can drastically skew your averages. Hawaii, ASU, and Texas State each allowed a kick return touchdown, while eight other teams allowed two and Louisiana Tech allowed three.
Really, though, what happens after about 30 yards is pretty random, just as big plays are to some degree random on offense and defense. Your goal as a return unit is to get your man to about the 30 or 40, then hope he's able to find an angle that allows him to go much further; your goal as a kick coverage unit is to hem the guy in before he gets to that point.
So what happens if we eliminate onside kicks and judge a kickoff or return unit by simply how frequently returns were hemmed in at a certain baseline?
On average, kickoffs netted about 40-41 yards per kick in 2015. Since touchbacks net 40 yards, the median falls in the same range, too. So what if we simply deemed kickoffs that net 40 yards or more a success? And what if we deem returns that create net yards of 39 or fewer yards successes in the opposite direction?
Top 10 kick coverage teams per Kickoff Success Rate
1. UCLA (92.9%)
2. Memphis (91.9%)
3. Ole Miss (91.6%)
4. Georgia Tech (90.3%)
5. New Mexico (90.3%)
6. Georgia Southern (89.9%)
7. PItt (89.9%)
8. Florida State (89.3%)
9. SMU (88.5%)
10. Alabama (88.3%)
The three teams in italics were also in the top 10 for kick return average, but the other seven were not.
Judging kicks in this rather simple way changes how we view kick coverage in general. A healthy 38% of kickoffs are touchbacks on average, and if you're really good at booting the ball through the end zone, you don't have to really worry about how good your coverage unit is -- you're producing good field position regardless, and that's the primary goal here.
UCLA allowed a pretty poor 23.8 yards per return in 2015, 112th in the country. But the Bruins were pinning opponents at or inside the 25 on about 23 of every 25 kicks, so who cares?
Bottom 10 kick coverage teams per Kickoff Success Rate
128. Old Dominion (26.4%)
127. California (43.5%)
126. South Florida (43.9%)
125. Oregon State (45.8%)
124. Kent State (45.9%)
123. Louisiana Tech (50.0%)
122. Toledo (50.6%)
121. Western Kentucky (50.9%)
120. San Jose State (52.2%)
119. South Alabama (52.4%)
Kent State and SJSU were among the bottom 10 in average return allowed. The other eight were not.
Meanwhile, Old Dominion allowed 'only' 19.8 yards per return, 37th in the country. But only 1.9% of the Monarchs' kickoffs were touchbacks. A 20-yard return gets you pretty far if you're fielding it at the 10.
But looking at net kickoff yardage (instead of just return yards) and focusing more on success rates than averages, we get a better view of the teams that were most consistent.
So what about returns? If we eliminate touchbacks and non-returns and simply deem a successful return as something that results in an unsuccessful kickoff, what do we get?
Top 10 kick return units per Return Success Rate
1. Tennessee (74.1%)
2. Auburn (70.6%)
3. Iowa (68.6%)
4. Kansas State (68.0%)
5. San Diego State (67.6%)
6. Stanford (67.3%)
7. Arkansas State (65.9%)
8. Marshall (65.5%)
9. South Florida (65.0%)
10. Southern Miss (64.3%)
Five of 10 were also in the top 10 in return average. As you would probably assume, there's more continuity there.
Bottom 10 kick return units per Return Success Rate
128. Florida (15.2%)
127. Wake Forest (16.7%)
126. Missouri (21.1%)
125. Buffalo (22.9%)
124. Georgia State (23.1%)
123. Ole Miss (23.5%)
122. Arkansas (23.7%)
121. New Mexico State (24.2%)
120. Virginia (25.6%)
119. Virginia Tech (26.5%)
Again, five of 10 were in the bottom 10 in return average.
Think for a moment, however, about the advantage or disadvantage this can generate. The worst return team (Florida) was getting out past the 25 on only three of 20 returns on average; the best (Tennessee) was doing so on 15 of 20. Even at only two to four returns per game, that can generate a healthy field position margin by itself.
Punting
Punting is a little bit trickier to measure since it doesn't take place from the same spot on the field every time (well, almost every time). The average punt netted about 37.3 yards in 2015, but depending on where you're punting from, that average shifts dramatically.
Here's a look at the average net punting yards in 2015 by yard line (i.e. punting when you're lined up at the 1 or the 28 or the 49 or whatever).
That's a pretty perfect polynomial right there. If you're punting with your feet in the end zone, you might be taking a shorter approach to make sure you get the kick off. If you're punting from the opponent's 40 -- and yes, it is okay to sometimes do that -- then setting the bar at 37.5 net yards is pretty tough (here's your reminder that touchbacks cut 20 yards from your net).
So for determining punt success rates, what if we just set the bar based on the trend line above? If you're punting from the 1, a successful punt nets more than 33.2 yards. If you're punting from your 35, it's 39.5 yards. From the opponent's 45, 31.5. This gives you a moving target and doesn't punish punters who end up taking more snaps from their end zone or from deeper in opponent territory.
So what does this produce?
Top 10 punt units per Punting Success Rate
1. Oklahoma (57.9%)
2. Florida State (55.7%)
3. Florida (53.6%)
4. Arkansas (53.5%)
5. Syracuse (52.2%)
6. UCF (51.5%)
7. UL-Lafayette (49.2%)
8. Idaho (49.0%)
9. San Jose State (47.9%)
10. Hawaii (47.3%)
Only two of these teams -- FSU and SJSU -- were also in the top 10 for punting average. Consider this Cason Beatty's Redemption, as FSU's much maligned punter had one hell of a fall. Meanwhile, everybody's favorite fat punter, Utah's Ray Guy Award winner Tom Hackett, ranked only 20th when it came to meeting this bar with frequency. He had a cannon for a right leg (48.0 yards per punt), but maybe the driver isn't always the best club to use.
Bottom 10 punt units per Punting Success Rate
128. Southern Miss (10.2% -- wow)
127. NMSU (14.3%)
126. SMU (14.5%)
125. Middle Tennessee (15.2%)
124. Maryland (16.2%)
122. Bowling Green (16.7%)
122. Western Michigan (16.7%)
121. Ball State (16.9%)
120. Baylor (17.1%)
119. Washington State (18.4%)
So what about returns? Because punters sometimes try to avoid awesome return men, I was tempted to include punts out of bounds in the sample here, but for now, let's just do what we did with kickoffs: look at punt returns that result in unsuccessful punts.
Top 10 punt return units per Return Success Rate
1. Ball State (76.9%)
2. Marshall (73.9%)
3. Fresno State (72.7%)
3. Iowa State (72.7%)
3. Navy (72.7%)
6. UL-Lafayette (72.0%)
7. Georgia Southern (71.4%)
8. Toledo (69.6%)
9. FIU (68.4%)
10. Utah State (68.2%)
And for inclusion's sake...
11. Alabama (67.4%)
And on the other end of the spectrum...
Bottom 10 punt return units per Return Success Rate
128. Georgia State (10.0% -- wow)
127. UConn (20.0%)
126. Clemson (21.1%)
124. Colorado (25.0%)
124. Oregon State (25.0%)
123. Air Force (26.7%)
122. Bowling Green (28.6%)
121. LSU (29.2%)
118. Purdue (30.0%)
118. Ole Miss (30.0%)
118. Oklahoma State (30.0%)
Again, the spread between consistently successful returns and consistently unsuccessful ones is pretty large, especially considering that punts are more frequent than kickoffs for most teams.
Place-kicking
Since you don't get partial credit for field goals -- "well, that was pretty long, and he came pretty close, so it was a successful kick" -- we have to take a different approach for place-kicking, I think.
Luckily, there are direct point expectations based on a given distance. On average, for instance, college kickers made 83.9% of 28-yard field goals in 2015. Multiply that by the three points a field goal is worth, and you have an expected point value of 2.52. Give him a few kicks, keep track of the expected and actual point values, and boom. You've got a Net Point Value kind of FG metric. Divide it by the number of FGs he takes, and there you go.
(It's a little bit more complicated than that, simply because I'm using a regression equation to determine the appropriate percentages, but it's not much more complicated than that.)
Top 10 place-kicking teams per FG Net Value per Kick
1. Western Kentucky (0.61)
2. Utah (0.56)
3. Stanford (0.53)
4. North Carolina (0.49)
5. Duke (0.46)
6. Clemson (0.46)
7. Appalachian State (0.46)
8. Notre Dame (0.45)
9. Oregon (0.45)
10. Kansas State (0.45)
Bottom 10 place-kicking teams per FG Net Value per Kick
128. Wyoming (-1.23)
127. Purdue (-1.06)
126. Florida (-0.88)
125. Boston College (-0.65)
124. New Mexico (-0.64)
123. Bowling Green (-0.60)
122. NC State (-0.59)
121. Rice (-0.54)
120. Kansas (-0.53)
119. Charlotte (-0.51)
Poor Wyoming kicker Tristan Bailey missed six of eight field goals in 2015. There's probably a reason he was only asked to attempt eight. (But hey, he only missed three PATs, so it could have been worse...)
So let's (finally) tie this all together.
Special Teams S&P+, beta version
Using the success rates discussed here for punts, kicks, punt returns, and kick returns, and using the net value method for field goals, we can begin to piece together what might eventually become a Special Teams S&P+ of sorts.
What you'll below are basically two stabs at that. You'll find that five sets of ratings, and you'll find a ST S&P+ and a Weighted ST S&P+. Since not every special teams category carries the same amount of weight -- there are usually more punts than kickoffs, and you don't have a return on every punt or kickoff -- this is an attempt to ascribe more importance to the more important pieces of special teams.
I started with the weights I referenced in this piece and started to tinker with them based on what made the ratings correlate more strongly with the overall S&P+ ratings (since that's where I'll be taking this, and since, again, pieces of special teams are already in the ratings).
I ended up with the following weights: 44% place-kicking (that surprised me), 24% punting, 14% kickoffs, 14% kick returns, 3% punt returns. That's what ended up with the best correlations, but that might not be where I end up. At first glance, that feels way too high for field goals and kick returns. For now, though, it works.
Team Punt
Succ. Rt Rk Kickoff
Succ. Rt Rk Punt Ret.
Succ. Rt Rk Kick Ret.
Succ. Rt Rk FG Net
Value Rk Wtd. ST S&P+ Rk ST S&P+ Rk Florida State 55.7% 2 89.3% 8 45.5% 77 56.0% 21 0.22 40 97.4% 1 97.1% 3 Duke 43.8% 16 72.8% 60 46.7% 73 52.6% 34 0.46 5 96.7% 2 91.2% 12 Appalachian State 41.2% 30 75.3% 48 33.3% 112 56.8% 17 0.46 7 96.7% 3 85.7% 22 Minnesota 41.3% 29 74.6% 55 33.3% 112 60.0% 12 0.40 16 96.3% 4 85.8% 21 Texas Tech 45.8% 13 80.4% 30 42.9% 88 49.1% 48 0.32 27 95.8% 5 90.3% 13 Memphis 41.1% 31 91.9% 2 60.7% 31 43.2% 73 0.38 19 95.5% 6 96.8% 4 Nevada 42.4% 25 70.1% 65 58.3% 33 50.0% 43 0.44 12 95.2% 7 93.6% 9 Central Florida 51.5% 6 75.6% 45 66.7% 12 60.0% 12 0.16 45 95.1% 8 98.7% 1 Kansas State 36.6% 52 70.7% 63 45.8% 76 68.0% 4 0.45 10 94.7% 9 88.4% 17 Stanford 35.4% 56 69.8% 67 41.2% 93 67.3% 6 0.53 3 94.5% 10 82.9% 23 Hawaii 47.3% 10 78.3% 37 57.7% 37 41.5% 78 0.31 29 93.7% 11 93.2% 10 Boise State 35.3% 57 85.3% 18 40.6% 96 48.3% 54 0.41 14 92.6% 12 82.6% 24 Western Kentucky 40.0% 35 50.9% 121 55.6% 42 51.3% 39 0.61 1 91.9% 13 80.2% 27 Auburn 26.9% 99 81.4% 29 66.7% 12 70.6% 2 0.43 13 91.6% 14 96.7% 5 Oregon 29.6% 88 83.8% 21 66.7% 12 51.7% 37 0.45 9 91.0% 15 95.3% 6 Utah 43.3% 20 65.1% 91 56.7% 39 35.0% 104 0.56 2 89.7% 16 75.0% 36 North Carolina 20.5% 116 86.4% 14 52.2% 52 61.3% 11 0.49 4 88.3% 17 89.2% 16 TCU 30.3% 85 84.0% 20 47.4% 68 48.6% 53 0.39 17 87.1% 18 80.9% 26 South Alabama 38.6% 43 52.4% 119 50.0% 58 52.5% 35 0.41 15 86.8% 19 69.1% 39 Oklahoma 57.9% 1 79.4% 32 40.9% 95 42.4% 75 0.12 50 86.7% 20 77.2% 32 Idaho 49.0% 8 74.0% 58 45.5% 77 28.6% 117 0.29 32 86.2% 21 65.3% 46 Iowa 21.7% 114 81.9% 25 66.7% 12 68.6% 3 0.36 22 85.7% 22 94.4% 8 Air Force 25.4% 105 75.6% 46 26.7% 123 59.4% 14 0.44 11 83.3% 23 57.6% 55 Mississippi State 34.0% 65 77.6% 38 52.6% 51 47.2% 58 0.23 39 80.4% 24 80.0% 28 Connecticut 43.4% 18 64.2% 98 20.0% 127 34.5% 107 0.35 23 79.9% 25 30.3% 89 Team Punt
Succ. Rt Rk Kickoff
Succ. Rt Rk Punt Ret.
Succ. Rt Rk Kick Ret.
Succ. Rt Rk FG Net
Value Rk Wtd. ST S&P+ Rk ST S&P+ Rk Marshall 42.9% 23 86.8% 12 73.9% 2 65.5% 8 -0.13 90 79.1% 26 98.1% 2 Clemson 37.3% 49 65.7% 88 21.1% 126 36.1% 100 0.46 6 78.5% 27 27.9% 96 Temple 31.3% 80 66.3% 84 62.1% 26 51.3% 39 0.32 26 77.7% 28 78.6% 30 Miami-FL 37.9% 47 76.6% 42 45.5% 77 26.7% 118 0.31 30 77.0% 29 53.5% 61 Syracuse 52.2% 5 73.3% 59 52.9% 50 43.6% 71 0.02 67 76.5% 30 80.0% 29 Cincinnati 34.8% 61 67.4% 80 46.7% 73 46.2% 63 0.28 35 75.9% 31 57.4% 56 Virginia Tech 31.9% 77 84.2% 19 46.9% 71 26.5% 119 0.37 20 74.4% 32 54.9% 57 UCLA 25.4% 106 92.9% 1 50.0% 58 38.8% 91 0.37 21 73.7% 33 66.2% 43 Georgia Southern 35.0% 60 89.9% 6 71.4% 7 53.7% 25 -0.01 72 73.5% 34 94.9% 7 Louisiana Tech 39.3% 38 50.0% 123 56.3% 40 38.9% 87 0.33 25 73.2% 35 52.7% 62 Michigan 28.3% 93 85.9% 17 61.1% 29 57.1% 16 0.11 53 73.1% 36 90.3% 14 West Virginia 41.4% 28 70.2% 64 41.7% 90 53.1% 28 0.03 64 73.0% 37 65.8% 44 Texas A&M 36.1% 54 86.7% 13 57.9% 34 38.9% 87 0.12 49 72.7% 38 81.5% 25 USC 43.3% 21 74.7% 53 44.4% 83 48.1% 55 -0.01 71 71.2% 39 69.7% 38 Kentucky 35.1% 59 66.1% 85 54.5% 48 40.0% 83 0.28 34 70.8% 40 57.7% 54 Texas 34.2% 63 82.
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magazine, "Aren't mothers the real super heroes?"
DC Superhero Girls
This series reimagines DC characters as teens attending Super Hero High with students ranging from well-known Wonder Woman, Supergirl and Batgirl to the more obscure Bumblebee, Katana and Cheetah to everyone's favourite semi-villainous BFFs, Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy.
The female-focused franchise has by now become a full-blown pre-teen phenomenon with action figures, Lego sets, books and a cartoon as well as the graphic novels.
The Mighty Thor
Remember Thor's girlfriend Jane Foster from the movies? Well, in the comics Foster is the Thor, having assumed Norse godhood after the blond original became unworthy and could no longer wield the magical hammer Mjolnir.
While the Goddess of Thunder is as powerful as her male predecessor, that's only with the hammer in hand. When she reverts to her human persona, Foster finds herself fighting a much different battle with breast cancer.
Lumberjanes
This award-winning indie comic from an all-female creative team began as a limited series but its instant popularity and acclaim soon extended the run indefinitely. The comedic and action-packed series revolves around the titular girls Mal, Ripley, Molly, April, and Jo — best friends and bunkmates who attend Miss Quinzella Thiskwin Penniquiqul Thistle Crumpet’s Camp for Hardcore Lady Types, a summer camp plagued by monsters and assorted supernatural hijinks.
Patsy Walker, A.K.A. Hellcat!
This all-ages comic stars Patsy Walker, a character first introduced in 1944 who also appears on the very adult Netflix series "Jessica Jones." Dubbing herself Hellcat, Patsy's "powers include butt-kicking and butt-punching, which she learned on the moon, and more!"
Helmed by Marvel's only all-female creative team and inspired by both romance comics and Saturday morning cartoons, the soon-to-be ending series begins with Patsy laid off as an investigator for She-Hulk's law firm. Naturally, she starts a temp agency for other unemployed superheroes.
Zita the Spacegirl
This sci-fi graphic novel trilogy began as a webcomic about an Earth girl, aliens, and robots before taking off as a print bestseller back in 2010. The story begins with young Zita going to a distant, monster-populated planet to rescue her best friend from a doomsday cult before taking unexpected turns. Get on board now before the upcoming animated film sends Zita's popularity into outer space.
Captain Marvel
Carol Danvers started out as the original Ms. Marvel in the 1970s. Over the years she evolved into one of Marvel's most powerful superheroes, and will soon be helming the studio's first female-led film in 2019. She became Captain Marvel in Kelly Sue DeConnick's 2012 series that established her more prominent presence and the newest volume, by "Agent Carter" showrunners Tara Butters and Michele Fazekas, has her leading Alpha Flight and protecting Earth from extra-terrestrial threats.
This series ended last fall but the character returned a few months later with a new creative team led by bestselling YA novelist Margaret Stohl and a new title: Mighty Captain Marvel.
Supergirl
DC Comics has been rebooting their universe, which means that this new Supergirl comic starts fresh for new readers, and seems especially aimed at attracting fans of the hit CW show.
In this series, Kara Zor-El is only 16 and brand-new to the planet, so the comic explores her immigrant experience and lives up her classic motto: "Hope, help, and compassion for all."
Goldie Vance
This 1960s-set girl detective comic by writer Hope Larson and artist Brittney Williams builds on the work of Nancy Drew and Veronica Mars to tell the tale of Marigold "Goldie" Vance, a 16-year-old sleuth who lives with her divorced dad in a Florida resort he manages while her mom works downtown as a live mermaid (which, by the way, is a real job in Florida). When not in school, Vance spends her time solving mysteries for her mentor, the hotel's in-house detective.
Also on HuffPostWith President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration a week away, Pacific Business News took the temperature of local industries on their expectations of the new administration. PBN editor-in-chief A. Kam Napier has more.
Obviously, it’s a bit early to know precisely what the Trump administration could mean for various sectors of Hawaii’s economy. He hasn’t even been sworn in and his cabinet is still in the confirmation process. But the long campaign season gave plenty of hints, so we interviewed leaders in banking, energy, health care, real estate and transportation for their take. What are they looking for from the new administration? What are they hopeful about? What worries them?
Ed Pei, president of the Hawaii Bankers Association, hopes to see a new approach to banking regulation, one that consults more with the banking industry. The Dodd-Frank Act, passed in 2010 in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, contains both sensible protections worth keeping, in Pei’s view, but also regulations that are needlessly burdensome on smaller banks.
Mark Dunkerley, president and CEO of Hawaiian Airlines, has his eye on Trump’s promises to invest in infrastructure. For his industry, improvements in air traffic control systems would result in greater efficiencies for airlines and shorter flights for passengers.
Hawaii’s solar industry seems the most concerned about the Trump administration, worried that it will roll back incentives for renewable energy while supporting fracking. Colin Yost, partner with RevoluSun, says Hawaii has opportunity to lead by example, pushing ahead with its renewable energy goals.
Other executives weighed in health care and housing policies that they’re going to be watching closely.I, like many I know, moved far away from home for my recovery. My addiction was so deeply imbedded in my home town that I knew in order to give myself a fighting chance I needed to ship out in order to shape up. So, I went to treatment across the country from where I grew up. I left my home, my friends, my family back in New Jersey and I headed out west. First to Arizona and San Francisco, finally settling in Southern California.
My first Christmas in recovery was an “easy” one, I was in treatment. I spent my day surrounded by the wonderful people I had met there, we exchanged small gifts and went to a lovely dinner at the fellowship hall. Though I regarded my new support system as a kind of little family, I ached for Christmas morning with my own family back home.
My new way of life was very different from what my friends and family were used to seeing. Of course, everyone knew that I was recovering but did they really understand what that meant? Simply put, no. Every person who encountered me on my first trip home for the holidays had a different reaction to the “new me”. Some were funny, some were baffling, some were irritating, and some were upsetting. All were warranted. Our loved ones don’t get a rule book on how to treat us, it’s our job to patiently show them how. We have to lead them to their new role by example. Holding ourselves to the same standards we would in our “recovery bubble” while we’re back home.
Flights—
Airports and flying for the first time since getting clean can be a trigger especially when you’re on your own. If taking a sober friend with you isn’t an option, keep yourself busy. You don’t have to turn your phone on airplane-mode until just before take off. Use that time to face-time your family and tell them how excited you are to be on your way. Call a sober friend. Listen to your favorite podcast (and download a few to listen to on the plane). I like to keep a token of my sobriety on me while I’m traveling to remind me of all the hard work I’ve put in and why this trip is possible. Once you’re in the air, try to take a nap or talk to the person you’re seated with, tell them about you. I tend to tell anyone who will listen that I’m in recovery. Not only because I’m proud of what I do every day but because I then feel that much more accountable to not order a drink.
Don’t forget your routine—
Something I’ve picked up in my recovery is a strict morning ritual. Some may wake up, make their bed, pray, read, reflect and meditate. Some may attend a morning fellowship meeting or religious service. Don’t drop that just because you’re in a different place. Your recovery should follow you everywhere. Do your research before you leave for your trip. Find a fellowship hall or place of worship near where you’ll be staying. You may be surprised at how much recovery you’ll find in your own home town that you never knew of. If your routine consists of making your bed and praying every morning, do that. Even if you’re sleeping on a couch in your grandma’s attic. Fold up the blankets and take a second to think about what you’re grateful for.
Holiday Parties—
Before getting clean the holidays for me had always been a time where everyone got together to eat, drink and be merry. Eat. Drink. Be merry. Before I made my trip, the thought of a holiday party without a drink in my hand seemed absurd. Apparently, my folks thought the same thing. About a month before I was set to head back east, my dad called to get an idea of what to expect. He asked what I drank now that I didn’t drink alcohol. The first thing that popped into my head was sparkling apple cider. He got 18 bottles of the stuff. Yes. 18. Suffice to say, I always had a drink in my hand during holiday parties that year. I reworked that habit to fit my new life and it made me more comfortable. Another thing I did was ask the host how I could be helpful. Tidying up, checking on food in the oven, restocking utensil all kept my hands and mind occupied and kept the host from getting stressed. Win-win in my book.
Seeing Old Friends—
Before I made my trip, the thought of seeing my old friends gave me a lot of mixed feelings. On one hand, I missed them so much and I wanted to show them how far had come and how much I had grown. On the other hand, I knew they had not grown with me. They were doing the same things we’d done together just without me and that brought on mixed feelings all its own. Even with some recovery time, new coping skills and knowledge of my addiction under my belt I had no idea how I would react to seeing my old friends and no idea how they would react to me. Before I left, I told tons of people that I wanted to see them (because at that moment, I did). At the end of my trip, I had seen 2 people that weren’t my immediate family. Why? Because I put too much work into my recovery to put it on the line for anyone else. Once I realized that I wasn’t sure if I could trust myself around my old friends if they were to offer me a drink, realized that I’d have to love them from afar. The two friends I did see, I trusted myself with them, I trusted them, and I gave myself a way out just in case I felt uncomfortable. We met at a neutral location (read: not a bar or nowhere any of us had drank or used together), I brought my sister with me and we had a way to leave without having to rely on my friends. Always cover your bases and when in doubt, stay in. This trip may not be the one where seeing your old friends is in the best interest of your recovery. Keep building and strengthening your recovery daily, maybe the next trip you will have a different mindset about the situation. Always remember that your recovery should come first. Your real friends will understand that and the ones that don’t, they don’t deserve a place in your new life anyway.
So, in short, stick to what you know and what will hold you accountable to your recovery. Rework old habits. Be there for the ones that have been there and supported you on your journey. Stay safe. I hope this was helpful! Have you gotten the chance to go home before this holiday season? What are your tips for others going home for the first time? Anyone have any “home for the holidays” success stories they’d like to share?In the wake of the demonstration of a vulnerability in the "connected car" software used in a large number of Chrysler and Dodge vehicles in the United States, Fiat Chrysler NV announced today that it was recalling approximately 1.4 million vehicles for emergency security patches.
The company has already issued a patch on its website for drivers, and on Thursday it performed an over-the-air update of some vehicles to block unauthorized remote access, Bloomberg Business reports. The vulnerability, revealed in a report by Wired earlier this week, allowed security researchers Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek to take remote control of a Jeep Cherokee's onboard computer and entertainment system, remotely controlling the throttle of the vehicle while a Wired reporter was driving it at 70mph on a St. Louis-area interstate highway. Miller and Valasek also demonstrated that they could take control of the vehicle's brakes and (in some cases) even its steering, as well as the vehicle's windshield wipers, navigation, and entertainment systems.
The vehicles covered by the recall include the 2015 model year Dodge Ram pickup, Dodge's Challenger and Viper, and the Jeep Cherokee and Grand Cherokee SUVs. While Fiat Chrysler officials said that there was no known real-world use of the vulnerablity (outside Miller's and Valasek's proof of concept), they were taking the recall step out of "an abundance of caution."For the past two and a half years, I’ve been devouring every sandwich I can get my teeth on and documenting the delicious carnage at allsandwich.com. Why? Because just like you, I love a great sandwich. It’s the perfect meal any time of day, with endless variations of drool-inducing, ultra-tasty convenience. And when you add up our varied ethnic cafés, mom-and-pop deli shops and fabulous Strip eats, Vegas comes into view as a truly great sandwich city.
Choosing the best bites is no simple task. Parameters must be established. A top sandwich has to be built upon outstanding bread. To keep this list from getting too messy, no burgers, wraps or other alt-sandwiches were allowed. My favorites encompass a range of styles and ingredients from all over the Valley, though I tend to favor spots where sandwiches are the specialty.
So without further ado, here are the 10 best sandwiches in Las Vegas. Let the checklist eating begin.
Hot Pastrami Zoozacrackers. Wynn, 770-3365, $11.99. The story: We may not all agree on the best in town, but I know we’re on the same page when it comes to the absolute necessity of pastrami. Best sandwich meat of all time? I think so, and I’m going with the house-made stuff at Wynn’s deli, because it’s the perfect blend of fatty, peppery and smoky. And because I love to eat a giant sandwich in a fancy casino. Don’t you? The stuff: Just meat and mustard, baby: that beautiful, brilliantly pink pastrami stacked on soft rye, with a smear of spicy yellow mustard. The right time: Immediately before or after winning big in Wynn’s poker room.
Muffaletta Bread & Butter. 10940 S. Eastern Ave. #107, 675-3300, $8.75. The story: The breads and pastries at this Anthem-area brunchery are developing a cult following. Combine one of its most unique creations with a pile of Italian meats, and you’ve got a spectacular version of a New Orleans classic. The stuff: Muffaletta bread is traditionally a round Sicilian loaf. At Bread & Butter it’s like they built a sandwich with thick, toasty, buttery pizza crust as the foundation. Ham, capicola, mortadella and salami bring the bite to go with provolone and fontina cheeses, topped off with pickled veggie giardiniera and salty olive spread. The right time: Just before hibernation.
Torta Ahogada El Birotazo. 4262 E. Charleston Blvd., 888-0858, $7. The story: This Guadalajaran gem is the epitome of satisfying sandwich simplicity: a crusty, baguette-like birote, juicy pork and spicy, sublime sauciness. It’s absolutely worth the trip east to the tiny taco shop to discover this treasure. The stuff: A thin layer of refried beans and a succulent pile of carnitas is stacked on the dense, flavor-absorbing roll, then the whole thing is drowned in a light, tangy, slightly sweet tomato salsa. It’s not complete until you add blazing salsa picante, raw white onion slices and a squeeze of lime. The right time: Your hangover is raging. You need something spicy to sweat it out and kick-start your system. The torta ahogada is ready to provide sweet, porky relief.
Croque Madame Payard Patisserie & Bistro. Caesars Palace, 731-7110, $17. The story: I’m not sure if the French invented the ham and cheese sandwich, but they’ve certainly perfected it. Food writers use the word “decadent” all too often, but this crackly-cheese creation can’t be described any other way. The priciest dish in my top 10 is worth every penny. The stuff: Two sweet slabs of perfect brioche are saturated with Swiss and Gruyère, layered with ham and rich bechamel sauce and crowned with a sunny-side up egg. The right time: Since you missed Bastille Day, let’s go with any available Saturday.
Meatball Sub with Broccoli Rabe Eddie D’s. 6870 S. Rainbow Blvd. #114, 541-8792, $8.99. The story: Improvisation is essential in sandwich making. You must be able to mix and match your favorite flavors, and that’s what I’ve done at one of our city’s top Italian delicatessens. The folks at Eddie D’s tell me I’m the only one to create this combo … each time I order it. The stuff: Beautifully flavored beef and pork meatballs and long-simmered marinara sauce are stuffed into a hard sub roll, which gets softer as it soaks up the meaty, spicy flavors. The kicker: Add rich, garlicky broccoli rabe for a little bitter contrast. It’ll blow your mind. The right time: When you can’t possibly consume another tired Italian sub from those chain shops, recalibrate your senses at Eddie D’s.
Cheez Whiz Steak Pop’s. 501 S. Decatur Blvd., 878-6444, $8.99. The story: Las Vegas might not have an official sandwich, but we do have a great, authentic cheese steak, and Pop’s is the place. Rolling up to that crazy A-frame on Decatur for an outdoor meat-feast is something every Vegas foodie must experience. Customize if you like, but the original is unbeatable as-is. The stuff: A puffy-soft, 9-inch roll from the Amoroso bakery in Philadelphia, loaded with marinated, paper-thin sirloin saturated with grilled peppers and onions and tangy, gooey Cheez Whiz. The right time: Around 3 a.m., when your great night with great friends doesn’t want to end, and you need to recap over a hearty (cheesy) meal.
Catfish Sloppy Joe RM Seafood. Mandalay Bay, 632-7200, $15. The story: It was on Oprah. It was in Esquire. Whether or not this is our city’s most famous sandwich, Rick Moonen’s lunchtime treat is one of the craziest, tastiest twists you could ever put on a home-style classic. The stuff: Firm, meaty catfish sautéed with onions, bell peppers, paprika and barbecue sauce, piled high on a buttered bun with sliced pickles and potato chips. The right time: When the mood strikes for a power-lunch on the Strip, between some killer clam chowder and Moonen’s guess-the-flavor ice cream game.
Banh Mi Thit Cha Pho Thanh Huong. 1131 E. Tropicana Ave., 739-8703, $3.25. The story: The banh mi is one of the world’s great sandwiches, French-Vietnamese flavor fusion personified. There are plenty of Asian sandwich factories on Spring Mountain Road, but the strongest combo of beautiful baguettes with fine fillings can actually be found at this UNLV-area eatery. The stuff: A warm, crackling fresh baguette is stuffed with savory Vietnamese ham, thin slices of steamed pork, a slab of earthy pâté and a bit of mayo. Vegging it up are pickled carrot and daikon, crisp cucumbers, cilantro and raw jalapeños. The right time: Before payday. You don’t have to save up to treat yourself at Pho Thanh Huong, where somehow, dirt cheap equals delicious.
The Olympian Johnny McGuire’s. Where's Johnny McGuire's? Funny you should ask. The story: Johnny McGuire’s was the best thing about Town Square, an oasis of deliciousness amid all the mall madness. Consistency, fresh-baked bread and a nice balance of meats and veggies in every bite make all the difference. The aptly named Olympian is a true titan. The stuff: Grilled corned beef, turkey and pastrami—a holy meat triumvirate. Fresh, crunchy goodness comes in the form of coleslaw tossed in Thousand Island dressing, and grilled onions and peppers, melting Muenster and ripe tomatoes complete this powerhouse. The right time: During the Summer Games. Duh.
The Royal Naked City Pizza Shop. 3240 Arville St., 243-6277, $7. The story: It was named Best Sandwich in the 2012 Weekly Awards. If that isn’t enough street cred, consider that Naked City Pizza Shop, now located inside Moondoggie’s bar, started life as Naked City Sandwich Shop Downtown next to Dino’s. So yes, the pizza’s great, but the sandwich is the soul. The stuff: A smooth, sweet and savory combination of Italian sausage, delicate and slightly spicy capicola and fresh mozzarella on a huge sub roll. The right time: You’ve had a few too many at your favorite dive, and you’re looking for somewhere to soak it all up with some tasty meatcheesebread. And then you realize: You’re already there.This week, the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting begins in Davos and for the 20th time I find myself on my way there. In the years that I have attended this conference I have come to see it as a barometer of change in our times. It was in Davos that I first learnt about the Internet from MIT professors who talked in a language so futuristic I barely understood what they said. It was here that I sent my first email to a fellow participant without knowing that it would soon become the world’s main method of communication.
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India in 1995, when I first came to Davos, was still emerging from her socialist cocoon so I found myself bedazzled by the changes in technology and world affairs that we knew nothing of. Nobody talked much about India that year and you could count on the fingers of two hands the number of Indians there.
I remember that we drove to Davos that year from Milan through the Italian Alps on a cold, luminous day and by the time we got to the Fluella Pass that was the entrance to Davos there was a snowstorm and we had to drive back and take another route. My first impression of Davos on that dark, winter evening was of a small, unattractive town made magical by its thick blanket of snow. The Central Sports Hotel where we stayed was (and still is) a place of small, dismal rooms that were ominously reminiscent of an earlier time when Davos was known mostly for sanitariums for people suffering from tuberculosis. It acquired a certain dubious celebrity as this mountainous hospital town when Thomas Mann brought his wife to a famous sanitarium here and wrote about this experience in his novel The Magic Mountain. When I went cross-country skiing on my second day in Davos, my ski instructor pointed to a decrepit building with boarded-up windows at some distance from the main town and said it was the laundry where the sanitariums sent their washing. The laundry no longer exists.
Much else has changed, of which the most remarkable change is that the number of people coming to the WEF meeting has more than tripled and the number of Indians coming here has gone up hugely as well. I am not certain exactly which year the number of Indians in Davos suddenly increased but remember it was when H D Deve Gowda was prime minister. He himself came to Davos that year but nobody noticed him much and he himself seemed to think of his visit as a holiday because he came accompanied by a large contingent of family members.
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They stayed in the finest hotel in Klosters (a nearby ski resort more popular than Davos) and the women wore South Indian silk saris and slippers which made going out onto icy streets impossible so they hung about the lobby with their children. The officials who came with Deve Gowda were also inappropriately dressed and wandered about the promenade in monkey caps and thin sandals instead of attire and footwear more suitable for icy streets and freezing weather. It would have made no difference had nobody come at all with the Indian prime minister because our economy then had no allure for foreign investors. And there were too many other things happening in the world. Not just in terms of new technology but even politics.
In South Africa apartheid ended and the year after Nelson Mandela became President he came to Davos and one evening arrived in the Central Sports Hotel for a media conference. His presence was so awe-inspiring that everything came to a standstill with every member of the hotel staff gathering in the lobby in the hope of catching a glimpse of him. I happened to come within speaking distance of him as he was leaving and when I said to him that I was from India he said he appreciated very much what India had done for the cause of ending apartheid. I would have liked to talk to him some more but he exuded an energy that was so powerful that I found myself unable to do more than mutter a few words.
Another memory from those early years was when Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat faced off in a special session in the main hall of the conference centre. It was meant to have been a moment of reconciliation but Arafat was belligerent and aggressive and nothing Peres said could persuade him that Israel was genuinely interested in peace. So at the end of a meeting fraught with visible tension, Peres said with his usual dignity that he had hoped to be attending a wedding ceremony and was disappointed that instead he found himself in the middle of divorce proceedings.
In those early years the WEF’s annual meeting was a small, intimate affair that was attended mostly by rich businessmen who had to be members of WEF to be invited. They were accompanied by their beautifully dressed, glamorous wives who seemed more interested in celebrities and social events than in the state of the world. When Bill Clinton came one year they fought one another for seats close to the stage and refused to move when they were told they were reserved for dignitaries.
India became important in Davos when Indian companies became important members of WEF. This started to happen after the licence raj ended and the growth rate of India’s economy tripled and quadrupled. Indian companies which in licence raj days functioned with their hands tied and feet shackled became suddenly free to grow and led the boom that the economy experienced between 1995 and 2005.
Suddenly foreign investors became interested in India and in Davos India no longer came to be seen as a faraway land stuck in an economic time warp. Indian businessmen and officials began to participate in important sessions and learned to hold their own. Chief ministers started receiving invitations to the annual meeting and took time to discover that meaningless verbosity was not appreciated in this forum. Their officials wrote for them the usual lengthy monologues filled with quotes from Gandhi and Tagore when they first started to come but they realised this kind of speech did not appeal to investors.
Then came a year when Indian companies pooled their efforts and money to lay on a spectacular show that was called ‘India Everywhere’. And India was indeed everywhere that year. There were fashion shows and concerts of Indian music and from the cafes on the promenade came the sound of Bollywood music and the scent of kebabs and Indian spices. That year every Indian in Davos felt exceptionally proud to be Indian. But this euphoric nationalism did not last long. When Dr Manmohan Singh began his second term as prime minister and Sonia Gandhi began to put her personal stamp on economic policies, India’s image changed once more to that of being a country that did not believe in free markets.
I remember endless conversations with people who had invested in India only to find themselves tied up in court cases and red tape. They said that whenever they had tried to fight their way out of the tangles they found themselves in, they found goalposts changed and mysterious new taxes to contend with. On top of all this came the retroactive tax as a last nail in the coffin of the economy. Indian investors faced their own problems when a new kind of licence raj was introduced through the Ministry of Environment. A thick gloom descended over the Indian contingent in Davos that has only just begun to lift.
Last year Arun Jaitley came for the first time and did his best to assure investors that as finance minister he guaranteed that the retroactive tax would not be used. But since he had not removed it in his first budget, it sent mixed signals. What was reassuring was Narendra Modi’s image among prospective investors as a man who had every intention of making India a country in which doing business would become easier and more profitable. On the promenade last year there were huge posters of the Make in India tiger and at the India evening there were more foreigners than there had been in recent years. So there are definite signs of renewed interest in the India story but it is still early days. When this year’s annual meeting ends we shall know more.
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Meanwhile on a snowy morning in Zurich I sit in my hotel room pondering over the theme of this year’s meeting: Mastering the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The press release from WEF informs me that ‘over 2,500 leaders from business, government, international organisations, civil society, academia, media and the arts will participate in the 46th World Economic Forum Annual Meeting’.Select Location(s)
All (474) AK - Anchorage (1) AL - Bay Minette (1) AL - Jacksonville (1) AL - Madison (1) AL - Oneonta (1) AL - Phenix City (1) AL - Thomasville (1) AR - Fort Smith (1) AZ - Phoenix (2) AZ - Surprise (1) CA - Fullerton (2) CA - Huntington Beach (1) CA - Newark (4) CA - Oxnard (2) CA - Pomona (1) CA - Sacramento (1) CA - San Diego (1) CA - South San Francisco (1) CA - Torrance (1) CA - Ventura (1) CO - Denver (1) CO - Fort Lupton (1) CO - Grand Junction (1) CO - Longmont (1) CO - Silverthorne (1) CT - Bridgeport (1) CT - Brooklyn (1) CT - Cheshire (1) CT - Enfield (1) CT - Hartford (1) CT - Naugatuck (1) CT - New Haven (1) CT - Waterbury (1) DE - Millsboro (1) FL - Apopka (1) FL - Boca Raton (2) FL - Bradenton (1) FL - Chiefland (1) FL - Coral Springs (1) FL - Cross City (1) FL - Delray Beach (1) FL - Fort Lauderdale (1) FL - Fort Walton Beach (1) FL - Gainesville (1) FL - Jacksonville (2) FL - Lake Wales (1) FL - Miami (2) FL - Mulberry (1) FL - Ocala (1) FL - Orlando (1) FL - Riverview (1) FL - Tallahassee (3) FL - Tampa (2) FL - Vero Beach (1) FL - West Palm Beach (1) GA - Acworth (1) GA - Alpharetta (1) GA - Atlanta (3) GA - Augusta (2) GA - Buford (1) GA - Calhoun (1) GA - Cartersville (1) GA - Chamblee (1) GA - Cumming (1) GA - Folkston (1) GA - Glennville (1) GA - Grovetown (1) GA - La Grange (1) GA - Mableton (2) GA - Marietta (2) GA - Norcross (2) GA - Powder Springs (1) GA - Rockmart (2) GA - Sandersville (1) GA - Sylvania (1) GA - Thomson (1) GA - Union City (1) GA - Washington (1) GA - Waycross (1) IA - Cedar Rapids (1) IA - Dubuque (1) IA - Iowa City (1) IA - Sioux City (1) IA - Waterloo (1) IL - Alton (1) IL - Belvidere (1) IL - Burr Ridge (1) IL - Champaign (2) IL - Charleston (1) IL - Chicago (1) IL - Fox River Grove (2) IL - Mundelein (1) IL - Palatine (1) IL - Rockford (1) IL - Romeoville (1) IL - Wood River (1) IN - Angola (1) IN - Auburn (1) IN - Bedford (1) IN - Columbia City (1) IN - Danville (3) IN - Fort Wayne (1) IN - Greenfield (1) IN - Indianapolis (2) IN - Kendallville (1) IN - Noblesville (1) IN - Rushville (1) IN - Vincennes (1) IN - Washington (2) KS - Hays (1) KY - Bowling Green (1) KY - Elizabethtown (1) KY - Lagrange (1) KY - Leitchfield (2) KY - Lexington (3) KY - Somerset (1) KY - Winchester (1) LA - Baton Rouge (1) LA - Covington (1) LA - Metairie (1) MA - Boston (1) MA - Brockton (1) MA - Franklin (1) MA - Lawrence (1) MA - Maynard (1) MA - Medway (1) MA - Needham (2) MA - Plymouth (1) MA - Quincy (1) MA - Randolph (1) MA - Revere (3) MA - Salem (1) MA - South Yarmouth (1) MA - Springfield (1) MA - Stoneham (1) MA - Stoughton (1) MA - Tewksbury (1) MA - Weymouth (2) MA - Whitinsville (1) MA - Wilmington (1) MD - Beltsville (1) MD - Berlin (1) MD - Bowie (1) MD - Chestertown (1) MD - Crofton (1) MD - Edgewood (1) MD - Landover (2) MD - Langley Park (1) MD - Rockville (1) ME - Winslow (1) MI - Battle Creek (1) MI - Bay City (1) MI - Detroit (1) MI - Grand Rapids (1) MI - Mason (1) MN - LAKEVILLE (1) MN - Minneapolis (1) MN - New Ulm (1) MO - Lees Summit (1) MO - St. Louis (1) MS - Columbus (1) MS - Starkville (1) MT - Bozeman (1) NC - Apex (1) NC - Arden (2) NC - Brevard (1) NC - Fuquay Varina (1) NC - Goldsboro (1) NC - Greensboro (1) NC - Harrisburg (1) NC - Holly Springs (1) NC - Jacksonville (1) NC - Kinston (2) NC - Morehead City (1) NC - Murphy (2) NC - New Bern (1) NC - Raleigh (2) NC - Sanford (1) NC - Selma (1) NC - Shelby (1) NC - Smithfield (1) NC - Wilson (1) NE - Lincoln (1) NE - Omaha (1) NH - Derry (1) NH - Laconia (1) NH - Somersworth (1) NJ - Bergenfield (1) NJ - Brooklawn (1) NJ - Dayton (4) NJ - Dover (1) NJ - Dunellen (1) NJ - Egg Harbor Township (1) NJ - Fair Lawn (1) NJ - Glassboro (1) NJ - Hackensack (1) NJ - Hammonton (1) NJ - Paramus (1) NJ - Parsippany (2) NJ - Passaic (1) NJ - Pleasantville (1) NJ - Ramsey (1) NJ - Rockaway (1) NJ - Wayne (1) NJ - Willingboro (1) NJ - Wyckoff (1) NM - Albuquerque (2) NM - Santa Fe (1) NV - Las Vegas (3) NY - Armonk (2) NY - Brooklyn (1) NY - Buffalo (2) NY - Central Islip (1) NY - Colonie (1) NY - Hamburg (1) NY - Jamaica (1) NY - Jericho (2) NY - Lawrence (1) NY - Monroe (1) NY - New York (1) NY - Rochester (1) NY - S Ozone Park (1) NY - Spring Valley (1) NY - Tappan (1) NY - West Haverstraw (1) OH - Akron (1) OH - Athens (1) OH - Bowling Green (1) OH - Carrollton (1) OH - Cincinnati (1) OH - Cleveland (1) OH - Columbus (9) OH - Cuyahoga Falls (1) OH - Defiance (1) OH - Delaware (3) OH - Euclid (1) OH - Fairfield (1) OH - Hamilton (1) OH - Lima (1) OH - Mansfield (1) OH - Marion (1) OH
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support is complicated. Pollsters found that only 27 percent of respondents agree with the overwhelming scientific consensus that human activity is the main cause of climate change.
[…]
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/264767-poll-70-percent-believe-in-climate-change?ref=yfpMulti-user support is one of the few remaining things a desktop OS can do that Android can't. The "coffee table tablet" use case would greatly benefit from a multi-user setup, as would an enterprise user who wants to keep work and home separate. It's been a top 20 item on the Android bug tracker since the debut of Honeycomb, so there is certainly demand for it.
As we've seen from my previous experiments in sticking my nose where it doesn't belong, Google likes to leave breadcrumbs in shipping products for the astute observer to find, and the multi-user situation is no different. After a bit of research, I can tell you that Google is listening. There is a surprising amount of multi-user work being done on Android - some of it is even working on devices right now.
Before we jump into things, we're going to need to learn some vocabulary. "AOSP" is Android Open Source Project, you should know that one. It's the publicly available code base for Android. A "commit" is a code push to this code repository. You're supposed to include a helpful comment with your commit, telling people what the new code is supposed to accomplish. This is Android code, so the commit comments are written by Googlers. In other words: they're accurate.
Now, on to the evidence:
The First Clue
You can't see it, but there is multi user support in there somewhere.
I was originally clued into the idea of multi-user code already existing by Abhisek Devkota, aka "ciwrl," CyanogenMod's Head Moderator. The guys at CM had stumbled upon some interesting sounding methods named "SetCurrentUser" and "onUserChanged." These methods were found in LockPatternKeyguardView.java, a file for Android's pattern unlock. Here's the whole section:
public void onUserChanged(int userId) {
mLockPatternUtils.setCurrentUser(userId);
updateScreen(getInitialMode(), true);
}
I'm no expert, but this looks pretty straightforward: when the user changes, switch the lock screen over to the new user's lock screen, and redraw the screen so the user can see these changes. It sounds like pattern unlock is listening for a user switch!
There's way more to this than just that one section. Ciwrl also pointed out a few commits to me, and if you start digging through the public AOSP repository, you'll start noticing tons of work related to multi-user functionality. After a bit of work, I've been able to piece together a decent timeline of multi-user upgrades to the AOSP code base.
The Timeline Of Commits
Please note that, just because something is mentioned, doesn't mean it is 100% working, or even working at all. And, just like any big change to Android, the biggest problem is ecosystem support: you have to implement this without breaking everything else. So consider this to be merely a peak at what has been worked on, and nothing more.
Direct quotes of commit comments are in bold, and my attempt at translations are in regular text:
By Amith Yamasani, A Google Engineer
Create /data/user directory and symlink /data/user/0 -> /data/data for backward compatibility - A big part of switching to a multi-user OS will be moving all of the global settings, files, and apps from wherever they are now, to a users/[username] directory, while remaining backwards compatible and not breaking anything. Luckily, Android is built on Linux, which supports all sorts of handy file system tricks, like a "symlink." A symlink allows you to move a directory, but leave behind a pointer for anything that goes looking in the old location. Here, they moved the /data/data directory to /data/user/0, and made a symlink, so anything looking in /data/data will know to look in /data/user/0. In theory, nothing will break. In theory.
A big part of switching to a multi-user OS will be moving all of the global settings, files, and apps from wherever they are now, to a users/[username] directory, while remaining backwards compatible and not breaking anything. Luckily, Android is built on Linux, which supports all sorts of handy file system tricks, like a "symlink." A symlink allows you to move a directory, but leave behind a pointer for anything that goes looking in the old location. Here, they moved the /data/data directory to /data/user/0, and made a symlink, so anything looking in /data/data will know to look in /data/user/0. In theory, nothing will break. In theory. Create data directories for all packages for new user - "Package" is just technical speak for "app." When a new user is created, the system will now make them their own copies of app data for every currently installed app.
- "Package" is just technical speak for "app." When a new user is created, the system will now make them their own copies of app data for every currently installed app. Remove data directories when removing a user - Then you'll want to delete all that data if the user is removed.
Then you'll want to delete all that data if the user is removed. Create data directories for all users when a package is created - Now, when you install Angry Birds, everyone gets a separate save file.
Now, when you install Angry Birds, everyone gets a separate save file. Clear / Remove data for multiple users - I assume this is talking about the "clear data" button in app info, and the uninstall procedure. This brings up a good example of how complicated this can be. What happens to User 1's data when User 2 hits clear data?
I assume this is talking about the "clear data" button in app info, and the uninstall procedure. This brings up a good example of how complicated this can be. What happens to User 1's data when User 2 hits clear data? pm commands for createUser and removeUser (will be disabled later)
By Amith Yamasani
Switching activity stacks - In other words, change the running apps when a user switch happens. The back button stack would change, the recent apps would change, etc.
- In other words, change the running apps when a user switch happens. The back button stack would change, the recent apps would change, etc. Cache ContentProvider per user - Content providers share data between multiple applications. Anything that is shared will use a Content Provider, so, for instance, Contacts and Calendar info. These are per-user now.
- Content providers share data between multiple applications. Anything that is shared will use a Content Provider, so, for instance, Contacts and Calendar info. These are per-user now. Long-press power to switch users (on phone) - User Interface?! I wish I could find this somewhere, but I can't. Maybe this wasn't UI, and was just a dirty testing hack.
- User Interface?! I wish I could find this somewhere, but I can't. Maybe this wasn't UI, and was just a dirty testing hack. Added ServiceMap for separating services by user - A new part of Activity Manager for handling background services on a per-user basis.
A new part of Activity Manager for handling background services on a per-user basis. Launch PendingIntents on the correct user's uid
Commands added to pm and am to allow creating and switching profiles. - "pm" stands for "PackageManger," which deals with information about installed applications. "am" stands for "ActivityManager." An activity is basically the any piece of UI in Android - usually full screen windows. Basically, this is Android's first lesson on how to deal with multiple users. You'll need to create separate user profiles, with different apps settings, and different sets of running apps.
By Amith Yamasani
Packages can be enabled/disabled per user. This requires maintaining stopped/launched states and enabled / disabled components and packages per user. - Well, there you go, per-user app disabling.
- Well, there you go, per-user app disabling. Refactored pm.Settings and PackageSettingsBase to keep track of states per user. - Similar to the above, per user Package Manager settings.
- Similar to the above, per user Package Manager settings. Migrated the stopped-packages.xml to users/<u>/package-restrictions.xml - More global settings being moved to per-user settings.
- More global settings being moved to per-user settings. Changed intent resolution to handle individual user restrictions. - A good example of intent resolution is the app picker box that pops up when more than one application can be used for an action. It matches the intent (like "I want to open a web page") with the programs that can handle it. So if 1 user prefers Chrome and another user prefers the stock browser, it can do that.
A good example of intent resolution is the app picker box that pops up when more than one application can be used for an action. It matches the intent (like "I want to open a web page") with the programs that can handle it. So if 1 user prefers Chrome and another user prefers the stock browser, it can do that. Bunch of IPackageManager calls now have a userId argument.
By Amith Yamasani
Broadcast intents that get sent out when users are added/removed/switched. - When a user switch happens, you're going to need to run around to everything on the system and let it know about it.
- When a user switch happens, you're going to need to run around to everything on the system and let it know about it. More work on generating user-specific information in package manager queries. APIs to update user name and query a user by id. Removed Package.mSetStopped and mSetEnabled, since they're not user specific. - You can now ask Package Manager about installed apps for individual users.
User removal: Cleanup ActivityManager, PackageManager, WallpaperManager, AppWidgetService
and AccountManager. Shutdown processes belonging to the user. - When a user is deleted, you're going to want to wipe out all of their settings and kill all their apps.
Lock the screen when switching users, to force unlocking. - Sounds like you would pick a user, then get the unlock screen, which would make sense and be secure.
By Amith Yamasani
Move all lockscreen related settings to LockSettingsService. LockPatternUtils uses this through IPC instead of Secure settings. Migrate old settings to new database managed by LockSettingsService. - It sounds like the lock screen is the primary interface for user switching, so it needed a rewrite.
Passwords and patterns are stored in a new per-user location, except for the primary user, for backward compatibility. - Like I said, doing this without breaking everything is going to be a challenge, so it looks like, initially, not all users will be equal as far as the system is concerned, for compatibility reasons. That doesn't necessarily mean end users will see the difference.
Like I said, doing this without breaking everything is going to be a challenge, so it looks like, initially, not all users will be equal as far as the system is concerned, for compatibility reasons. That doesn't necessarily mean end users will see the difference. KeyguardViewMediator and LockPatternKeyguardView listen for changes to user and updates the lockscreen. - This is referencing the code I showed, above. Pattern unlock is listening for a user switch! Currently the user switch never happens, but it's ready for it.
This is referencing the code I showed, above. Pattern unlock is listening for a user switch! Currently the user switch never happens, but it's ready for it. Settings provider will look for Lock settings in the LockSettings service now for the entries that used to be stored in Settings. - Ah, so the lock screen settings used to be stored with all the other settings, but they have been spun off into their own file. This is another security measure. It sounds like, before, you would need to load the entire settings file to get the lock screen settings. Now you load as little as possible until the lock screen can verify the user.
So How Much Of This Actually Works?
Of course, the question arises when reading those comments, how much of this is actually in Android right now? All of those commit dates are pre-Jelly Bean, and some are pre-Ice Cream Sandwich, so some of this stuff must be live, right?
One of the more interesting and new-ish Android files is called "UserManager.java." It references a "userlist.xml" file in /data/system/users, so that sounds like a good place to start. Here it is in Jelly Bean:
Oh my. You're telling me this works right now?!
That is a live, working, multi-user directory structure. A single-user OS would just store everything under /data/system, but the fact that this is already storing things in a "user" folder is just phenomenal progress. There are settings for app widgets I have on my home screen, apps I have installed and disabled, and my wallpaper settings. It's been right under our noses this whole time: Jelly Bean is a multi-user OS, with only 1 user. I am User 0.
Let's take a closer look at some of these files:
As we can see in the "<users>" section of "userlist.xml," there is only 1 user, User 0. A quick look at users/0/appwidgets.xml confirms that user is me, because those are the widgets on my home screen. It's interesting that app widgets are here, but there's no mention of the actual app shortcuts.
"0.xml" will probably, one day, house things like my name and my profile picture, but for right now, my name is just "Primary." If you recall, we've heard of "Primary" before in the March 28th, 2012 commit: "Passwords and patterns are stored in a new per-user location, except for the primary user, for backward compatibility." Primary is the least exotic and most backwards compatible user.
"Accounts.db" is an SQLite database. It contains the accounts listed under the "Accounts" section of settings, in my case, Google and Dropbox. It also contains the full list of every Google service I've ever used, my preferred language, and my authtokens. So it looks like accounts and syncing is on a per-user basis now, too.
Package-restrictions.xml has a seemly complete list of apps on my phone, and their enabled/disabled status. Toward the middle you can see "com.google.android.email enabled=3" which means I've gone to app info and hit the disabled button for it. So, as we saw in the commits, each user can enable/disable the apps of their choosing.
In the April 14th 2011 update, we saw a switch from /data/data to /data/user/0, so let's check that out on Jelly Bean:
Wow. The magic of Linux. Thanks to the symlink, the majority of apps are now storing their data in a user directory, instead of dumping them in a global directory. There's almost 100 directories in here. I was concerned about 3rd party app support, but it looks like most app is ready for more users.
Conclusion
So, in my very-much-non-expert-opinion, it looks like the following things are separated for multiple users: lock screens, installed applications, running applications, application data, default applications, home screen widgets, accounts, syncing, and language.
And the following things still need to be worked on: Namely, every piece of UI. You need a user switching screen, an entire settings section for managing users, setting permissions, taking or picking user avatars, names, etc. You'll also need a way to know what user is currently logged in. There also doesn't appear to be separate settings for home screen shortcuts, and probably a million other settings. And who knows how 3rd party apps would really deal with a massive change like this. Lots of testing needs to happen.
The first commit was over a year ago, and the last one we know about was 4 months ago. A lot of work has already gone into multiple user account support, but I'm sure there's still a lot more work to be done. Keep plugging away Googlers! I'll be watching...• England international will not rush talks over contract • Discussions may now drag on into new season
Theo Walcott is keen to pen a new contract at Arsenal, as he enters his 10th year at the club, but will not sign for anything less than he feels he is worth.
At 26, Walcott and Arsène Wenger believe the England forward is fit enough to fulfil his potential but he will not be rushed into signing, even if it means starting the final season of his contract without a new deal agreed.
Premier League Asia Trophy: five things we learned Read more
Walcott signed a £90,000-a-week agreement 18 months ago and is believed to feel he is now worth in excess of £100,000, in keeping with some of his peers. He said: “My agent has talked to the club, I enjoy playing for this club so I am just letting them crack on with things and I’ll continue playing football. If it happens it happens. We’ll just play the waiting game and see what happens but I’m sure it won’t be long.”
Asked if he would be comfortable with talks dragging into the new season, he responded: “Definitely. It’s not in my thought process at all. You don’t want to dwell on it, you want to play well and if it happens it happens.
“I won’t let that delay the way I’m going to be playing this season. I can’t let that affect me, I want to do well for this club.”
Walcott was speaking after opening the scoring with a clinical finish in Arsenal’s comfortable 3-1 win over Everton in the final of the Asia Trophy in Singapore.
It was his first pre-season appearance since a strong end to a frustrating campaign in which he was not assured a starting role after recovering from the cruciate knee ligament injury he suffered in January 2014.
That problem kept him out of the World Cup and he did not play in the Premier League again until a substitute appearance against Burnley nine months later. He played only 14 league games last season, just four of which were in the starting lineup.
He showed what he can do when he is fit with a closing day hat-trick against West Brom and the crucial opening goal against Aston Villa in the FA Cup final, when he was selected ahead of Olivier Giroud.
Walcott was then strongly linked with a summer move to Liverpool while Chelsea wanted to take him as part of the Petr Cech transfer but now he has his sights set on rewarding Arsenal’s loyalty with an injury-free season.
Chelsea willing to sell Juan Cuadrado but only if the price is right Read more
He believes a player in his position should be scoring upwards of 20 goals and added: “I didn’t want the season to end. It was a frustrating season for me. When you have been out for such a long time, it is difficult to get into a winning team.
“It’s my first pre-season for two years now so I want to work hard and get fit. It’s a really exciting year for myself personally and I think this team can go very far. I’m always going to be judged on goals, I’ve been very happy with my goal record when given the opportunity. That is all I can do.”
Reminded he is the club’s longest-serving player and could celebrate his 10th anniversary in January, he said with a smile: “Maybe I should be talking about testimonial times. I have always played with a smile on my face, always enjoyed playing for this club. It is one of the best groups I have been involved with. I want to be involved with that squad as well. I want to work really hard and make sure I’m in that starting lineup come the first game of the season.”The Future of Humanity: a Lecture by Isaac Asimov
To the Isaac Asimov home page
The following document is a transcript of a lecture given by Dr. Isaac Asimov. It is from an audio tape which I have had in my collection since 6th grade. It is not available anywhere, and please don't e-mail me requesting copies of it. I present it to the group as a tribute to a man who changed my way of thinking when I needed it the most.
I have made corrections to any misplaced words, eliminated any stutters, etc. These edits have in no way affected the intended content of the presentation. After listening to this for so many years, I thoroughly understand it.
As you read this, please keep in mind that the good doctor improvised many of his lectures. Generally, when he was asked to speak at a given function, he would ask what the topic desired was, and rarely if ever prepared anything for it. Most of what you read here is conversational English, and on paper may not look very elegant.
What you read here, though timeless, was a product of the time. 1973 saw the end of a lot of optimism carried over from the sixties, and the oil embargo was the first real inconvenience experienced by the baby-boomers of the USA on a nationwide scale. Many middle class families were now requiring two wage-earners, and the cost of living was on the rise.
Twenty-plus years have passed since the good doctor presented this, and yet the content holds as universal truth. Even if this is the only thing you ever read produced by the late Dr. Asimov, you will get a good idea as to the level of his wisdom. I sincerely doubt that this world will ever see another individual even close to his abilities ever again.
Please note that this material is NOT copyrighted, and I am placing it in the public domain.
B. Torre
June 8, 1995
INTRODUCTION: (unidentified person)
It is now my great pleasure to introduce to you a man who is probably the most prolific science fiction author in the world today. And, he's also a very learned man...and I'm not going to talk to you anymore because he's so much smarter than I am. I'm just going to...well that's not saying much, but...I'm just going to bring him right out here now. Uhhh...would you please welcome Dr. Isaac Asimov.
[applause]
Dr. Asimov's words:
Thank you, thank you. I have...can you hear me as I talk now, or do I have to lean into this?
[no response]
Can you hear me when I speak like this? Anyone?
[some of the group responds that they can understand him.]
OK.
I had a pretty exciting time coming to Newark.
[group laughs]
Because you see, my correspondence was from my office. Which is not where I live. And when I was told that I would be picked up I carefully wrote a very clear letter explaining exactly where I lived. Which made it inevitable that they send the people to my office.
[group laughs slightly]
As I stood there in the street, waiting for the car, listening to the minutes tick away, realizing I had to be up here at eight o'clock...I grew desperate. Finally on the intercom, I called my wife and said: "Would you call my office and ask if there are any jerks there looking for me".
[group laughs]
She did, and then she called back, and she said that's where they were, so I told them to come here. I said: "Why did you do that?" I said "It's four blocks. They'll never make it!"
[group laughs]
They almost didn't.
[group laughs]
I had to wait another ten minutes.
[group laughs mildly]
Then, but finally we got here with five minutes to spare. And we knocked at a locked door.
[group laughs mildly]
And a security guard opened it, and said: "You can't come in".
[group laughs heartily]
And the two young men who were with me, who looked like college students...very unsavory characters...
[group laughs mildly]
...said: "Well that's allright about us", he says, "But this is the lecturer". And the guard peered at me, and he said: "that's the lecturer?" And they said yes. "I happen to know that the lecturer is upstairs"
[group laughs very heartily]
So we went through another door where there wasn't any guard.
[group laughs]
And here I am. Now this other lecturer isn't going to say a word to you, but I'll bet he collects the fee.
[group laughs]
Ahhh... But anyway, now you see why I hate to travel. My discussion on the future of man applies very, very well to what has just happened to me as you will shortly see. Let me explain.
I once, when I was not quite nineteen, wrote a story called "Trends". It was the first story I ever sold to John Campbell of the old "Astounding Science Fiction". It appeared in the July 1939 issue.
And in it I dealt with the first flight around the Moon and back. I had it placed in the 1970's. The first attempt, which was a failure, was in 1973. And the second attempt, which was a success, was in 1978. The actual flight took place in 1968, so I was ten years conservative. In addition, my flight was all there was, whereas in real life the flight around the Moon was preceded by all kinds of orbital and sub-orbital flights, and dockings, and mid-course-corrections, and communication satellites, and navigation satellites...everything under the sun.
So you can see how wrong I was. In fact I was even wronger than that because when I wrote my story back in 1939...38, it was printed in 39...When I wrote that story, I had definite ideas on how the space flight was to take place.
First place, I had my inventor build a spaceship in his back yard.
[group laughs slightly]
In the second place, I took the attitude that any man who good enough to build a spaceship was good enough to fly the spaceship.
[group laughs slightly]
I mean the inventor was the astronaut; a great saving in time and labor.
[group laughs slightly]
Furthermore, I didn't bother establishing any computer banks anywhere...especially not in Texas. Because to this day, to be perfectly honest with you, and that's what I would like to be, perfectly honest. To be perfectly honest with you, I don't really see what the big deal is about getting to the Moon with the computers and the mid-course-corrections. I know you are a bunch of engineers, and you know better than I do, but I ask you...once you get there beyond the atmosphere, do you or do you not see the Moon?
[group laughs, and then applauds]
And if you see the moon steer for it, right?
[group laughs heartily]
In fact the only thing that bugged me...the only thing that bugged me in that story is where you launch the spaceship from. I lived in Brooklyn all my life, and I looking around Brooklyn I could see there was no place you could safely launch a spaceship...
[group laughs]
...without arousing the anger of the citizenry.
And so I thought that I had better launch it outside Brooklyn somewhere. And that sort of promptly got me into trouble because I wasn't sure, for certain, that there was any place outside Brooklyn.
[group laughs]
I mean I heard rumors to that effect, but I'm a pretty difficult fellow to fool. I like definite evidence. But I realized that I have to do something, so I launched the ship...the spaceship...from the farthest limits of the known world. To wit, in Jersey City.
[group very heartily laughs]
I'm not kidding. Really did. And yet I sold this story.
[group laughs]
Not only sold this story, but its been reprinted five times. The last time, in 1973. By which time I suspect that most people had a pretty good idea that the details in my story were wrong.
[group laughs mildly]
Well why was this do you suppose? I'll tell you. The story was not printed because of any of the engineering details...you should excuse the expression. It was published because I had something in it that the editor had never seen before. I had postulated resistance to space flight. There was a whole organization of people on earth who were sore as anything at the people who were trying to get out into space. They thought people should stay on earth and mind their own business. And this had never been postulated before. Never!
Up till that moment in time, the only way in which space travel was treated was either by having the hero go out to Deneb or someplace, and fight the oyster men there,
[group laughs mildly]
...and marry the beautiful princess who lays eggs,
[group laughs mildly]
...without any reference whatsoever to earth or the people thereof. On the other hand, the other way of handling space flight was to have the hero land on the Moon, or on some other place thereto akin, and then come back and receive a ticker tape parade with everyone being very pleased at this heroic action.
It never occurred to anybody that there might actually be resistance to the whole notion; people might think it was a rotten idea and a waste of money.
After I wrote the story, again, nobody had the idea. I don't think another story ever appeared in which there was any hint of opposition to space flight. I mean, on principle. Until such time as the opposition did develop.
And so you are entitled to ask how is it possible that an eighteen year old boy, very unsophisticated an naive, who literally and honestly was dubious as to whether there was anyplace outside Brooklyn. How it was possible that he could see something clearly that older and thicker heads failed to see?
And it goes against the grain to have to explain this to you because I would much prefer to have you think I was very smart, and had some kind of key to the wisdom of the universe. I mean, that's a great thing to be able to impress you with. But instead I'm going to have to tell you the truth, and you're going to see how disgustingly simple the whole thing was.
I was going to Columbia University at the time, and as I don't need to tell any of you here, the tuition rates were something appalling. I mean, as I recall it was three hundred and sixty-five dollars a semester.
[mild laugh from crowd]
And I couldn't afford it. And so I looked about for all kinds of things to do in order to eke out the tuition.And one of the things I did was to join the NYA, National Youth Administration, which was a kind of relief for deserving students. They gave you little sinecure jobs, and paid you the munificent sum of fifteen dollars a month. And this enabled you to get through your tuition.
And the job I got was to serve as a kind of secretary to a sociologist who was preparing a book entitled "The Social Resistance to Technological Change". And what I was supposed to do was as follows: I had to go to the library with a list of references from him, and ask for the books. Turn to the pages where I was to find the reference, copy them out longhand...because this was the days before Xerox. Luckily too, otherwise I would have starved. Copied them out longhand, took them home, typed them up. Now, it was impossible for me to copy them out and type them up without reading them.
[mild laughter]
As a result, I read perhaps ninety percent of the book. Because you must understand how learned books are written in case you ever want to write a learned book. First thing you do is get a thousand references, chosen at random...
[group laughs]
You then put them into the book, in the order you reach them...
[group laughs mildly]
And stick two or three lines of your own between each of them to act as mortar...
[group laughs mildly]
And you're all set.
Well, when I read all of these references I discovered, to my amazement, that all through history there had been resistance...and bitter, exaggerated, last-stitch resistance...to every significant technological change that had taken place on earth. Usually the resistance came from those groups who stood to lose influence, status, money...as a result of the change. Although they never advanced this as their reason for resisting it. It was always the good of humanity that rested upon their hearts.
For instance, when the stagecoaches came into England, the canal owners objected. Not that they would lose money, although they would, but they feared for humanity. Because as the stagecoaches tore along at fifteen miles an hour, the air whipping past the nostrils of the people on board, would by Bernoulli's Principle, suck all the air out of the lungs.
[group laughs]
You know, when I tell this story to a non-engineering audience I can't mention Bernoulli's Principle, which is what gives it that real taste.
[group laughs]
Well naturally the stagecoach people laughed heartily, and all they had to do was run a stagecoach at fifteen miles an hour with people inside and show them there's no harm. But they memorized the argument...for when the railroads came in.
[group laughs mildly]
Well then, reading all this, and this was over a period of months...I read it, and read it...I said to myself: "Hey, you know I can make a syllogism out of this" because I had taken up liberal arts and the humanities, and they taught me about syllogisms.
I don't know if you guys know about syllogisms. It's... The units of a syllogism is one Aristotle.
[group laughs]
Well, see, that's...to put it in engineering terms: One Aristotle per second is a fast syllogism.
[group laughs mildly]B/R
The clock is ticking. Time is running out. After a rare lull on a frenetic day of transfer activity at Sheffield United's Shirecliffe training base, now enveloped by the South Yorkshire night, there is suddenly a chink of light. A deal the club have been working on for two days can be completed.
"Game on?" asks Chris Wilder, the manager, to Carl Shieber, the head of football administration, after he takes an unexpected call from the selling club, who have decided to resurrect the deal.
Shieber raises his eyebrows. He waggles his hand. It will be touch-and-go. They have got 15 minutes until the 11 p.m. deadline. But there is another problem. No one knows where the player is. A call is put into the agent.
"Call us sharpish," says Paul Mitchell, head of recruitment. "There's something to be done. They've come back to us."
This was the denouement to an extraordinary 15-and-a-half hours on deadline day at the Championship club. The day had begun with five players set to sign and two to leave. All Wilder and his team had to do was get the deals over the line.
With unprecedented access, Bleacher Report takes you behind the scenes of everybody's favourite episode of the football soap opera. The fans love it. The managers loathe it. A day when agents hold all the power, transfer fees double at the last minute and players go missing on their way to medicals.
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7:30 a.m.
An early start for Wilder. Just as well. Best laid plans have been thrown into chaos. Ched Evans, the striker, may need an ankle operation. And the agreements Wilder thought would be relatively simple to conclude are beginning.
A week earlier, the signings Jerome Sinclair, the Watford forward, and the 19-year-old West Ham United prospect Domingos Quina, were "all but done." But "we've been let down," Wilder says, twiddling his mobile phone through his fingers. "Today is gonna be mad. You won't believe it. It'll be the maddest yet."
For the first time that day, we hear his phone ring. It won't stop until 11:30 p.m. It's a player Wilder knows at another club. He wants to ask him about a centre-half he's interested in. "Is he mobile," Wilder asks. "Can he get up the pitch?"
He ushers us through into the transfer bunker. A small, auditorium-style room where analysts are perched on the top bank feeding data and clips to a cinema screen below. Wilder, assistant manager Alan Knill, Mitchell and first-team coaches discuss the strengths of their targets.
Ed Hawkins
It is difficult to keep up. Punching the initial CD on the board with a marker pen Wilder says, "He'll give us pace in behind." Knill says of another, "He can play all shapes, all combinations." The other initials after Sinclair and Quina are CD, DC and BH. Shieber pops his head around. "Anything you want from me?" "Pizza," laughs Wilder. "And 10 million quid."
8:15 a.m.
In his office, Wilder reclines slightly in his chair and puffs out his cheeks. It's as if he's bracing himself for the twists and turns to come. "It never goes smoothly," he says. "Just wait and see." But so far the portents are good. He gives an update on the deals that are in the pipeline and the names behind the initials.
|
, from co-location to hosting, private cloud and infrastructure-as-a-service.
“Our customers such as Ryanair are increasingly moving their critical IT services to the cloud, and as a result of this announcement today Vodafone Ireland can now offer our business customers the ability to host their IT services in Vodafone’s secure data centre facilities,” said Anne Sheehan, enterprise director at Vodafone Ireland.
The development comes on the heels of Vodafone announcing 200 new jobs as part of a €60m investment in a new inside sales initiative that will be based at Carrickmines.
The expansion will grow Vodafone’s headcount in Ireland to 2,000 people.
Looking for tech jobs in Ireland? Check out our Featured Employers section for information on companies hiring right now.Last updated on: February 19, 2017 14:33 IST
Some persons have been taken into custody in connection with the harassment of a noted South Indian film actress, police said Kochi on Sunday.
Police had on Saturday taken the driver of the actress’ vehicle into custody soon after she complained about the ordeal she underwent the previous night while travelling from Thrissur to Kochi for dubbing.
The actress was allegedly harassed for two hours by a gang of men, who forced their way into her car before fleeing at a busy area in Kochi.
“Some people have been taken into custody. We would be able to talk about their role in the incident only after a proper verification,” a top police officer said.
Police had deputed its various teams to places including Coimbatore in search of at least six more culprits involved in the crime.
Kerala DGP Loknath Behera has constituted a special investigation team to probe the case, following widespread condemnation of the incident.
Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has said the gang members involved in the crime have been identified and they will be arrested very soon.
The actress in her complaint to police stated that on Friday night her car was hit from the rear by a tempo traveller van at Athani, between Aluva and Angamaly.
The members in the van forcefully entered her car and took control of it before proceeding to Kochi.
Police suspects that seven men, including her driver, were involved in planning and executing the crime that sent shock waves in the state.
The actress’ driver is suspected to have followed her car in the vehicle used by the gang members.
During the drive, the men harassed her, by clicking her pictures and making a video, she has said in her complaint.
After nearly two hours of drive through Kochi city, they left the actress in the car in Palarivattam and fled the scene. She was later taken to the house of film director Lal in Thrikkakara by her driver.
A woman judicial magistrate has taken her statement about the incident. Police had also taken her for a medical examination at a hospital near Kochi.
Police suspect that blackmailing was the motive behind the crime.High-Profile Russian Trials Bring International Criticism
Enlarge this image toggle caption Mikhail Pochuyev/ITAR-TASS/Landov Mikhail Pochuyev/ITAR-TASS/Landov
In one of several high-profile cases that have drawn international criticism, a Russian military court has sentenced a Ukrainian film director to 20 years in prison for allegedly plotting terrorist attacks in Crimea.
The cases have provoked protests from human rights groups and Western governments, including the United States.
As the sentence was being read Tuesday for the filmmaker, Oleg Sentsov, and his co-defendant, Oleksander Kolchenko, they laughed derisively and began singing the Ukrainian national anthem.
From the beginning of the trial, Sentsov, 39, rejected the authority of the military court in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don.
"I don't consider this court a court at all," he said.
In his final statement, Sentsov quoted the Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov, who said that cowardice is "the greatest sin."
Sentsov was accused of leading a terrorist cell that allegedly plotted attacks in Crimea after the Ukrainian region was taken over by Russian troops in February of last year. Russia annexed the territory shortly afterward, a move not recognized internationally.
Prosecutors said Sentsov's group planned to blow up a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin and a monument to Soviet soldiers from World War II.
Human Rights Groups Criticize Verdict
"We are talking about a man against whom the prosecutors had no criminal evidence, no evidence of his direct involvement in any criminal acts," says Tanya Lokshina, director of the Russia Program for Human Rights Watch in Moscow.
Lokshina says the charges against Sentsov were trumped up, but that even if they were true, the sentence of 20 years in prison was disproportionately long.
Sentsov's co-defendant, Kolchenko, 25, confessed to two arson attacks that caused minor damage at pro-Russian organizations in Crimea and was given 10 years in prison.
Sentsov's supporters say he was targeted because he is a high-profile figure, an up-and-coming film director who attracted a lot of attention with his 2011 debut Gamer, about a Ukrainian teenager who wins big at a video game championship.
Last year, more than a dozen noted film directors and producers, including Spanish director Pedro Almodovar, wrote an open letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin, calling for Sentsov's release.
Sentsov's conviction was based on the testimony of two other defendants, who said he was their leader in the terrorist group.
"One of these individuals actually withdrew his testimony, saying that he provided the testimony under torture, and the testimony had been entirely false," Lokshina says.
Sentsov himself said that police had beaten him and threatened to rape and kill him if he didn't sign a confession.
U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby condemned the trial and sentencing, calling it "a miscarriage of justice."
"Mr. Sentsov and Mr. Kolchenko were targeted by authorities because of their opposition to Russia's attempted annexation of Crimea," Kirby said.
One Of Several Cases
The Sentsov case isn't the only one that has attracted international condemnation.
Last week, a secret court in Russia sentenced an Estonian intelligence officer, Eston Kohver, to 15 years in prison for spying.
Estonia says that not only was Kohver not a spy, but that he was kidnapped by Russian agents on Estonian soil.
Tanya Lokshina points to a number of harsh sentences in political cases over the past several years, and says they're designed to send a message to the public, "if you're discontented, you should keep quiet—or else. You might face very serious consequences."
The next high-profile trial that's expected in Russia is that of Nadezhda Savchenko, a Ukrainian army pilot who's accused of targeting two Russian journalists who were killed by artillery fire in eastern Ukraine last year.
Ukraine says that Savchenko, too, was kidnapped and subjected to trumped-up charges in Russia.As Mueller's Russia Probe Forges Ahead, Potential Legal Endgames Begin to Take Shape
Enlarge this image toggle caption Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
While many aspects of the Justice Department's Russia investigation remain shrouded in secrecy, one thing at this point is clear: Special counsel Robert Mueller isn't finished yet.
That raises the question about where he might be heading.
Mueller has moved aggressively in his high-profile probe since taking the reins seven months ago. He has brought charges against four people with ties to the Trump campaign or administration so far, including the president's onetime campaign chairman Paul Manafort and former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
The outcome of Mueller's relationship with Flynn — who has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and is cooperating with investigators — could be the key to what happens down the line, attorneys say.
"There are two possible ways this could end up going, and both hinge on why Flynn lied," said Randall Eliason, a former federal prosecutor who teaches white collar criminal law at George Washington University Law School. "Depending on which is the case, you could have very different endgames."
If Flynn lied about his Russia contacts because they were deemed politically damaging, then Trump associates — and maybe the president himself — could get caught in a cover-up, even if what they're trying to hide isn't itself criminal.
If the facts bear that out, that could mean an obstruction of justice case. For months, news outlets have reported that Mueller is looking into whether Trump obstructed justice, which would amount to attempting to influence or subvert an ongoing investigation.
A Trump tweet after Flynn's guilty plea renewed the talk about possible obstruction and fueled questions about what the president knew when he cut Flynn loose in February.
Trump said on Twitter that he fired Flynn "because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies." Trump lawyer John Dowd took responsibility for the tweet after it ignited a firestorm, but the White House ultimately acknowledged that Trump knew in late January, before he fired Flynn, that Flynn had probably lied to the FBI.
"The president has the right to fire anybody when he wants. But what he can't do is try to interject improper influence in, and impede, an investigation," said Michael J. Moore, a former U.S. attorney now at Pope McGlamry in Atlanta.
Moore alluded to the account of former FBI Director James Comey after Flynn's firing. Trump, in Comey's telling, asked him in a confidential meeting at the White House whether he would "let this go." And Trump later fired Comey himself.
"That's why that tweet was so important," Moore said. "If he knew at the time that Flynn had lied to the FBI and told Comey to back off, then he's using his position as Comey's superior as leverage to try to achieve an outcome in an investigation — that amounts to obstruction."
Obstruction could remain a possible endgame charge in a second scenario as well: If Flynn lied to shield a broader network of contacts between Trump associates, Russians and some nefarious actions they engaged in together.
Mueller's mandate from the Justice Department calls for him to investigate "any links and/or coordination between the Russian government" and the Trump campaign. In the popular parlance, that is often called the question of "collusion."
But even though "collusion" is a word that has been frequently bandied about, there is no such criminal charge. There is another C-word that could come into play — conspiracy.
Depending on the facts developed in Mueller's investigation, there are a couple of options.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
One potential charge might be conspiracy to violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, says Barak Cohen, a partner and litigation lead at Perkins Coie in Washington, D.C. Mueller's team could reach for that if there is evidence that Trump associates worked with Russia on the hacking of the Democratic National Committee or the emails of Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta.
"I think the special counsel would like to be able to charge them as co-conspirators to the hack or accessories after the fact," Cohen said. "It's the most credible and well-established legal theory."
If Trump associates weren't directly involved in the hacks but, say, knew about them and kept them hidden, then they could be charged as accessories after that fact, Cohen said.
Another theory proffered by John Norris and Carolyn Kenney for the liberal Center for American Progress is that Mueller might try to use the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.
Law Will The Mueller Investigation Unearth A Crime? Legal Reporter Says It's Complicated Will The Mueller Investigation Unearth A Crime? Legal Reporter Says It's Complicated Listen · 37:54 37:54
"More dominoes seem almost inevitable to fall given the special counsel's efforts to secure cooperating witnesses, and RICO statutes give him a powerful card to play if he wishes to do so," they wrote.
Or a more general conspiracy charge — to defraud the United States — could come into play, according to Eliason. Conspiracy of this sort means interfering with a lawful government function by deceit or dishonest means. In this case, prosecutors might try to prove the Trump camp had helped pervert the election.
"Of course, it depends on what the facts show," Eliason said, "but if one worked with the Russians to leak information and create false social media accounts and other such stuff, that could be conspiracy to defraud the U.S."
A third possible endgame is some sort of financial crime such as money laundering.
"My guess is this is all going to center around money — Russian money," Moore said.
Questions swirl around Trump's finances, partly because he has been opaque about his tax payments and partly because of charges by opponents that his businesses are the terminus of a money laundering scheme.
This aspect of the story got a boost after reports that Deutsche Bank had received a subpoena from Mueller's team for information on accounts held by people or entities connected to Trump.
A lawyer for Trump, Jay Sekulow, denied those reports. The bank itself has made no comment. A Deutsche Bank spokesman told a German business newspaper that it cooperates with official inquiries but does not comment on individual cases.
Probing possible financial crimes dating back to before Trump took office and unrelated to Russia could be perilous politically. Trump's aides and Republicans have already argued that such a move would be a step too far for Mueller.A United Airlines flight from Newark International Airport in New Jersey, US has been grounded after a passenger spotted a huge fuel leak as the plane sat on the tarmac waiting to take off.
The passenger said she and her husband were on their way to Venice, Italy for their honeymoon when she looked out the window and saw the fuel pouring out from the edge of the left wing.
She said no-one was reacting, so her husband ran to the back to inform flight attendants of the problem.
TWITTER/RACHELEPAS VIA STORYFUL The United Airlines flight was scheduled to go from Newark, US to Venice, Italy when the leak was spotted.
The flight attendants, though, yelled to him to sit back down.
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Once he had, she said, the flight attendant ran to the cockpit before the engines turned off.
On Twitter the passenger, known as RachelEPas, said: "How not one crew member saw this is beyond me. Thank god we were lookin (sic) out the window at take off."
Clearer video of the #united #gasleak. How not one crew member saw this is beyond me. Thank god we were lookin out the window at take off. pic.twitter.com/3BDZJ3S4xd — Rachel (@RachelEPas) June 14, 2017
United representatives told NJ.com the passengers were put in hotels. But RachelEPas said that wasn't true. Some passengers were given hotel vouchers, but many, including her and her husband, were not given anything more than a food voucher.
Many people from the flight were sleeping on the floor in baggage claim, she said.The Numbers
NBA Rank: 20
Conference Rank: 11
Conference Rank: 11 Philadelphia 76ers
Average Seed
9
Average Seed 9 📉 Pessimist
25.0 wins
Pessimist 25.0 wins Realist
35.1 wins
Realist 35.1 wins 📈 Optimist
45.2 wins
First Seed 1.1% First Seed ⋆ Division 12.9% Division Top 4 8.8% Top 4
👍 Over (16.5) 98.0% Over (16.5) 👎 Under (16.5) 2.0% Under (16.5) 🎀 Playoffs 33.1% Playoffs
Guys who might not be superstars but because of their hustle, because of the little things they do, these are the guys who can really mean the difference between winning and losing. Dwyane Wade
The Brief
The 76ers are going to be a bad team. But they aren't going to be historically bad. The mainstream media has made a very large fuss over two things that Sam Hinkie has done: 1) he took forever to hire a coach, and it was well after the draft when he finally did (meaning he didn't value having a coach on board to influence any draft choices), and 2) the team is operating at or below the league minimum payroll, and for a long while had many roster spots to fill. These facts led most analysts to believe that Philadelphia wanted to lose. I disagree; I think it is far more likely that management does not care if they win. The distinction is important, and it's why the "over" on Philadelphia is one of our biggest predictions this year.
The Story
The 76ers' new general manager, Sam Hinkie, worked with Daryl Morey in Houston. He is, by all accounts, an "advanced stats" guy. I'm not really sure what this really means about him, but judging by the things that he and his "mentor" Morey have said in public, I suspect that Mr. Hinkie believes strongly in a few key ideas:
You cannot contend without a superstar or a couple of star players
There are market innefficiencies to exploit for many players (i.e. inefficient scorers get overvalued, efficiency is undervalued unless it is at volume)
Draft picks are very valuable, especially if your talent evaluation is good
Getting the far better end of a deal is worthwhile, even if it doesn't make your team currently better, unless you are contending
Note that although some or all of these may lead to situations where "winning now" is not important, none of them require "losing on purpose". Again, I am not privy to the 76ers' decision making processes, but this very much looks like a team that is making decisions based on real vs. perceived value, and where each individual decision is not about winning now, but about putting the team in a better position overall. Sometimes the two will overlap, but other times it won't. For instance, over the next 4 years, having Noel on the roster will be far superior to having Holiday on the roster. But it won't be this November and December.
Last Year
Actual Wins: 34
Actual Wins: 34 Expected Wins: 31.8
Expected Wins: 31.8 ⚅ Lucky Wins: 2.1
Indicates that the player is no longer with the team.
31.8 total Wins Produced
8 players leaving
(8227 minutes, 14.8 wins)
Last year the workhorses on this relatively bad team were Young, Wright, and Holiday. Holiday, however, was nowhere near as good as the popular perception. He posted a career high in points, but that was only because he took a career high number of shots -- his shooting efficiency was at a career low, and was well below average for a point guard. He also caused a great deal of turnovers. Fans will say that he made up for this by being a great defender but even if that's true (I'm not sure I accept the premise), that makes him a role player, not a star. It's shocking to me that New Orleans gave up this year's best prospect (torn ACL or not, Noel was the best prospect) and an additional first round pick to acquire, essentially, a replacement-level point guard.
The Spencer Hawes gamble looks like it isn't working -- his 2011/12 season may have been an anomoly. But that's ok, because the contract was both cheap and short.
This Year
Projected Wins: 35.1
Projected Wins: 35.1 Conference Rank: 11
Conference Rank: 11 % Playoffs: 33.1
Indicates that the player is new to the team.
📅 35.8 WP last year
by these players
35.8 WP last year by these players 🔀 -8.6 WP (roster changes)
-8.6 WP (roster changes) ⏲ 5.9 WP (age/experience)
As you can see, this year will basically be more of the same: stellar play by Thaddeus Young, and not a lot else. There should be a bright spot as Moultrie will get some more minutes (despite his injury), and we think that this will make a positive difference. As bad as some of these wing players are....well, they're replacing minutes from Nick Young, so there's no harm done. The loss of Wright hurts but probably not that much.
Our projection for Noel's minutes is very low, and his per-minute performance projections are modest; if he comes back in January and gets starter minutes, or if he lives up to pre-torn-ACL projections, things can get even better for him and by extension the 76ers.
What it boils down to is this: the 76ers are a bad team, no question, but the vegas over/under of 16.5 wins is simply ridiculous. It amazes me that some folks are predicting that this will be the worst team of all time. Those people have very short memories. Let's consider the lockout Bobcats. That teams best player was Derrick Brown. Derrick "Who the hell?" Brown. It managed an astounding 6 players that produced negative win totals. I am not sure that people understand just how bad a team's players need to be to drag it down to the 16-win level. The fact is, this roster has a borderline star, a budding young star, and a bunch of guys who are "only" sub-par. There are no players on this list anywhere near as bad as, for example, Tyrus Thomas, Darko Milicic in the 11/12 season. If Thaddeus Young were surronded by the likes of the Kevin Love's supporting cast on the 10/11 Timberwolves, we'd have a different projection, but there aren't any truly pathetic players on this roster.
And there is one final fact that everyone keeps forgetting: they'll be playing games in February and March vs. other teams that have just as little interest in winning. It wouldn't suprise me at all if they finish with 25 wins, but 16 wins would require truly herculean effort towards losing.
The Wrap
Our projection of nearly 35 wins is bound to attract some scorn and laughter. The fact is that this roster simply doesn't have enough truly terrible players to be "historically" bad. Consider that only 27 teams have done this since 1946, and take another look at how horrific the rosters of those teams were. When you add to the fact there is almost no chance that David Stern (Adam Silver) is going to allow his final (first) season to be marred by shenanigans in the style of "Mark Madsen shoots 7 threes in the fourth quarter" this year, it's going to be downright hard for Philly to lose 20 games no matter who it trots out on the floor. In fact, simply by trying to win, even with its underpowered roster, it has a longshot chance of eeking in to the playoffs by wiping the floor with other terrible teams that aren't trying too hard.
Finally, given that the 76ers play in a division where only the Nets look strong, and a conference that's far weaker than the West, predicting that this team will surprise a few people seems like a no-brainer.
The Second Opinion Arturo nods his head
16.5 wins in a "tank year" (i.e. a year where several teams will probably be trying more-or-less on purpose to maximize their lottery chances) is a tough number to achieve. The last two tank years (2002-3 and 2006-7) saw 17 wins and 22 wins respectively take the crown for worst record. The thing is, these years provide incentives for everyone to lose. The Sixers, as covered above, haven't got a terrible roster and they'll be playing teams that will be trying to lose.
I actually think that they might even bring some of their injured players back after the All Star break, get them some run and be a decent team. That's better than, say, the Suns, who will not have any injured good players to bring back.I learned from my Christian McCaffrey Scouting Report that scouting prospects for the NFL Draft is a polarizing proposition. If you see and point out something that goes against popular wisdom, you better be ready to defend yourself. This ability, not just to disagree with the group, but to be able to defend that disagreement, is the difference between a contradictory voice that deserves to be listened to and someone who’s just looking to get cheap clicks.
You have to hang your hat on prospects you feel strongly about, and the second prospect on my list is one such player.
I believe Obi Melifonwu will end up as the best defensive back from the 2017 NFL Draft.
Now I do need to clarify here. He might not be as good a safety as Jamal Adams or Malik Hooker… but those guys are limited to playing their natural positions. Hooker is the prototypical ball hawking free safety, and Adams is a hammer at strong safety.
Obi, on the other hand, can be whatever a defense needs him to be.
He measured 6’4″ 219 lbs. at the Senior Bowl, which made it that much crazier when coaches lined him up as a press corner during practice, even in the slot. And he held up very well, showing the fluid hips, awareness, and break on the ball that you would expect from a cornerback. This is a man who has shown the ability to track free receivers on passing plays, and diagnose and charge down into the box on a run.
Add to that versatility that he is expected to run in the low 4.4s at the combine- and let me remind you, this is at 6’4″ 219 lbs.- and expected to test with the kind of explosion that will put him near the top of the 2017 SPARQ rankings, and you have yourself a top defensive back. Coaches can’t speak highly enough of him as an athlete, student of the game, and leader, and he will be a first round pick in April.
Best Case Player Comparison: Patrick Peterson
Peterson was a bit of a cornerback/safety hybrid when he was drafted, then was soon considered one of the league’s better cornerbacks. But that doesn’t mean his role is limited to the outside, or that he hasn’t helped the Cardinals with his physical presence as an enforcer against the run. Obi can be drafted with similar traits- all-world athleticism and size to go along with impressive ball skills- and improve a defensive backfield in a number of different ways.
Worst Case Player Comparison: Brandon Browner
If Obi is drafted purely as a safety, I imagine he will reward his new team with above average play, and lock down the position for a long time. But if he is drafted with his ability to play some cornerback in mind, he will need more seasoning at the position. A few Senior Bowl practices does not a cornerback make, no matter how good he looked when thrown into the fire. If he is forced to start at corner, he will at the very least be a physical jam-em-at-the-line player, which could make up for his lack of experience actually covering receivers.
Summary
It’s hard not to look at Obi and picture him drafted by the Seahawks as the big, long, tough cornerback that mans the field on the opposite side of Richard Sherman, the way Browner did (successfully in 2012, unsuccessfully in 2016.) I see a good athlete with a very high floor as a safety, and with an incredible ceiling in the right system as a cornerback. Though I didn’t have him in the first round of my current mock draft, he will be there in my next one.As the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power takes up legislation Wednesday to force approval of the Keystone XL pipeline extension, the bill raises a key question: can Congress wrest the Keystone decision away from President Obama?
The answer: Neither side knows exactly, but depending on the legislative language, Congress could very well pull it off.
The Northern Route Approval Act, the subject of Wednesday’s hearing, would grant TransCanada a permit to build a 1,179-mile pipeline between Hardisty, Alberta, and Steele City, Okla., to ship crude oil from Canada’s oil sands region. The company is moving ahead with the project’s 485-mile southern leg — known as the Gulf Coast Project, between Steele City and Port Arthur, Tex. — which is two-thirds built and has all the necessary federal permits.
The State Department is in the midst of an extensive environmental and national interest review of the pipeline, which supporters say will help meet America’s energy and economic needs, and which opponents say will accelerate climate change. That review will continue for several months, and the president is expected to make a final decision by either the late summer or early fall.
Congress tried to force Obama’s hand more than a year ago on this: they imposed a February 2012 deadline on the president for a final decision, and in response he rejected the permit, arguing it did not provide his deputies with enough time to do a full review of the project.
While the new House bill could face a similar problem if it passes both chambers before Obama rules on the permit, the more salient question is what would happen if the president rejects TransCanada’s permit application and the House and Senate respond by passing a bill by veto-proof majorities that effectively grants the pipeline a permit.
“Congress could still deem it approved,” Rep. Lee Terry (R-Neb.), the bill’s author, told reporters Tuesday.
Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, who directs the Natural Resources Defense Council’s international program, said her group wouldn’t hesitate to challenge such a move in court.
"Should Congress decide to set aside a decision by the president to deny the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, we would push back in every way possible, including researching the legality of such an effort to undermine a decision-making process that included public participation by hundreds of thousands of Americans," she said.
The Congressional Research Service has examined this question in two separate reports, and in a 2012 report, it suggests Congress has just as much a right to weigh in on international pipelines as the president.
That report notes, “Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution authorizes Congress to ‘regulate Commerce with foreign Nations.’ Whereas any independent presidential authority in matters affecting foreign commerce derives from the President's more general foreign affairs authority, Congress's power over foreign commerce is plainly enumerated by the Constitution, suggesting that its authority in this field is preeminent.”
Now, just to complicate matters, a 2013 CRS report notes that a 2010 ruling by the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota found the president had the right to issue international pipeline permits because Congress had not challenged this authority over a period of several years.
“The court also noted that these permits had been issued many times before and that ‘Congress has not attempted to exercise any exclusive authority over the permitting process. Congress’s inaction suggests that Congress has accepted the authority of the President to issue cross-border permits’” the 2013 report reads. “Based on the historical recognition of the president’s authority to issue these permits and Congress’s implied approval through inaction, the court found the Presidential Permit requirement for border facilities constitutional.”
Ironically in that case — Sierra Club v. Clinton — it was an environmental group challenging the Clinton administration’s ability to oversee an international pipeline. Now, the Sierra Club and other environmental groups are pushing for Obama, rather than Congress, to have final authority on the question, but that probably reflects the fact that Democrats had control of both chambers of Congress when the Sierra Club was suing over the Alberta Clipper pipeline decision.
On the political front, do backers of Keystone XL have the 67 votes in the Senate and 290 votes in the House to override a presidential veto? Not quite: on March 22 the Senate approved a non-binding resolution in favor of building the project by a vote of 62 to 37, with 17 Democrats voting in favor.
So in the end, can Congress grant a permit to the pipeline even if Obama rejects it? It appears proponents may be able to force the project through, if they can attract a few more Democrats to their side, but they would still have to fight in federal court to seal such a victory.Can I get iPhone 7 with JUMP! On Demand?
Absolutely. For customers who want the freedom to switch to the latest phones whenever they want (up to 3X a year), iPhone 7 and 7 Plus are also available with JUMP! On Demand.
Can I get iPhone 7 with JUMP!?
Absolutely. Just like any other JUMP! upgrade, you can jump to iPhone 7 or 7 Plus with trade-in once you’ve paid off 50% of your current phone.
How much does iPhone 7 and 7 Plus cost without the iPhone Trade-Up offer?
Plus taxes & fees. Device pricing for well qualified customers. 0% APR. If you cancel wireless service remaining balance at full price is due.
When can I pre-order iPhone 7 or 7 Plus as a JUMP! or JUMP! On Demand customer?
JUMP! On Demand customers can pre-order iPhone 7 starting Friday, September 9th at 12:01 AM PT by calling 611 or by visiting your local T-Mobile store when it’s open that day. Unfortunately, our web site does not yet have the functionality to process JUMP! On Demand orders for iPhone 7, but our award-winning care and retail teams will be ready to help you.
JUMP! customers can pre-order iPhone 7 online using a standard JUMP! Upgrade starting Friday, September 9th at 12:01 AM PT, by calling 611 or by visiting your local T-Mobile store when it’s open that day.
iPhone Trade-Up with JUMP! and JUMP! On Demand
What if I have a JUMP! On Demand lease for my current iPhone that I want to trade-in for the iPhone Trade-Up offer?
You can absolutely do that. You need to own your iPhone to participate in this offer, so after you pay off remaining months and the residual on your JUMP! On Demand lease agreement, you can trade it in for a free iPhone 7.
If I participate in the iPhone Trade-Up offer, will I still be in JUMP! On Demand and be able to upgrade whenever I want?
If you participate in this offer, you’ll be starting a no-cost 24 month finance agreement, which is not part of JUMP! On Demand. If you want the freedom to continue to upgrade your phone whenever you want (up to 3x a year), you should just upgrade through JUMP! On Demand.
How much will it cost me to pay off my JUMP! On Demand lease to get the iPhone Trade-Up offer?
It depends on what kind of phone you have and how long you’ve had it. The best thing way to figure out exactly how much you owe is to reach out to customer service (call 611) or visit a T-Mobile store, and we’ll help you out.
Can I use my JUMP! upgrade with the iPhone Trade-Up offer?
You need to own the phone you’re trading in, so once you’ve paid off any remaining balance, you can trade in your current phone and get this deal.
If you want to take advantage of the iPhone Trade-Up offer and are enrolled in JUMP!, you can do that by calling care (611) or visiting a retail store.
If I get the iPhone Trade-Up offer, when will my next JUMP! upgrade be?BENGALURU: Recruitment by IT services industry, which accounted for nearly a quarter of the organised private sector employment in India in fiscal 2014, will halve by fiscal 2018 despite a 13-15% growth forecast in the industry’s revenues during this period, according to credit rating agency CRISIL.The shift can be seen already. Between April 2013 and March 2014, the IT industry added only 13,000 employees for every billion dollar of revenue, according to data from software industry grouping Nasscom. During the year to March 2013, it needed 26,500 employees.IT services vendors are struggling to crank up profitability in a milieu where global weakness is forcing their clients to optimise costs to hold on to margins. On their part, vendors responded by rationalising their bench strength, improving utilisation rate and trimming operational costs, according to CRISIL.Among the top IT services providers, HCL Technologies is so far proving to be the most efficient when it comes to revenue productivity.In 2012-13, it employed 18,270 staff for every billion dollar in revenue. Infosys required 21,202 employees, Wipro 23,480 and TCS 23,810 for every $1 billion in the top line.Since the end of 2007, India's largest standalone BPO, Genpact, has reduced the number of employees needed to earn $1 billion in revenue by over 10,000 to 29,577.According to a CRISIL report, despite revenue growth, companies will run very tight ships because of which incremental employment will be curbed. Vendors are gradually adopting just-in-time hiring and increasing the proportion of fixed-price contracts in their portfolio, which reduces the need to maintain flab on the bench, the report said. Additionally, they are migrating towards higher-value service offerings such as consulting, investing in intellectual property (IP)-based products and leveraging on the emergence of social media, mobile, analytics and cloud (SMAC).“These initiatives will increase revenue per employee (RPE) at a compounded annual growth rate of 7% between fiscals 2015 and 2018. This, along with improvement in employee utilisation, will over time delink hiring from revenue growth. We also foresee a transformation in the recruitment pattern where employers become more focused and picky, increasingly seeking specific skill sets. This will lead to greater lateral hiring,” said Ramraj Pai, President, Business Head –Ratings, Large Corporates, CRISIL.India’s IT sector, with revenues of $118 billion in the last fiscal, employs 3.1 million people, or around 24% of organised private-sector employment in India. The sector has practically driven growth in organised private jobs in the country over the past decade. Its initial phase of high revenue growth between fiscals 2003 and 2007 also saw a substantial growth in recruitments.This was followed by the global financial crisis between 2008 and 2010 and moderate recovery during fiscals 2011 and 2013. Yet hiring rates mirrored revenue growth. CRISIL believes the sector is now entering a new phase where this will gradually delink.“We believe despite healthy
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etotaller and non-gambler" who loved his pipe, tennis and music.[54] After his marriage, Macartney described himself as a civil servant while he was not engaged in cricketing activities.[54] Like most Australian cricketers of his era, Macartney was Protestant, and a freemason.[55]
Macartney wrote for several Sydney newspapers, and between 1936 and 1942 regularly produced pieces for the Sydney Morning Herald. In 1930 he published the autobiographical My Cricketing Days. During the Second World War, he was a lieutenant in the amenities service of the Australian Defence Force, and afterwards was a personnel officer at Prince Henry Hospital.[54]
Childless, Macartney was predeceased by his wife. He died of coronary occlusion (heart attack) while at work in Little Bay, New South Wales, aged 72.[52][54] In February 2007, Macartney was inducted into the Australian Cricket Hall of Fame along with Richie Benaud, making them the 26th and 27th inductees.[56]
Test match performance [ edit ]
Batting[33] Bowling[32] Opposition Matches Runs Average High Score 100 / 50 Runs Wickets Average Best (Inns) England 26 1640 43.15 170 5/7 908 33 27.51 7/58 South Africa 9 491 37.76 137 2/2 332 12 27.66 5/44 Overall 35 2131 41.78 170 7/9 1240 45 27.55 7/58
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]Abstract
In the past year, in response to emerging independent science on the 9/11 attacks, nine corporate, seven public, and two independent media outlets aired analytic programs investigating the official account.
Increasingly, the issue is treated as a scientific controversy worthy of debate, rather than as a “conspiracy theory” ignoring science and common sense.
This essay presents these media analyses in the form of 18 case studies.
Eight countries – Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and Russia – have allowed their publicly-owned broadcasting stations to air the full spectrum of evidence challenging the truth of the official account of 9/11.
This more open approach taken in the international media – I could also have included the Japanese media – might be a sign that worldwide public and corporate media organizations are positioning themselves, and preparing their audiences, for a possible revelation of the truth of the claim that forces within the US government were complicit in the attacks – a revelation that would call into question the publicly given rationale for the military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
The evidence now being explored in the international media may pave the way for the US media to take an in-depth look at the implications of what is now known about 9/11, and to re-examine the country’s foreign and domestic policies in the light of this knowledge.
I. Introduction
Until 2009, doubts about the official 9/11 story were briefly entertained by the mainstream media on each anniversary of the event, allowing the independent research community only a fleeting moment once a year to publicly voice its findings.
But after crucial scientific evidence emerged in April 2009 to challenge the official story of how the towers fell, a spate of European media reports followed. The news coverage of this evidence seems to have opened the door to more serious reflection on all aspects of the 9/11 issue in the major media.
The first paper in my series, “The Media Response to 9/11,” dealt with the New Statesman’s grudging recognition of Dr. David Ray Griffin, the world’s “top truther” (as it dubbed him), placing him number 41 among “The 50 People Who Matter Today.”1 Since this admission in September 2009, the issue has gathered increasing momentum.
The collective content issuing from this new momentum is presented here in the hope that it will embolden other major media to take up the pivotal controversy concerning 9/11, and pursuing the truth wherever it may lead.
Observations on the Analysis
While carrying out my analysis, I observed five new features in the media treatment of the 9/11 issue that developed as 2009 progressed. They are listed here, so that readers might look for them in the case studies that follow below:
1. The 9/11 issue is increasingly framed not as conspiracy theories versus hard science, but as a legitimate controversy resting on unanswered questions and a search for truth. 2. News reports and television programs examining these controversies have become longer and more balanced. 3. Major media outlets have begun to present the claims of the truth movement first, followed by counter-arguments from defenders of the official story. 4. Major media outlets have begun to include, and even to introduce, extensive evidence to support the claims of the 9/11 truth community. 5. The media treatments increasingly suggest the possibility of a re-investigation into the events of September 11, 2001.
The first part of this essay deals with the crucial scientific evidence that emerged in early 2009, the significance of this evidence in relation to the official story of 9/11, and the immediate news coverage it received.
II. Scientific Paper Finds Nano-thermite Explosives in World Trade Center Dust, April 3, 2009
A peer-reviewed paper published in the Open Chemical Physics Journal on April 3, 2009,2 reported that a little known high-tech explosive called nano-thermite was found throughout the World Trade Center dust.
These physicists and chemists involved in this study discovered “distinctive red/gray chips in significant numbers”3 in four samples of dust collected from the area. The presence of aluminum and iron oxide in the red material provided one of the signs that it might be nano-thermite, which is a high explosive (whereas ordinary thermite is an incendiary.)
Another clue was provided when putting a flame to the chips produced an explosive reaction.
On the basis of these and other observations, the team concluded that “the red layer of the red/gray chips we have discovered in the WTC dust is active, unreacted thermitic material, incorporating nanotechnology, and is a highly energetic pyrotechnic or explosive material.”4
The article’s first-named author, Dr. Niels Harrit – a University of Copenhagen chemistry professor who specializes in nano-chemistry5 –explained on Danish TV2 News:
“Thermite itself dates back to 1893. It is a mixture of aluminum and rust-powder, which react to create intense heat. The reaction produces iron, heated to 2500 degrees Centigrade. This can be used to do welding. It can also be used to melt other iron. “So in nano-thermite, this powder from 1893 is reduced to tiny particles, perfectly mixed. When these react, the intense heat develops much more quickly. Nano-thermite can be mixed with additives to give off intense heat, or serve as a very effective explosive. It contains more energy than dynamite, and can be used as rocket fuel. “You cannot fudge this kind of science. We have found it: unreacted thermite.”6
What was the significance of this sophisticated material?
Reported Evidence that Nano-thermite is a Military Substance
In a German interview in May 2009, Dr. Harrit said: “There are no experts on nano-thermite without connections to the military…. This stuff has only been prepared under military contracts in the USA and probably in bigger allied countries. This is secret military research…It was not prepared in a cave in Afghanistan.”7
Chemist Kevin Ryan, another co-author, had reported in an earlier article that explosive nano-thermite, which may be painted onto surfaces, was developed by US government scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories.8
A United States Department of Defense special publication confirms that work on these “energetic materials” has long been “performed in laboratories within all military services.”9
According to a June 2009 statement by Britain’s prestigious Institute of Nanotechnology,10 the Harrit study “provides indisputable evidence that a highly engineered explosive called nano-thermite was found in the dust of all three buildings that came down on 9/11 2001 in New York city. [sic] This advanced explosive incorporating nanotechnology is only available to sophisticated military labs.”11
It thus became known by mid-2009 that explosives of military origin, probably in the United States, had been involved in the World Trade Center collapses.
Early Coverage of the Nano-thermite Finding in the European Mainstream Press
Although the new scientific evidence against the official story of 9/11 was not reported in the mainstream British or North American media, it did receive attention in continental Europe.
The day the article was published, a thorough essay in the Danish journal Videnskab (Science) examined both sides of the controversy about controlled demolition.12
The same issue of Videnskab also carried an interview with Professor Harrit, who answered pointed questions about the peer-review history of the article, and the military nature of nano-thermite.13
The following day, Denmark’s politiken.dk reported the scientific nano-thermite paper in an article called (in Danish) “Conspiracy theories about 9/11 get new life.”14
Then, the day after Professor Harrit’s April 6 interview Danish TV2 News, he was featured on the popular talk show, “Good Morning Denmark”, on which he said:
“The material we found is super hi-tech frontline military research. It’s not a mixture of random chemicals. It’s an advanced material which is difficult to get information on. But some conference papers and internal reports have been published…There has to be a normal forensic investigation of this attempt. Our research is high-level forensic work. We have provided technical evidence that can be used in the future investigation.”15
On April 13, an online Croatian political newspaper posted the Danish TV2 video interview with Harrit along with an article titled “VIDEO: 9/11 No Longer Taboo Topic in Denmark”.16
Russia also took notice. On July 9, Laura Emmett, the London correspondent for RT, interviewed Dr. Niels Harrit for over 10 minutes. (RT, previously known as Russia Today, is a globally broadcast English-language channel sponsored by the state-owned news agency RIA Novosti. It reaches 1.5 million people monthly, including half a million Americans.) Stating that “the evidence for controlled demolition is overwhelming”, Harrit reported that the nano-thermite reaction produced pools of molten iron beneath the rubble and inextinguishable fires that lasted for months.17
I turn now to ways that the mainstream news coverage of the case against the official story has changed since the appearance of the nano-thermite paper.
III. The Changing Mainstream Media Treatment of 9/11 Evidence from early 2009 to early 2010: 18 Case Studies
Two February 2009 news items illustrate the wary mainstream attitude towards conspiracy theorists early in the year. A New York Times article said about actor Daniel Sunjata:
The second episode of “Rescue Me’s” fifth season, starting in April, may represent the first fictional presentation of 9/11 conspiracy theories by a mainstream media company…Mr. Sunjata’s character delivers a two-minute monologue…describing a “neoconservative government effort” to control the world’s oil, drastically increase military spending and “change the definition of pre-emptive attack.” Mr. Sunjata surprised some of the TV reporters when he said that he “absolutely, 100 percent” supports the assertion that “9/11 was an inside job.”18
Fox News was somewhat less constrained, saying:
An upcoming episode of the drama “Rescue Me” is about 9/11 being an inside job. The actor who spews the theories on camera, Daniel Sunjata, actually believes in it too. Look, the fact is, actors who barf this crap are doing it for their own egos. It makes them feel smart, because for once they’re spouting something provocative instead of puerile. Never mind that it’s an insidious insult to the victims of 9/11 – as it is to the rest of us, who may or may not be guilty, according to Sunjata’s theory.19
However, things started to change after the appearance of the nano-thermite paper on April 3, as may be seen from the following case studies of media reports, each of which is identified as having corporate, public, or independent ownership.
The case studies reveal the evidence which has been introduced into public consciousness during the past year.
Case Study 1: The Dutch TV Mock Trial of Osama bin Laden, April 25, 2009
On April 8, 2009, a popular TV program called “Devil’s Advocate” held a mock trial of Osama bin Laden with lawyers arguing before a politically balanced civil jury of five people.
The case against bin Laden was argued by two real-world opponents: former American correspondent Charles Groenhuijsen, and Dutch-American Glenn Schoen of a US security firm. Real-world lawyer Gerald Spong acted as bin Laden’s defense attorney.20
Spong presented new evidence from a videotape of Professor Emeritus of Islamic Studies Gernot Rotter, saying that the American translators who transcribed the bin Laden tapes of the November 9, 2001 “confession video” have “clearly added things in many places – things that are not there even when listening multiple times.”21
Spong won. Although the jury found bin Laden to be a terrorist, it said there was no proof that he had ordered the 9/11 attacks.
Through this method, this program on AVRO – the Dutch public broadcasting organization – presented evidence, not previously seen in the major media, against the likelihood that bin Laden ordered the attacks.
On April 15, Fox News reported the Dutch jury findings in a long and unusually balanced article, in which former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani was quoted six times, saying that bin Laden’s exoneration sent a “disturbing message” to the world and fueled conspiracy theories. Giuliani variously called this message “bizarre,” “dangerous,” “aberrational,” “irrational,” and “unfortunate.”22
However, referring to Spong as a “well-known yet controversial attorney,” Fox mentioned him 10 times, and more substantively, reporting his evidence that the bin Laden videos seemed inauthentic, as well as his point that the FBI has not indicted bin Laden for the attacks.
Concluding Comment: (AVRO is publicly owned, but Fox News is corporate.) Neither of these two mainstream treatments of doubts about the official story was broadcast on the customary anniversary date, and both reached millions of people.
Case Study 2: Architect Richard Gage in Canada’s “Financial Post”, April 25, 2009
One of Canada’s top four English-language newspapers, the conservative National Post, publishes its business section as the Financial Post.
Three weeks after the nano-thermite story broke, Jonathan Kay, a National Post columnist and editor with degrees in both engineering and law, wrote an article about Richard Gage, the “lucid” San Francisco architect who heads up the 1,000-strong “Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth.”23
Kay, who himself endorses the official story of 9/11, described Gage as a “respectable-looking middle-aged” architect, “complete with suit and tie, and receding hairline,” and reported that Gage’s organization “scored a booth at the upcoming American Institute of Architects conference from April 30 to May 2.”
In the midst of references to thermite reactions and iron-oxide-based explosives, Kay wrote of controlled demolitions:
“As radical as Gage’s theory may sound to readers, it’s surprisingly popular. The ‘9/11 Truth Movement’…has millions of adherents across the world. Many believe that the World Trade Center was destroyed on Sept. 11 through controlled demolition set in motion by officials within America’s own government and military.”
Gage’s presentation was also described as “effective”:
“In one particularly effective segment, he puts up shots of the localized fires that broke out in the lower floors of WTC Building 7 hours before it collapsed. Seconds later, he shows footage of Beijing’s Mandarin Oriental hotel – which suffered an epic top-to-bottom conflagration in 2009…and remained standing.”
Concluding Comment: (Corporate). Besides reporting Gage’s evidence without any attempted refutation, this corporate-press writer remarked that “no major media outlet has done a truly comprehensive profile or investigation of the Truther movement.” He thereby seemed to be suggesting that it is now time to take the 9/11 truth movement seriously.
Case Study 3: Norwegian State Radio’s Public Debate on 9/11 Truth, May 21, 2009
Professor Harrit, who was lecturing in Norway in late May 2009, was interviewed by public radio program “Here and Now”,24 on NRK (the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation).
Harrit presented the findings of the nano-thermite paper, which were then discussed by three Norwegian scientists who did not support his conclusions.
Following the radio program, an extended email debate continued between Dr. Ola Nilsen, who teaches chemistry at the University of Oslo, and Dr. Steven Jones, a co-author of the nano-thermite paper who formerly taught physics at Brigham Young University. This debate, during which Nilsen somewhat modified his original view, was posted to a Norwegian blogsite in English.25
Concluding Comment: (Public). Although NRK in this April program challenged the findings of the Harrit paper, this was to change by late summer, as we shall see below.
Case Study 4: Architect Richard Gage on Fox News, May 28, 2009
The hosts of Fox News on KMPH in Fresno, California, began their 7-minute interview by saying, “He’s an architect experienced in steel structures. Now Richard Gage is…here to show us why he’s calling for a more thorough investigation into the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings.”26
These two anchors actively encouraged Gage’s discussion of the ten key features of controlled demolition. He was allowed to explain the free-fall acceleration of WTC 7 (shown on his two video frames as dropping at the same rate as a second building felled by controlled demolition) and the “uncanny” failure of 40,000 tons of structural steel columns that were designed to resist its collapse.
Although normal office fires were said to have caused the collapses, he explained, various firefighters had reported large pools of molten iron at ground level.
“What produced all that molten iron?” he asked.
The answer, he said, was found in the inches of dust covering lower Manhattan. “The by-product of thermite is molten iron and it’s dispersed throughout all this dust…and there are small chips of unignited thermite as well. This is very high-tech thermite – nano-thermite. It’s not found in a cave in Afghanistan; it’s produced in very sophisticated defense department contracting laboratories…[its] particles are one-thousand times smaller than a human hair.”
Asked whether bin Laden might have had access to the buildings, Gage said probably not – that someone else who had access to nano-thermite, and to the buildings’ security systems, would need to be investigated. Someone who had access to the elevator modernization, which was going on nine months earlier and was “immediately adjacent to the core columns and beams in the building.”
Concluding Comment: (Corporate). This Fox News show began by asking Gage about his credentials, saying “We ask that for clarification so that as we get into this, we want people to make sure that you’re not just someone with a wacky idea…you come with some science to you.” The program ended with a sincere thank-you to Gage for “opening up a lot to think about,” and an announcement that there is “a great deal of information” on the KMPH.com website. In short, Gage was treated with the respect due to any serious participant in an important and controversial issue.
The next major mainstream event was the Russia Today program of July 9, 2009, which was covered above, so we will move directly to the anniversary period of September 2009, when further evidence of the impact of the nano-thermite discovery became apparent.
Case Study 5: The National Geographic Documentary, “9/11: Science and Conspiracy”, August 31, 2009
In late August, 2009, the National Geographic Channel (NGC) aired a two-hour documentary, “9/11: Science and Conspiracy,” which sought to answer several questions, “What caused the collapse of the Twin Towers? Was it from the fires, or were explosives placed inside the buildings, causing them to implode? Did a missile, rather than a commercial airline jet, strike the Pentagon?”27
This “NatGeo” program purported to explore evidence about controlled demolition presented by the 9/11 truth movment. It interviewed Dylan Avery (the maker of the “Loose Change” films), Richard Gage, David Ray Griffin, and Steven Jones. But in reality this NatGeo program was entirely devoted to debunking their claims by using pseudo-scientific demonstrations to refute claims that none of these men have made.
For example, in order to refute the claim that nano-thermite could have brought down the buildings, NatGeo used ordinary thermite (with the narrator explaining that they had no access to nano-thermite). Moreover, instead of using the thermite to make shaped charges, which can cut through steel, the NatGeo experimenter simply placed a bag of thermite next to a steel column and lit it. When the burning thermite (entirely predictably) did not melt the column, the narrator concluded, triumphantly, that science had disproved the claim of the conspiracy theorists.
A review in Media Life Magazine, while not fully exposing the phoniness of the program’s claim to represent “science,” did point out some shortcomings, saying:
Some of the issues raised by the truthers, however, aren’t addressed, or are addressed in brief asides. This leaves this documentary open to charges of picking and choosing which points to cover. “9/11: Science and Conspiracy” spends too much time discussing the psychology behind conspiracy theories – which isn’t really a hard science.28
A review in the New York Post quoted Sander Hicks, a journalist who is openly a member of the 9/11 truth community, as saying that its representatives on the program “come off as careful and professional, unemotional, but compassionate about the truth,” and that the program, in spite of its faults, shows “that the topic is still relevant and that the case isn’t closed.”29
Concluding Comment: (Corporate). This program by National Geographic provides a good reminder of how the 9/11 truth issue has generally been handled by the corporately-controlled media. But it also demonstrates the fact that the controversy is very much alive in the major media.
Case Study 6: Germany’s Weekly TV Guide, “TV Hören und Sehen,” August 31, 2009
“TV Hören und Sehen”, with a paid circulation of nearly a million copies, is owned by the Bauer Media Group, which publishes 308 magazines in 14 countries. The TV magazine features interviews and articles by prominent German authors.30
It is therefore significant that on August 31, 2009, this magazine published “Die Geheimakten von 9/11” (“The Secret Files of 9/11”) as a full double-page spread, continuing with photos on two subsequent pages. It opened by saying: “9/11 is officially the largest criminal case in history – but classified documents and witness accounts are surfacing, that speak against the official versions of the CIA and Pentagon.”31
It then asks what force could pulverize 200,000 tons of steel in 11.4 seconds, quoting US engineer Neel Ginson: “In order to bring down this kind of mass in such a short period of time, the material must have been artificially exploded outwards.” Ginson added that, looking closely, one can see small explosions in the Twin Towers always occurring before the floors are reached by the collapse line. The fact that the towers were the first steel-frame buildings in the world to collapse because of fire, he added, was even admitted by NIST (the National Institute of Science and Technology, the government agency that produced the official reports).
Among many other questions, the article raises the issue of adjacent World Trade Center 7, the 47-storey steel-frame building with a base the size of a football field that collapsed at 5:20 PM the same day: “But the official 9/11 investigation never mentions the building once.”
With reference to the Pentagon, this article asks: How were the victims identified by their fingerprints, when even the airplane steel had melted?
Concluding Comment: (Corporate). Although this article does not specifically mention nano-thermite, it clearly suggests that artificial explosions brought down the buildings. By not defending the official story at all, this large-chain corporate media outlet was among the first to give an open hearing to the independent 9/11 research community.
Case Study 7: Two California Newspapers Review the Role of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, September 2009
In September 2009, Metroactive (Silicon Valley’s number-one weekly magazine) and the Santa Barbara Independent, each published slightly different versions of a long article on the controversy surrounding the WTC building collapses.32
The Independent article – entitled “Twin Towers, Twin Myths?” – begins:
“One of the crucial technical disputes in American history, perhaps second only to global warming, is underway. It pits hundreds of government technicians who say the World Trade Center buildings were brought down by airplane impact against hundreds of professional architects and building engineers who insist that the Twin Towers could never have collapsed solely due to the planes and are calling for a new independent investigation. It is a fight that is not going away and is likely to get louder as more building trade professionals sign on to one side or the other.”33
The version in MetroActive – called “Explosive Theory” – says “[E]ight years after 9/11, a growing organization of building trades professionals suspect that there was more to the event than the government will admit.” It then gives a short history of Gage’s now 1,000-strong organization, Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (AE).34
Deputy Director Michael J. Heimbach of the FBI’s counter-terrorism division, this article adds, had recently acknowledged in a letter to the organization that Gage’s presentation is “backed by thorough research and analysis.”
One local AE member was quoted as saying “it takes too much energy” – energy that was not there – to collapse the buildings at free-fall speed, given the resistance that steel offers. This was borne out, this member continued, by a team of scientists “working at technical laboratories in the United States and Denmark [who] reported in April that analysis of dust …gathered at the World Trade Center found evidence of the potent incendiary/explosive ‘super thermite,’ used by the military.”
Almost half of this article deals with the controversy over whether nano-thermite was used, with most of the space allotted to evidence supplied by the 9/11 Truth Movement. Near the end, however, spokesman Michael Newman is brought in to defend NIST’s research, saying there was “no need” to test the dust for thermite.
But the last word was given to engineer Ed Munyak of AE, who said:
“The fact is that the collapses don’t resemble any fire-induced behavior of structures, but it exactly mimics a controlled demolition, so why not investigate that? It’s all very suspicious and that’s why an independent investigation is needed so we can all learn from this.”
“Explosive Theory” also focuses pointedly on the growing number of professional organizations and retired officials calling for a new investigation, including:
…two dozen retired U.S. military brass and eight former U.S. State Department officials, along with a number of Republicans who have served in high federal positions since President Reagan, including former Assistant Treasury Secretary Paul Craig Roberts and former Reagan administration Assistant Defense Secretary (and retired Marine Corps colonel) Ronald D. Ray.
The version in the Santa Barbara Independent concludes with an unusually candid observation:
And how would America deal with such an investigation against the backdrop of suppositions that some officials in government were complicit? This idea is virtually unthinkable to most of the public, much less something the American political system can handle…The forces of denial, in the system and in most of our minds, are innately powerful and probably sufficient to mitigate against a reopened investigation. Despite this, [Richard] Gage [of AE] sees his role as provoking a better investigation.
Concluding Comment: (Independent). The authors of this article, rather than referring to “conspiracy theorists,” present the 9/11 issue as a “technical dispute” of historic importance. Both versions of the article represent a 180-degree turnaround in American newspaper reporting, providing a useful introduction to the long-ignored research by independent professionals. The Santa Barbara Independent, curious about public opinion rather than seeking to hide it, published a local poll asking if conspiracy was behind the collapses: 75% of respondents answered “yes”.35
Case Study 8: Dr. Niels Harrit on NRK1’s “Schrödinger’s Cat,” September 10, 2009
NRK1 is the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation’s main TV channel. It’s program “Schrödinger’s Cat”, which is about scientific research and technology, comes on every Thursday following the evening news. It has won several awards, and averages 487,000 viewers.
For the September 10 program, Dr. Harrit was interviewed for about ten minutes in his office and laboratory at the University of Copenhagen Nano-Science Center, where he demonstrated the magnetic quality of a WTC dust sample. He also showed videotape of molten iron flowing from the upper South Tower, which was iron, not aluminum (which melts at a much lower temperature than steel or iron). Emphasizing that an office fire, even if fed by jet fuel, could not possibly get hot enough to melt steel, thereby producing iron, he concluded that the flowing iron had to have been caused by something such as nano-thermite, which produces “an enormous amount of heat”, and molten iron is created in the process, with a temperature of 4530 F.36
Although Harrit did not know who placed the explosives, he said, he had no doubt that a crime had occurred.
In the final third of the program, three other people were asked for comments. Two of the people tried to cast doubt on Harrit’s conclusions, but their comments were weak, even absurd. An architect argued that the energy from the airliners brought the Twin Towers down and then Building 7 came down because the collapse of the towers acted like an earthquake to weaken the ground. American buildings are weak, he explained, because they don’t use reinforced concrete.
Finally, Dr. David Ray Griffin has stated that “for scientists and people who study the facts, the official story about the Twin Towers is completely ludicrous, but for the general public it has seemed plausible. Jet fuel fires – they seem so hot. Jet fuel’s just kerosene.”
Concluding Comment: (Public). This prime-time coverage by Norway’s largest TV channel was quite a turnaround from the earlier NRK radio coverage in May. Most of the time was given to Drs. Harrit and Griffin; the content was groundbreaking; and the opposing views were obviously insubstantial. Considering Norway’s NATO membership and military participation in the US-led operations in Afghanistan, the program could prove to be significant.
Case Study 9 : London’s “Daily Mail” asks whether Osama bin Laden is Dead, September 11, 2009
This long and detailed article opens with the menacing bin Laden audiotape of June 3, 2009, timed to coincide with Barack Obama’s arrival on his Middle East tour, and then moves to the new Anglo-American offensive to “hunt and kill” the al Qaeda leader.
But, the Daily Mail asks, what if bin Laden isn’t alive?
What if everything we have seen or heard of him on video and audio tapes since the early days after 9/11 is a fake – and that he is being kept ‘alive’ by the Western allies to stir up support for the war on terror?
Incredibly, this is the breathtaking theory that is gaining credence among political commentators, respected academics and even terror experts.37
Professors Angelo Codevilla of Boston University and Bruce Lawrence of Duke University point out that the early, verifiable videotapes of bin Laden do not match the tapes that have emerged since 2002 – and even one in late 2001.
Telltale distinguishing features include a changed facial structure and increasing secularism in the content of the messages.
The article then presents the findings of Dr. Griffin’s book on the topic – Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive? – as “provoking shock waves”.
This book presents evidence that bin Laden died, probably due to kidney failure, in mid-December 2001, which would mean that his taped messages since then have been faked to “stoke up waning support for the war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Perhaps the most controversial of all the tapes was released by the Pentagon on December 13, 2001, claiming that it had been found in a home in Jalalabad. Prior to this tape, bin Laden had, while praising the 9/11 attacks, consistently denied responsibility for them. But the bin Laden of this tape boasts about having planned them.
President Bush, the Blair Government, and the mainstream media all hailed this message as offering conclusive proof of bin Laden’s guilt.
The Daily Mail, however, points to various reasons provided in Griffin’s book to believe that the man in this video was an imposter. It refers to the existence of a “highly sophisticated, special effects film technology to morph together images and vocal recordings.”
And it quotes Griffin as saying: “The confession tape came exactly when Bush and Blair had failed to prove Bin Laden’s responsibility for 9/11 and both men were trying to win international public support, particularly in the Islamic world, for the anti-terrorist campaign.”
Far from seeking to ridicule Griffin’s book, the Daily Mail concluded thus: “[T]he Bin Laden tapes have emerged with clockwork regularity as billions have been spent and much blood spilt on the hunt for him. Bin Laden has been the central plank of the West’s ‘war on terror’. Could it be that, for years, he’s just been smoke and mirrors?”
Concluding Comment: (Corporate). This 2400-word article is the first serious mainstream coverage the evidence that Osama bin Laden is dead – and has been for many years.
Case Study 10. The New Statesman announces Dr. David Ray Griffin as No. 41 in “The Fifty People who Matter Today,” September 24, 2009
Two weeks after the Daily Mail article, a second corporate British publication put Griffin in 41st place in a list of people who “matter today.”38
Because this article was discussed in my earlier paper, Part I of this series, it is mentioned here only as a significant milepost, one that gave (grudging) recognition to the fact that the movement challenging the official account of 9/11 can no longer be ignored.
Its impact on the media is shown by the fact that the New Statesman placed Dr. Griffin (who scores 200,000 results when googled) above Venezuela’s President, Hugo Chavez, (who scores over 11 million results) on its list of influential people.
Concluding Comment: (Corporate). Although the New Statesman called the movement represented by Dr. Griffin “pernicious”, its evaluation of his importance represents a point of no return in the media coverage of 9/11 – as we shall see.
Case Study 11: Jean-Marie Bigard on France 2 Public Television, October 28, 2009
Back in September 2008, Jean-Marie Bigard, France’s most popular stand-up comedian, was led to apologize for claiming 9/11 was orchestrated by the US government.39 But by July 2009, Bigard had started to post humorous videos on his website ridiculing the official account of the September 11 attacks.
In October 2009, Bigard and award-winning French filmmaker Mathieu Kassovitz appeared for an hour in a debate on France 2, the publicly owned French national television channel.40
The hosts, who had refused to include the scientist who was originally supposed to be on the show (Dr. Niels Harrit) attempted to center the debate on “straw man” theories that neither Bigard nor Kassovitz held. This led to arguments, which then allowed Le Figaro, France’s second largest newspaper, to dismiss the debate as “noisy sophistry”.41
Concluding Comment: (Public). Although this program was aimed at debunking the 9/11 movement, as shown by its refusal to include a scientist, the fact that it was aired on this state-owned network was a breakthrough, ending the era in which 9/11 questioning was ignored in France.
Case Study 12: “The Unofficial Story”, by CBC’s The Fifth Estate, November 27, 2009
On November 26, 2009, Canada’s largest newspaper, The Globe and Mail, noting in an objective review42 that the 9/11 truth movement is “gathering steam,” reported that a documentary airing that evening “follows up on some fairly startling public-opinion polls of late.”
It was referring to “The Unofficial Story”,43 a program in the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s weekly award-winning investigative series, The Fifth Estate.44
Host Bob McKeown, himself a recipient of multiple awards45, opened by saying that eight years after the “most scrutinized day in history”, there may be “more questions than ever”, and that an increasing number of people now believe the US government was behind the 9/11 attacks. “Incredibly”, he adds, “public opinion polls now show that a majority of Americans believe the Bush Administration had advance knowledge of those attacks, and one way or another allowed them to happen, and polls show that one Canadian in three believes that, too.”
“The Unofficial Story” then allows leading members of the 9/11 truth community to present a spectrum of evidence on various issues:
Architect Richard Gage on how the towers were brought down by controlled demolition Canadian scientist A.K. Dewdney on the impossibility of cell phone calls at high altitude David Ray Griffin on the FBI’s 2006 admission that, although US Solicitor General Ted Olson had reported receiving two calls from his wife, CNN commentator Barbara Olson on Flight 77, the evidence
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mixed-member" proportional representation (or MMP) that seems to work a great deal better. In MMP, voters both choose a local representative and vote for a national party. Then, parties that have fewer seats than their national vote share suggests they should have get "add on" members chosen from a party list to compensate. So parties both have to compete regionally and get broad national support, while voters have the benefit of a dedicated, geographic representative. At the moment, that's led to a two-party system in Japan and New Zealand and a four-party (two left, two right) system in Germany which has traditionally had no trouble forming coalitions.The Putin-critic and Russian activist also says 'I'm not for Hillary, I'm for sanity'.
Garry Kasparov, the former chess champion and Putin critic, says Donald Trump, the US Republican presidential nominee, is "probably" an agent of Russia.
The Russian activist says Russian President Vladimir Putin is "definitely behind" Trump, with what he calls "an army of Russian trolls" supporting the nominee.
Kasparov who has also been a long-time critic of both Bill and Hillary Clinton, says that while he doesn't think Hillary is the best-qualified candidate for US president, "she's running against Donald Trump".
"I always say I'm not for Hillary, I'm for sanity", Kasparov adds.
Watch more from Mehdi Hasan's interview with Kasparov, in which they discuss Putin, Russia and Ukraine.
Follow UpFront on Twitter @AJUpFront and Facebook.
Source: Al JazeeraThe song is called Watch Me—and watched it has been: nearly one billion times on YouTube, where the catchy hip-hop video, by American rapper Silentó, debuted last June.
“Now watch me whip, Now watch me nae nae. Now watch me whip whip, Watch me nae nae.”
In Peterborough, Ont.—home to a few thousand of those YouTube clicks, at the very least—a 13-year-old girl is dancing in her living room, mimicking the moves from the video. Her name is Ansam Al-Debaijel, and she’s a few days away from finishing Grade 7. “Now watch me whip!” she sings, bobbing up and down in dark-blue jeans and a grey hijab. “Now watch me nae nae!” Her curly-haired little sister, nine-year-old Dalya, follows along beside her.
Their brother, Ibrahim, 10, is lounging on a nearby couch, far more interested in his iPad football game than an impromptu dance party. Directly behind him, looking down from an elevated dining room, is their mother, Amal Alkhalaf. She can’t help but smile at the scene.
“Now watch me whip whip,
Watch me nae nae.”
“Sometimes I still feel like it’s a dream,” she says.
It’s hard to blame her. Six months ago, this family of Syrian refugees—a single mother and her three kids—was holed up in a tiny, squalid apartment in Lebanon, their latest stop after years on the run (first from their home city of Homs, obliterated by Syria’s civil war, then from Islamic State-controlled territory in the north). After crossing into Lebanon in 2014, they survived largely on the generosity of friends and relatives. If the children ate a meal, it was a good day.
When Maclean’s first visited the family last December in Beirut, they were desperate for news. They knew the Canadian government had selected them for refugee resettlement, but nothing more. They had no idea when they would actually leave Lebanon—weeks? months?—and were beginning to doubt the day would come at all. “If they told me now to go to the airport, I would grab my children and go right now,” Amal told me then, speaking Arabic through a translator. “I would stay at the Canadian border. The most important thing is that I reach Canada.”
More than anything else about that visit, I will never forget Amal’s eldest daughter. Ansam had turned 13 only a few weeks earlier, and she was sitting on the floor of that crumbling apartment, her brother and sister beside her. “My only dream is to study,” she said via a translator, her voice barely a whisper. “I want to learn how to speak English, that’s it.” Then she buried her head between her knees, hiding tears.
Now here she is, on the other side of the world, dancing the nae nae—and speaking English as if she always has. Oh, and she also enlisted in Air Cadets, proudly sporting a crisp blue uniform with a matching hijab. “It is everything I wanted,” she says of her new life, no translator required. “It is not a dream right now. It is real.”
Surreal is the best way to describe their first few weeks in Canada. As thousands of fellow Syrians arrived by the planeload, this particular refugee family’s journey—and the strangers who banded together to help them—was the subject of a Maclean’s cover story: “Saving Family No. 417.” After the article appeared in January, Amal had a chance to briefly meet Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, using the opportunity to present him with a signed copy of the magazine—which he later tweeted. (“Family 417 is safe in Peterborough—and had a special gift for me,” he wrote, alongside a photo of the cover. “Welcome to Canada, Amal Alkhalaf.”)
The three children even enjoyed their own moment of YouTube fame, as tens of thousands clicked on a video of the kids enjoying the thrill of a Canadian toboggan ride.
Where they are today, however, is infinitely more heartwarming than any video could convey. Family 417 is safe and settled and thriving—grateful for the chance to celebrate their first-ever Canada Day. “I feel like I have been here 100 years,” Ansam says, her dance routine finished.
When I show her some old photos on my smartphone—including one of her inside that Lebanon apartment, her future unknown—she barely recognizes the girl. “Mom, do you believe this is me?” she says. “Oh my goodness, I don’t believe we lived in there.”
On paper, the story pitch seemed straightforward enough: tell the full tale of one refugee sponsorship, start to finish. Hundreds of private groups had mobilized to help displaced Syrians last fall after seeing that horrifying image of three-year-old Alan Kurdi, his little drowned body washed ashore. Chronicling the efforts of one Canadian group would provide a snapshot of the massive humanitarian response sweeping the country.
Which group would we profile? The choice was almost random.
The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) recommends the most vulnerable families for resettlement in Western countries. When Ottawa accepts one of those recommendations, that family is then matched, anonymously, with a willing sponsorship group under a program known as “blended visa office-referred,” or BVOR. When I googled the acronym back in November, one of the hits was a local TV-news item about a recently formed group called Salaam Peterborough.
I sent an email to the address listed on the group’s GoFundMe page. The next morning, my phone rang; on the other end was Dr. Kristy Hiltz, a Peterborough veterinarian and mother of three. The ball was officially rolling. Days later, I would be introduced to the entire group: friends, and friends of friends, who had rallied together, via Facebook, to do their part.
As Canadians go, it is a diverse, inspiring collection. Hiltz’s husband, Dave McNab, is a crisis negotiator with the Ontario Provincial Police. Twelve others had signed on: Lise Fines, a Grade 7 teacher, and her husband, Rick Fines, a jazz and blues musician. Sisters Paulette Quinn, a fellow teacher at Lise’s school, and Lee-Anne Quinn, a decorated nurse practitioner who served 23 years in the Canadian Army (including a tour of duty in Afghanistan). Stephanie Melles, a Ryerson University ecology professor, and her husband Trevor Middel, a fisheries biologist. Retired spouses Myra Hirschberg and Tom Calwell, both contra dance instructors. Carla Gorman, another Grade 7 teacher who works with Lise and Paulette. Tom Whillans, a prominent environmental sciences professor at Trent University. And husband-and-wife biologists Brad Steinberg and Phung Tran—herself a refugee from Vietnam whose family was sponsored to come to Canada by a New Brunswick church nearly four decades ago.
Phung was still a baby when she and her parents fled the grip of Communism on a crammed, rickety boat, and the photos of Kurdi hit especially close to home. That could have been her. By joining the group, Phung told me, she could pay forward the generosity that saved her family all those years ago.
The people from Peterborough knew next to nothing about the Syrians they were sponsoring. All they had was a file number (BVOR 417) and a piece of paper listing their country of residence, names and ages: Amal Alkhalaf, then 41, and the three kids, 13, 10 and 8. (The children’s last name, Al-Debaijel, is their father’s; I would later learn that he disappeared in Homs sometime in 2011 and has not been heard from since.)
My plan was to travel to Lebanon in the hope, however slim, of tracking down this family of Syrian refugees—four among the many millions who had fled for their lives. I never could have predicted that my arrival at their door would mean as much to them as it did to me.
It was Canada’s ambassador to Lebanon, Michelle Cameron, who ultimately helped me locate the family. Because they were already listed in the government’s queue (again, accepted for resettlement after a recommendation by the United Nations), the embassy had Amal’s cellphone number on file. When a staffer called her on my behalf, Amal immediately agreed to meet.
Physically reaching her, however, proved yet another hurdle. Though Sunni Muslims, the family lived in the largely Shia municipality of Bourj el-Barajneh, where Hezbollah enjoys widespread sway and influence—and where, just three weeks earlier, a pair of Islamic State suicide bombers had targeted a bustling market district, killing 47 civilians. Post-attack, Hezbollah was especially wary of outsiders, and Maclean’s needed permission from the group’s central press office just to enter the neighbourhood. Passing through an armed checkpoint, we were specifically warned not to film or photograph outside.
Amal met us on a street corner, steps from where the bombers had struck. Dalya was nestled into her waist, gripping tightly.
After walking to her apartment and stepping inside, Amal had nearly as many questions for me as I did for her. She didn’t know that a group of private citizens was raising money to fund her family’s resettlement, and the word “Peterborough” meant nothing to her. When I handed her a small gift from the group—four tiny pins depicting the Canadian flag—she placed her hand over her heart. “This is like a trophy for me,” she said. “It is an honour to get the flag. I don’t know how I can express my thanks.”
She asked if I knew when they would fly to Canada. I had no idea, of course, but I promised to pass along her number to the people back in Peterborough. Maybe they could find out more, I told her.
“Thank you very much,” Amal replied. “I appreciate the hard work you did to contact me.”
Four weeks later, I saw the family again: stepping off a bus outside a Toronto-area hotel. It was Dec. 30, 2015, and they had just touched down at Pearson International Airport. Some of their sponsors were waiting nervously in the hotel lobby, rushing outside to hug them as soon as they caught a glimpse.
Ibrahim noticed me in the crowd and flashed a wide grin. Ansam smiled, too, touching the little Maple Leaf pinned to her jacket.
Until this afternoon—the day of the living-room dance routine—I had not seen Family 417 since their arrival in Canada. Home is now a rented three-bedroom townhouse directly across the street from the children’s school (St. Paul’s, the same school where three of their sponsors, Lise, Paulette and Carla, are teachers). When I knock on the front door, Dalya answers.
“Uncle Michael!” she says.
From the kitchen, Amal waves and smiles. “Hello,” she says. Her command of English is nowhere near the level of her children’s—they are close to fluent—but she is improving by the day, thanks to morning language classes at Fleming College.
“Coffee?” she asks.
As the children show me around, one thing stands out: their sponsorship group has lived up to its commitment, and then some. Donated furniture fills the home, in stark contrast to their windowless Lebanon apartment, which didn’t have a single table or chair. Each child has a new bicycle parked in the basement, and their own bed upstairs. Hanging above the flat-screen television is a stunning black-and-white sketch of Amal, drawn by a sponsor’s friend. Also on display is a large, framed photograph, a panoramic shot of the kids skating on a Peterborough lake for the first time.
Near the front door, a small Canadian flag hangs from a mirror.
“How are things?” I ask Ibrahim.
“Everything is awesome,” he replies, singing the chorus from The Lego Movie theme song.
Dalya? “I’m very happy,” she replies.
They are also very happy to see me, it turns out. I went searching for Amal and her children in the pursuit of journalism. They were the cornerstone of a story I was trying to tell, a story that would help Canadians better understand the plight of Syrian refugees, and our country’s collective desire to help them. But in their eyes, I was something else entirely: confirmation. Proof that they were indeed coming to Canada. Proof that they would one day live in peace.
“After you came, my mom said to us: ‘I believe we are going to Canada,’ ” Ansam says, sitting with the others around the dining-room table. “ ‘Maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe after tomorrow—but soon.’ ”
“I am sure,” Amal adds, using her English once again.
In hindsight, my visit might have helped speed up their departure. After I shared Amal’s phone number with the group, and they spoke for the first time, the sponsors discovered that the family’s medical exams, necessary to clear the final approval process, had been booked—but that word of the appointment had somehow not reached the family. A few calls later, the group ironed out the wrinkle and the medicals were rescheduled.
“If we hadn’t been able to talk to her, we wouldn’t have had a clue that any of this was going on,” Lise told me. “She would still be sitting there.”
Would that bureaucratic hiccup have fixed itself? Probably. Nevertheless, Amal is convinced that my surprise visit somehow helped pave the way for their speedy departure. It is why her children, raised to be respectful, call me “Uncle Michael” (even though I know I played only a bit role, if any, in helping them reach Canada when they did).
But this much is certain: I had the privilege of following them on this journey—of telling their story—and to see them today is definitely an emotional reunion. Simply put, I could not be happier for them.
Ansam says she wants to be a teacher, like Auntie Lise and Auntie Paulette and Auntie Carla. (“My favourite subject is mathematics,” she says. “We’re doing probability and algebraic expression.”) Ibrahim dreams of being a soccer star, or maybe a baseball player; he is already a diehard Toronto Blue Jays fan. Dalya, the youngest, hopes to be a police officer. (As soon as Dave McNab heard that one, the OPP veteran made sure to bring one of his female colleagues to see her—to show Dalya that in Canada, a woman can indeed grow up to be a police officer.)
“For me, the most amazing thing has been to hear the kids talking about how they have hopes and dreams for careers,” Dave says. “Months before, they couldn’t possibly have dreamed that.”
For his wife, Kristy Hiltz, one specific memory stands out. “It was probably within a week of their arrival, and I was sitting trying to communicate with Amal over the iPad using Google Translate,” she recalls. “Dalya was singing, and it took me a few seconds before I realized that she was singing our national anthem to me. Needless to say, the tears were streaming down my face. That will stay with me for the rest of my life.”
Sitting at the dining-room table, Dalya and Ansam start to sing it again.
“O Canada,
Our home and native land.
True patriot love, in all thy sons command.”
It may be the most beautiful performance I’ve ever heard. Silentó has nothing on them.
As the clock approaches 6 p.m., Lee-Anne Quinn arrives at the door. She is here to drive Ansam downtown to pick up her new Air Cadets jacket. (The previous one didn’t quite fit.) “Did Auntie Paulette give you the paper?” Ansam asks, referring to Lee-Anne’s sister.
“Yes, hon,” she replies.
They aren’t gone for long, and when they return, Ansam runs upstairs to try on the entire uniform. When she emerges a few minutes later, everything fits perfectly.
Lee-Anne, forever a soldier, beams with pride. “Being ex-military, of course, I’ve always been very patriotic and love my country; I went to war for my country,” she says. “That I can help this family—over here, in Canada—it’s probably the happiest moment of my life.”
The next morning, I offer to drive Amal to her daily English class. She usually takes the bus, leaving at 7:45 a.m. to make it for 9, but by car, an 8:30 a.m. pickup leaves plenty of time for the commute. Amal emerges from the house with a black-and-white backpack over her shoulder.
The language barrier limits our conversation, but we get by. I tell her it’s funny that her children simply cross the street to get to school, while she needs to endure a long bus ride.
“Two buses,” she says, correcting me.
At one point, we drive past a house made entirely of logs. “Very nice,” I say.
“I like Peterborough,” she replies.
Where will Amal Alkhalaf be in another year? Five years? It’s impossible to say. But in the meantime, her family is taking full advantage of the opportunity they’ve been handed. Not once has Amal missed a class.
As we approach Fleming College, she points me in the direction of her building. Class begins in a few minutes. “Thank you,” Amal says, opening the door. “Thank you.”
Thank you.Evangelicals' New Chief Says Days Of Moral Majority Over
Russell Moore is considered the public face of Evangelical Christians, as the new leader of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. Moore speaks with host Michel Martin about what it will take to bridge the racial gap in the Church and deal with some hot-button topics like immigration and abortion.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
This is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. I'm Michel Martin. Coming up, you tell us more - editor Ammad Omar and I are going to dig in to the listener inbox to hear what you had to say about stories we've covered this week.
But first, it's time for Faith Matters, that's the part of the program where we talk about matters of faith and spirituality. Today, we have a newsmaker interview with one of the most influential religious leaders in this country, whose name you might not know - at least not yet. He's taken on one of the most prominent posts among American Evangelicals as leader of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.
Now Southern Baptists represent nearly 40,000 churches and missions, claiming nearly 16 million members in the country. As the leader of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, where he succeeds the very influential and prominent Richard Land, Mr. Moore will be at the forefront of some of the most contentious issues of our time. From abortion to immigration to civil rights. And we caught up with him at a studio in Nashville. Welcome to the program. Congratulations on the new post or is it condolences? I'm not sure.
RUSSELL MOORE: I'm not sure which but thanks so much. It's good to talk to you.
MARTIN: Now, obviously, we could have a whole conversation just on this topic but I did want to mention that you are an ordained minister. Recently, you've been serving as dean of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. I just wanted to ask how you felt or decided that the religious life would be your calling.
MOORE: You know, it was one of those things I struggled with quite a bit because I sensed the Lord calling me to ministry as a 12-year-old. But then moved into a political life and thought I wanted to be in politics. I was serving in a variety of roles for a United States congressman from Mississippi. And while I was working for him, I went to - I was in Washington for a while and went - the Library of Congress had some discarded books that congressional staffers could take that they were going to throw away. And I picked up several books, but one of them was a little pastor's manual with weddings and funerals and those sorts of things.
And when I got home, I started looking through the books and I thought why did I want this? And the Lord kind of used that to start the conversation again in my mind. And I thought this really is the direction I think I should go.
MARTIN: What do you think your called to do in this job?
MOORE: I think I'm called to do two things - the first thing is to help start conversations and equip our churches to think through ethical issues.
And then the second is to speak for our churches to the larger culture about the things that we're concerned about and the sort of mission that we have. And so that means helping churches and pastors to think through issues ranging - pastors and church leaders have to deal with pressing ethical issues every single day. The question of what do I tell the infertile couple who come in and say we don't know what to do and does this mean God is mad at us? To questions of how do we create churches where different ethnic groups are reconciled and showing the unity of the body of Christ - to all sorts of questions. Ranging from the very, very significant and important to very relatively mundane things that we have to make decisions about - how do we live and how do we follow Christ?
MARTIN: We're speaking just after the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington. At the original March, faith leaders were very much a part of the leadership of the movement. But we're also reminded that Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous letter from Birmingham jail was directed at white clergy in the South who he felt - or not just in the south but white clergy in general - he felt they were standing on the sidelines on one of the most momentous issues of our time. And I wondered what, if anything, this week's commemorations brought up for you? As part of your charge.
MOORE: It brought up a lot of convictions inside of me. Thinking through how far we've come and how far we need to go. I remember being a very young boy in South Mississippi in Sunday school and there was a substitute Sunday school teacher that day who said to me - I was picking up a quarter, I remember, and I put it in my mouth while I was doing something - and she said don't put a quarter in your mouth - a black man may have held that. And then she gathered everybody up and said let's sing Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world. And I remember, even as a 4-year-old, thinking those two things don't go together.
And as I've kind of reflected on that over the rest of my life, I've concluded this woman wasn't self-consciously trying to destroy the Gospel. She instead had just absorbed something from her culture, from the things that she had been taught, that was contrary to what the scripture tells us about the unity of the human race. Everyone's created in the image of God. And she couldn't see how what she was singing about and what she believed conflicted.
And I think that's what Martin Luther King did preeminently, was to speak to the conscience and to say, you're not living up to what you say you believe. So he could speak to the conscience of Americans and say, you don't really believe the words of the Declaration of Independence as long as you stand with Jim Crow. And then he spoke to Christians and said, you cannot claim the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the anti-Gospel of Jim Crow, one of them has to go. And I think the message that he was speaking - the reason it was so powerful, is because he was right and he addressed the conscience in a way that revealed evil.
But more than that, I think the power of Martin Luther King is that he did not simply reveal injustice. He also painted a picture, an imaginative picture of what justice could look like - the day when the sons of slaves and the sons of slave holders would join hands. One of the most powerful experiences for me, as a Christian, was as a Southern Baptist standing in our denominational meeting. A denomination that was formed in order to defend the rights of slave holders, or the so-called rights of slave holders, a very evil and wicked thing by Southerners right before the Civil War, electing our first African-American president, Dr. Fred Luter, and realizing the - you know, the power of the Gospel is greater than all of these carnal captivities that we come across culturally.
MARTIN: If you're just going us, I'm speaking with Russell Moore. He is the new leader of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. That is a group that often is very prominent in addressing important issues in this country, such as immigration and other issues that are in the public square.
You know, conservative Christians of which the Southern Baptist Convention is, you know, believed to be - have been very vocal on issues like abortion rights, have been very vocal on issues like protecting life, for example, the sanctity of life. Being outspoken on issues that they deem undermining of the sanctity of life like, you know, stem cell research and things of that sort.
For other people, something like the Trayvon Martin killing, is an issue around the sanctity of life and we don't necessarily hear conservative Christians speaking out on this issue - on an issue like that. We also see that there seems to be a fairly wide racial divide on this. On an issue like this where a lot of African-Americans see this as a great tragedy and other - according to the polls at least - a lot of white Americans not quite understanding why it's seen that way or in some cases saying, you know, what's your issue?
MOORE: Yeah.
MARTIN: I'm wondering what your thoughts are about that.
MOORE: Well, I think what happened after the Trayvon Martin - not only the killing but also then after the trial - is there was the emerging of a lot of conversations among black and white Christians, because I think what was happening is that many white Christians were looking at this microscopically. Just in terms of the legal aspects of this particular trial and that was the argument that many of them were having. African-American Christians were seeing this macroscopically. They were seeing the big picture of what's happening and what hasn't happened in this country when it comes to racial justice.
And so I think that lead to many conversations in churches, in communities, that I think can lead to some very good things. In order to say - I had an African-American pastor who called me right after the Zimmerman trial and he said, you know, I'm working through college applications for my son right now and there are certain places in the country that I just - I pray won't accept my son. I pray he'll be accepted somewhere else because I'm afraid that he will be in danger in those places.
And I realize that's the sort of situation that I've never had. I've never had to think through places in the country where I wouldn't want my son to be. Those are two very different life experiences that I think these sorts of moments can cause people to have conversations in order to empathize and then to say, how do we work?
MARTIN: Well, what kinds of conversations? You know, I'm mindful of the fact that President Obama is often called upon to address issues of personal responsibility in the black community. But I don't know any prominent white politicians or political figures who are addressing issues of personal responsibility among white people.
And when I think about, like, racist comments that are made, even by public officials. I mean, there was a member of Congress, a sitting member of Congress, who made disparaging comments about the first lady's figure in a public place. You know, and yet, you know, who is the figure who is called upon to, you know, prophetically witness and call these people to account? Who is that person?
MOORE: Well, I think you have seen that. I think that - for instance, think of Steve King's comments about immigrants...
MARTIN:...Yeah.
MOORE:...About the children of immigrants. I think there were many of us who denounced that and said that sort of rhetoric just cannot take place in this country. It's not right. It's not morally right. Jim Daly, the President of Focus on the Family, and Samuel Rodriguez, a Hispanic Evangelical leader, and I spoke a couple of years ago about the kind of rhetoric, veiled racist rhetoric that often happens in our public discourse, as being a kind of a rhetorical pornography that happens, and did call on people to be held accountable for that sort of language.
So I do think that happens and is happening with more regularity, which is one of the reasons why - sometimes we do need to call and to recognize how far we have to go but I do think we also need to step back and say, look at how far we have come. The fact that we don't see this sort of vicious rhetoric as commonplace as we did in say the George Wallace era. That is something to be celebrated even as we recognize we do have a long way to go.
MARTIN: What will be your priorities in this new role? And how will you know that you have succeeded? I mean, many people will remember the Richard Land because he was so visible a force. I mean, most recently I think many people will credit him with having become an important player in the immigration conversation. What will your priorities be? And how will you know that you've succeeded?
MOORE: My top priority is to prepare Evangelical Christian churches to live as faithful witnesses in a post-Bible Belt America. I think that we're living in a time when the traditional structures of the Bible belt - the day in which Evangelical Christians can assume that we are a moral majority in this country, those days are over. And so we have to learn how to be a prophetic minority in this country, and how to be faithful in a culture without simply being absorbed into that culture.
And also to learn how to speak with convictional kindness in a way that holds fast to those things that we have been given in the gospel and those things that we believe are fundamentally true.
But also to recognize that the people who disagree with us aren't our enemies, they're not our opponents. And so we treat them with civility made in the image of God and to treat them with the kind of integrity and kindness that Jesus himself emulated.
MARTIN: That was Russell Moore. He is the new lead of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. We caught up with him in Nashville. Mr. Moore, I do hope we'll speak again. Thank you so much for speaking with us.
MOORE: Thank you so much for having me.
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As more and more U.S. couples decide to have children without first getting married, a group of 18 family scholars is sounding an alarm about the impact this may have on those children.
In a new report out on Tuesday, they say research shows the children of cohabiting parents are at risk for a broad range of problems, from trouble in school to psychological stress, physical abuse and poverty.
The study is put out by the National Marriage Project and the Institute for American Values, groups whose missions include strengthening marriage and family life. It suggests a shift in focus is needed away from the children of divorce, which has long been a preoccupying concern for such scholars.
Brad Wilcox, a report co-author and head of the National Marriage Project, says divorce rates have steadily dropped since their peak in 1979-80, while rates of out-of-wedlock childbearing have soared. Forty-one percent of all births are now to unwed mothers, many of them living with — but not married to — the child's father.
Wilcox notes that the iconic 1979 movie of the divorce revolution, Kramer vs. Kramer, is no longer emblematic of the drama facing families today.
Percent of Children Experiencing Divorce/Separation and Cohabitation (2002-2007) By the time they are 12, children today are more likely to have their unmarried parents live together or with others than to have their married parents divorce or separate.
"It'd be Kramer vs. Kramer vs. Johnson and Nelson," he says with a small laugh. "We're moving into a pattern where we're seeing more instability, more adults moving in and out of the household in this relationship carousel."
Wilcox says the children of the divorce revolution grew up to be understandably gun-shy about marriage. Many are putting it off, even after they have kids. But research shows such couples are twice as likely to split.
"Ironically," he says, "they're likely to experience even more instability than they would [have] if they had taken the time and effort to move forward slowly and get married before starting a family."
In fact, another recent study finds that a quarter of American women with multiple children conceived them with more than one man. Psychologist John Gottman, a co-author of Tuesday's report, says that kind of instability can have a negative impact on kids in all kinds of ways.
"Both in externalizing disorders, more aggression," Gottman says, "and internalizing disorders, more depression. Children of cohabiting couples are at greater risk than children of married couples."
This is true, says marriage historian Stephanie Coontz, "but the question is why it's true."
Coontz teaches family studies at Evergreen State College in Washington state and is research director for the Council on Contemporary Families. She says people are more likely to get married if they have the things that make a union strong: mutual respect, problem-solving skills and — especially — economic security.
That's something many working-class men have lost as wages stagnated in recent decades. In fact, Coontz notes that a huge marriage gap has emerged, with lower-income Americans much less likely to wed.
"Cohabitation and out-of-wedlock childbearing is as much a symptom of the instability of children's lives as it is a cause of it," Coontz says. Coontz worries that too many Americans who break up with a partner rush into another relationship, thinking this will provide more stability for their children. As Tuesday's report notes, the appearance of a new caregiver can also be traumatic for children, many of whom appear to fare better with a loving single parent.
To be sure, not all marriages are good, and some cohabiting couples create perfectly healthy families. But psychologist Gottman says for whatever reason — and it's a mystery to researchers — cohabiting partners are not as stable in the U.S. as in some European countries, where family-building outside marriage is more of a norm.
For Americans, Gottman says the evidence for marriage is strong. The institution's wide-ranging benefits — better health, longevity, greater wealth — are not conferred on those who cohabit.
"Because," he says, "they're basically saying, 'If you get into trouble, baby, you're on your own; I'm not there for you.' I think that's the big problem."
Gottman's advice, even if you decide not to tie the knot: pick a partner carefully, then hang in there — for better, or worse.Today we're continuing our look at lesser-known UIKit features. Let's get started:
Fixing Unwanted Undo Prompts
Ever been testing an app and have an unwanted "Undo" prompt appear? This can be dynamically enabled or disabled with a property on UIApplication:
UIApplication. sharedApplication (). applicationSupportsShakeToEdit = false
Customizing Tab Bar Items Layout
We can use the UITabBar's itemPositioning property to control whether tab bar items use a "fill" or "centered" layout:
let tabBarController = UITabBarController () tabBarController. tabBar. itemPositioning =. Centered
Significant Time Changes
The applicationSignificantTimeChange app delegate function lets us know when things like daylight savings time begin.
Refresh Control Labels
UIRefreshControl has an attributedTitle property we can use to show a nice little bit of text when a user pulls to refresh:
refreshControl. attributedTitle = attributedStringForRefreshControl ()
In-App Dictionary View Controller
This one is awesome.
We can use a reference library view controller to display a nicely formatted screen depicting the definition of a term in our app. Neat!LOS ANGELES -- An appeals court released a Southern California father who is a medical marijuana user from court-mandated parental supervision, making a milestone distinction between pot "use" and "abuse."
The California Court of Appeals overturned a lower court's decision to place "Paul M.," the father of toddler "Drake M." under the supervision of the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services, a mandate that had meant required drug counseling, parenting classes and random drug testing for the father. The appeals court ruled that medical marijuana use alone does not constitute child abuse or put children at risk.
The decision is a "victory for parents who use medical marijuana," Lauren K. Johnson, attorney for
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she realized all they wanted was to make Jessie better.
Later, in Whichever Way the Wind Blows, Meowth used a medicine made from Salveyo weed in order to cure Jessie and James from the status caused by Vileplume's Stun Spore.
Pokédex entries
Episode Subject Source Entry EP110 Salveyo weed Ash's Pokédex An effective Stun Spore antidote can be be made by boiling the leaves of the Salveyo weed. Salveyo weed is found on clear lake bottoms wherever Vileplume live. Poliwag are also found in the vicinity of this plant. This concludes the entries from the original series.
Trivia
Salveyo weed is similar in both name and use to the Remeyo weed that was featured in the Best Wishes series; it too was used to cure those inflicted with a status ailment, in this case poison.
series; it too was used to cure those inflicted with a status ailment, in this case poison. In closed captioning, Salveyo weed is spelled out as "Sangora" weed for unexplained reasons.
In other languages
Language Name Origin Italian Alga Salveyo Polish Vileplume'owe Ziele Literally Vileplume weedIn the fifth volume of his book Castes & Tribes of Southern India, Edgar Thurston has written that it was a game worthy of bold and free people. It was regrettable that certain Collectors (District Magistrates) should have discouraged it under the idea that it was somewhat dangerous. He has written that an enraged bull lowered its head and charged at the people. But when a man dropped on the sand, the bull leapt over his body instead of goring him. He has pointed out that the bulls never trampled on the people lying down. If any one was hurt, it was because he was not vigilant. That was not too often.
It must also be pointed out that rarely were the participating bulls injured or harmed in any way, unlike in Spain, Portugal and Mexico, where the bulls are ultimately killed. In those countries, it is considered an art form and a highly ritualised cultural event which is deeply tied to Spanish culture and identity. Matador, the principal performer, thrusts a sword between the shoulder blades of the bull and kills it. In Jallikattu, no harm is done to the bull.
Besides being a sport, Jallikattu also has a bearing on the local economy. Bulls are reared from the time they are calves. Virile bulls are in great demand as they are used to sire calves. “While land is our immovable property, bulls are our movable property,” declare some farmers. Some of the bulls that take part in Jallikattu fetch as much as Rs 2 lakh. There would be no incentive to rear bulls if Jallikattu was banned, declare farmers.
It is to be noted that only native bulls are allowed to participate in Jallikattu. There are five native breeds now. A sixth, known as Alambadi, has become extinct. There were more than 1.1 million Kangeyam bulls at one time. They have now come down to just 15,000. It is these bulls that are extensively used in Jallikattu. If they are not allowed to participate in the sport, the locals fear that not only the famed Kangeyam bulls but also the other breeds may become extinct.
There was a time when bulls were extensively used in agriculture. They were essential for ploughing the fields and for drawing the carts. With mechanised agriculture, where tractors are used, there is little use for the bulls. If the ban is not revoked, farmers may not raise local livestock. They point out that when the stress is on conserving electric and fossil energy, animal energy would be useful, as in yesteryears.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the main opponent of Jallikattu, claims to operate “under the simple principle that animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on or use for entertainment, while educating policymakers and the public about animal abuse and promoting an understanding of the right of all animals to be treated with respect.”
A supporter of Jallikattu asks why PETA is concerned only with animals. He wants it to extend its principle to include birds also. He points out that every day several lakhs of chicken are transported in cages in which they cannot even stand.
When animals are “not ours to eat,” has PETA done anything to prevent the slaughter of cows, bulls, goats and sheep, not only in India but also in foreign countries? No wonder film actor Kamal Haasan says people should stop eating biryani.
“The lives of lakhs of animals are being extinguished every day to feed the people. PETA and the Supreme Court are keeping quiet, while they seem very concerned about a few bulls,” says one of those demanding that the ban on Jallikattu be revoked.
Another supporter says that in horse racing, the horses are goaded with electric whips. There have been occasions when a horse, while running, has stumbled and broken a leg, only to be put to sleep later. “Why is PETA not bothered about it?” asks another supporter of Jallikattu.Credible sources are reporting that Trump's airstrikes against Syria, which risk provoking a major military conflict involving not only Russia but also China, could begin imminently, "even within the next several hours."
First, the Spectator tweeted moments ago that there are "reports that journalists are being told to remain at Pentagon and 'chatter' of military strike on Syria as soon as tonight"
BREAKING: Reports that journalists are being told to remain at Pentagon and 'chatter' of military strike on Syria as soon as tonight — The Spectator Index (@spectatorindex) April 6, 2017
Second, NBC's Richard Engel, who reports that "I've been talking to senior US military officials and they say that something is seriously under consideration, that it could happen imminently, that a wide range of options are being presented to the president. This could develop very quickly, even within the next couple, the next several hours." According to Engel's sources, Trump is leaning toward a "limited" response, targeting Assad's chemical weapons capabilities.
NBC's @RichardEngel says US military response in Syria "could happen imminently," perhaps in "next several hours" pic.twitter.com/Xu9uiNfDaD — Jon Passantino (@passantino) April 6, 2017
Third, according to BBC's North American reporter, Jon Sopel, US military action against Assad could be "imminent"
"Given everything that’s been said in the last 24 hours, I think that military action is a betting certainty and could be imminent and we could wake up tomorrow morning and find out that the Americans have taken action," Sopel said adding that the Trump administration’s shift on the issue has been “pretty dramatic” in light of Rex Tillerson statement just one week ago that Assad was part of Syria’ s future and "the longer term status of President Assad will be decided by the Syrian people."
.@BBCJonSopel on Syria: "We could wake up tomorrow morning and find out that the Americans have taken action." https://t.co/RT9xXCsEl7 pic.twitter.com/SNJvYSRNBW — BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) April 6, 2017
Sopel adds that having “heaped derision” on Barack Obama for allowing Assad to cross his red line, “for Donald Trump not to act now he would look weak, and he wouldn’t want that.”
Per pool reports, the White House is mum about potential action tonight.
As reported earlier, the Pentagon is set to brief Trump on his military options in Syria, which include a potential "saturation strike" which could result in numerous Russian military casualties, and resulting in an imminent confrontation between Washington and Moscow. The NYT adds that negotiations are taking place right now between Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Meanwhile, as Paul Joseph Watson reports, a groundswell of opposition to what Trump supporters see as a "disastrous move" is building, with many amazed that Trump is considering following the same catastrophic policy that Hillary Clinton pursued in aiding jihadist rebels in Libya and Syria by destabilizing Assad’s secular government.
So far markets have not reacted to speculation of imminent action.Fire crews try to control a blaze at the Mt. Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church in Greeleyville, S.C., on June 30, 2015. (Clarendon County Fire Department via Reuters)
Over the past several weeks, a handful of predominantly black churches across the South have burned down. Some were ruled arson, others accidents — but they still recalled racist attacks against black churches throughout American history.
The church fires followed the mass shooting at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., igniting concern over the possibility of a wave of hate crimes.
Three Muslim charities have since launched a “Respond with Love” crowdfunding campaign to damaged black churches rebuild and “stand united against hate.” The Muslim Anti-Racism Collaborative, Arab American Association of New York and Ummah Wide have raised nearly $45,000 since starting the fundraiser last week.
“It’s Ramadan and we are experiencing firsthand the beauty and sanctity of our mosques during this holy month. ALL houses of worship are sanctuaries — a place where all should feel safe, a place we can seek refuge when the world is too much to bear,” campaign organizers said in a statement. “We want for others what we want for ourselves: the right to worship without intimidation, the right to safety and the right to property,” the statement also said.
[Why racists target black churches]
At least six predominantly black churches caught fire during the two weeks after 21-year-old Dylann Roof allegedly killed nine people during a Bible study meeting last month at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C. Authorities have not, however, classified any of the fires as hate crimes. Two fires were ruled accidents and three others were ruled arson. One fire’s cause had not been determined.
[Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church: A legacy of heroes and martyrs]
“It doesn’t matter to us how or why these churches burned down, we want to help our black sisters and brothers get back in to their houses of worship as soon as they can,” Linda Sarsour, executive director of Arab American Association of New York, told Huffington Post in an e-mail. “Ramadan is a time of giving and what better cause to give to than one that rebuilds houses of worship where God’s name is constantly called, remembered and loved.”
[Opinion: Why this has been the worst year for American Muslims since 9/11]
The fundraiser will stay open until July 18 in an effort to meet its $50,000 goal, according to the Web site. Organizers said they have contacts with church leaders to make sure the funds make it to the churches that “need it most.”
“The American Muslim community cannot claim to have experienced anything close to the systematic and institutionalized racism and racist violence that has been visited upon African Americans. Unless, of course, we are talking about the African American Muslim community,” Islamic scholar Imam Zaid Shakir said in a statement on the fundraising Web site. “As a whole, however, we understand the climate of racially inspired hate and bigotry that is being reignited in this country.
“We want to let our African American brothers and sisters know that we stand in solidarity with them during this dark hour.”Milo Yiannopoulos is reaching his saturation point. Since Gamergate, the alt-right’s paradoxical poster boy has been on a steady incline. He got kicked off Twitter (“free speech” martyr status: check), people riot and/or protest when he’s invited to speak at colleges (“left-wing violence and censorship”: check) and was just a guest on Real Time with Bill Maher (Normalization Status: Unlocked). His voice has gotten louder and louder, despite many attempts to shut him down, and it’s the worst thing that could possibly happen to him.
Well, one of the worst things. It’s tied with Donald Trump becoming President of the United States. In order for Milo to thrive, he needs to be iconoclastic and a rattler of sacred cows. His anti-feminist, anti-Islam, anti-left rhetoric stood out during the Obama years because the backdrop was much different. What he said stood in firm opposition to the powers that be and the overall sense there were things you couldn’t say in a progressive, liberal democracy.
Milo hit peak popularity (an appearance on HBO, headlines about Berkeley riots and protests, etc) at a time when his words function as little more than propaganda for the new establishment. His former boss, Steve Bannon, has the president’s ear and the president himself already seems to believe just about everything Milo says anyway. With Trump in the White House, he’s no longer an iconoclast at all. He’s a boring echo of the new authority, a predictable propagandist unable to admit “Daddy”—his name for Trump—is more capable and guilty of authoritarian rhetoric and action than the social justice warriors ever were.
It’s unfortunate time ran out before he could explain how Trump is compatible with his supposed libertarian views to Bill Maher. My guess is it wouldn’t have been a very good answer because he never really has good answers. A huge amount of his usual talking points are bunk and he even irrationally used a statistic about transgendered people in the Maher interview itself. He’s more flash grenade than drone strike; there’s nothing precise about his speech and debate strategy, it’s all just triggering and discombobulation. As long as people are obsessed with how offensive or unexplainable he is as a person, they won’t see how banal and middling he really is behind all the glitz. When the rubber meets the road, he’s Mike Pence with marginally better jokes and mid-2000s H&M style.
He thrives on being singular, on shocking people who can’t believe he’d say the things he does. How can a gay man insult transgendered people? How can a Catholic deride all Muslims out of hand? How can a person of Jewish descent with a black boyfriend spout such awful generalizing rhetoric about entire people groups? Well, the answer is simple: because you can cross all the t’s and dot all the i’s on the identity politics spectrum and still be a colossal asshole.
One thing I hope he, Bannon and their fellow ghouls force the left to do is rethink their own strategies going forward. Clearly, our outrage culture wasn’t enough to stop Milo from getting on Bill Maher or Trump getting into the Oval Office. Milo is only notable because, according to certain strains of liberal ideology, he shouldn’t exist. His identity shouldn’t be able to produce his ideology. This sort of thinking rightfully needs to be reevaluated.
By no means should we stop thinking in terms of identity issues! The great fallacy of the right is that every single person is invariably at the same starting line no matter what. But that doesn’t necessitate the left is correct to subtract any amount of individualism from the equation. Milo should be more than enough proof people do not fit into easily labeled groups and the longer liberals pander to groups on the basis of collectivist logic, the longer people like him can thrive. We should acknowledge systemic and entrenched oppression toward certain groups without losing sight that the individuals making up these groups are of many different stripes.
This is one of Milo’s more valid arguments: that identity shouldn’t protect anyone from criticism. He uses this to slam Black Lives Matter, the Muslim community, feminists and all sorts of other people but he’d be his own best target. Let’s say we concede his point here and say he’s right the left has gotten too whiny and reliant on shibboleths of identity. This implicates him as much as any social justice warrior. His whole M.O. is to whine and rely on identity as his best argument.
That’s the trap: he can only win as long as you’re offended and surprised by him. There’s no reason his viewpoints should be treated any differently than Rick Santorum or Michelle Malkin’s. If he wins this big fight against identity politics, he’ll have rendered himself irrelevant. What I’m trying to say is: he already is irrelevant. He’s just another Trump supporter. He’s just another bigot. He’s just another charlatan.
When Bill Maher said he was a young Christopher Hitchens, it’s an insult to Hitch’s memory. Hitchens was a rational contrarian with a “Women Aren’t Funny” essay and some late-period neoconservatism to dint his progressive pedigree. Milo is a reactionary, partisan hack who’s only as contrarian as Tucker Carlson or Megyn Kelly. Identity issues are important to take into account so long as the person in question isn’t a lying, blathering jerk. If you want to use your words to bully and oppress people, it doesn’t matter who you sleep with, how you dress, what color your skin is or where you land on the right/left/libertarian/authoritarian chart. At that point, your main identity is as a scumbag. Identity is important but a bankrupt sense of moral character can still cancel out all other signifiers.
And make no mistake: Milo isn’t just a mischievous troll, he’s a scumbag. He’s made light of pedophilia and recently walked it back. He’s singled out transgendered people for exposure, made statements about Black Lives Matter directly contradicted by the movement’s own FAQ page, circulated revenge porn and lit the fuse for a barrage of racist abuse against Leslie Jones. He is not the “virtuous troll” he claims to be at all. In this way, he is also unoriginal. Villains always claim virtue is on their side.
So sure, Milo. The misinformed college students shouting social justice platitudes before knowing what they’re talking about should shut the hell up for once and they shouldn’t have set stuff on fire or assaulted people at your Berkeley speech. I wish more people would protest you through conversation than through censorship because I think they’d see you and the SJWs aren’t that different after all.
When Lena Dunham says she wishes she had an abortion or you say feminism is cancer, you both sound like insensitive, ignorant morons. You’ve used false information to further your narrative just like they have. You’re as party-line as any of them even if you’re on a different team. You can hold your own against YouTube personalities and impressionable college students but I’d love to see you in the same room as Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky or Ta-Nehisi Coates. After all, you got pretty quiet when you came face to face with a former counterterrorism official at Bill Maher’s desk.
All America needs to see of Milo Yiannopolous is this interview on HBO. Watch him for ten minutes and you’ve got the gist of everything he’ll ever say after. The shock value wears off when you realize how unoriginal he is. One of the most telling moments of his interview with Maher is when Milo agrees he’s just at the beginning of his career and has years of being hated ahead of him. I’m already starting to doubt it. Society will outgrow him because he now represents the authoritarian Trumpist establishment. He’s not fabulous, he’s not a special snowflake, he’s just another shitty dude with shitty ideas working for a shitty system. How edgy, punk rock and dangerous of him.More than 1,000 Harvard alumni are urging the university to strip the fellowships it’s given to former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and former Trump press secretary Sean Spicer.
Agitation over Spicer and Lewandowski’s position at the school has been brewing for days since Harvard’s Institute of Politics announced them among its roster of additional visiting fellows. And it grew deeper once Chelsea Manning, the infamous whistleblower, had her fellowship rescinded after former deputy director of the CIA, Michael Morell stepped down from his position as senior fellow in protest.
In an online petition launched last week, Harvard graduates Talia Lavin, Paul B. VanKoughnett and Pete D. Davis called upon fellow alumni to demand that the IOP retract fellowships for Spicer and Lewandowski as well.
“Sean Spicer served as the mouthpiece for an administration that runs counter to the values Harvard purports to embody. What can undergraduates learn from a man whose brief tenure in national communications began with an unabashed lie about crowd sizes, continued with an ignorant minimization of the Holocaust, dabbled in unvarnished hostility to the free press, and ended in public ignominy?” the petition reads.
“Corey Lewandowski, who managed a campaign that began with racist provocation and continued with rampant misogyny, was ousted from the Trump orbit after assaulting a female reporter, and has supplemented his notoriety with ignorant fulminations on national newscasts; he has also been accused of threatening his New Jersey neighbors with a baseball bat. What could this man offer that would be worth exchanging for the safety of student journalists and the greater Harvard community? What message does this send to students who embrace the dream of contributing to the free American press?” it continues.
Last week Lavin told The Daily Beast that they were aiming for 500 signatures at which point they would take the petition to Dean Doug J. Elmendorf. They hit 1,000 on Tuesday but have yet to receive a response from the Dean.
Former Congressman Bill Delahunt, who serves as the acting director of IOP, did not respond to a request for comment from The Daily Beast. Neither did Spicer or Lewandowski.
Spicer is not immune to the cultural backlash against Trump and his associates. This past week, the Emmy Awards were criticized for using the former press secretary in a comedic set up for host Stephen Colbert. Spicer encouraged everyone to lighten up.
Some Haravrd alumni who signed the petition also listed their reasoning for demanding that the two former Trump associates be stripped of their titles.
Carlin Chi, who graduated from Harvard’s Radcliffe College in 1991, wrote: “If Harvard is willing to rescind its offer to Chelsea Manning, please don't hesitate to rescind these two offers as well, I firmly believe Spicer and Lewandowski are far more dangerous to our society than Manning ever was.”
Harleen Gambhir, a 2014 graduate and a member of Harvard Law School’s class of 2019, wrote: “An IOP fellowship is an honor and an endorsement-- at the very least, an endorsement that the person hosted for a semester has something to teach students. If the IOP is going to disinvite fellows based on the perceived value of their past actions, then Spicer and Lewandowski ought to be pushed out, too.”
Lavin told The Daily Beast that the timing of Harvard’s dismissal of Manning coupled with their choice to retain Lewandowski and Spicer was insulting and wrong.
“By rescinding the Fellow title from Ms. Manning it admitted such a title conveys an imprimatur of legitimacy and approval; retaining Spicer and Lewandowski's imprimatur is an act of institutional cowardice, more sympathetic to those who perpetuate horrors than those who expose them,” she said in a direct message to The Daily Beast.On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Shira Schiendlin ruled that the New York City Police Department's use of "Stop and Frisk," a policing tactic in which officers detain and search citizens on the street who are guilty of suspcious behavior, is unconstitutional as currently practiced. Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his police commissioner, Ray Kelly, consider the tactic an unequivocal success, crediting it with bringing New York City's rate of gun-carrying among teens to half the national average. Critics, who claimed victory after Monday's ruling, contend the policy has led to wholesale stops of young black and Latino men, who endure public humiliation and frequent harassment based on nothing more than their skin color and their proximity to high-crime areas.
In Judge Schiendlin's rulling in Floyd v. New York, she found that the NYPD violated the 4th Amendment (protection from unreasonable search and seizure) and 14th Amendment (equal protection under the law) rights of the plaintiffs. The decision presented the following "uncontested" facts:
Between January 2004 and June 2012, the NYPD conducted over 4.4 million Terry stops. In 52% of the 4.4 million stops, the person stopped was black, in 31% the person was Hispanic, and in 10% the person was white. In 2010, New York City’s resident population was roughly 23% black, 29% Hispanic, and 33% white. Weapons were seized in 1.0% of the stops of blacks, 1.1% of the stops of Hispanics, and 1.4% of the stops of whites. Between 2004 and 2009, the percentage of stops where the officer failed to state a specific suspected crime rose from 1% to 36%.
Sunita Patel, an attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights, which filed the class-action suit on behalf of 12 New Yorkers, concedes that officers have the right to detain and frisk an individual per the 1968 Supreme Court decision Terry v. Ohio. The purpose of the lawsuit, she says, is not to end the practice altogether, but to make it so that if someone is "young, male, and black" it's no longer sufficient cause to stop them.
Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Heather Mac Donald, a supporter of Stop and Frisk, says the numbers show no evidence of racial profiling:
Blacks are being understopped compared to their crime rates. Blacks are 23% of the population in New York and yet they commit 80% of all shootings, 70% of all robberies, and 66% of all violent crimes. They're 53% of all stops. The advocates complain about the number of stops, they complain about the racial disparity in stops, but they have never suggested an absolute number of what they think the racial stop ratio should be given the crime rates.
Mayor Bloomberg agrees. On WOR-AM radio, he stated that although "nobody racially profiles," blacks aren't being stopped enough. While the numbers show that about one-tenth of one percent of suspects were found to be carrying guns, Bloomberg credits the policy with averting crime before it happens. "Kids think they're going to get stopped," Bloomberg says, "so they don't carry a gun."
Mac Donald cites the hypothetical case of an individual stopped by police for trying all the door handles on a row of cars. This person may then be released by police because of lack of evidence, but that does not mean the person is "innocent."
Critics argue that all an NYPD officer needs to justify a stop is to complete a UF-250 form, which is a checklist of 10 suspicious behaviors. More than 50% of all stops in 2011 cited "furtive movements" as a cause, which can include fidgeting, putting hands in pockets, and turning the other way when police are approaching. That is to say, the definition is so arbitrary as to be meaningless, leaving police with no reasonable limits on their authority to detain citizens at any time.
In some cases, the very act of being stopped and frisked changes the nature of the crime. During police stops, officers routinely order citizens to empty their pockets, sometimes bringing marijuana into plain view and triggering an arrest. Possession of marijuana in New York results in a $100 fine, but once it's in plain view, it becomes a Class B misdemeanor, punishable with jail time.
Mac Donald calls this practice "an abuse of power." Commissioner Kelly also condemned the practice, and yet 400,000 New Yorkers have been arrested for minor marijuana charges on his watch, with 50,000 arrests just last year.
In testimony during the Floyd trial, Kelly was accused by State Senator and former NYPD captain Eric Adams of having said in private meetings that the purpose of Stop and Frisk is to instill fear in minority communities as a means of keeping guns off the street. Kelly replied that Adams' allegations were “ludicrous” and “absolutely, categorically untrue.”
Sunita Patel says "the NYPD has this very rogue attitude that it's ok for them to engage in unlawful behavior." She adds that high-level officials testified that civilian complaints about stop and frisk are "par for the course," and just a part of police officers "doing their jobs," an attitude which she says "undermines structural accountability."
Judge Schiendlin's verdict in Floyd v. New York imposes the very oversight Bloomberg has long opposed. Former state and federal prosecutor Peter Zimroth will serve as a federal monitor charged with overseeing reforms to Stop and Frisk policy. With enough votes to override Mayor Bloomberg's veto, the New York City Council passed a law that will create an inspector general to oversee the NYPD. Bloomberg had promised to financially support the campaigns of any city council members who voted against the measure.Story highlights Cindy Crawford has been a model since high school
At 50, she's ready to leave that life behind
(CNN) Cindy Crawford retire from modeling?
It may be hard to fathom, but the famed beauty -- who will be turning 50 on February 20 -- says it's time to "move on."
"I'm sure I'll have my picture taken for 10 more years, but not as a model anymore. And that's OK. I've done it," she told United Airlines' Hemispheres magazine. "I've worked with all these incredible photographers. What else do I need to do? I can't keep reinventing myself. I shouldn't have to keep proving myself. I don't want to."
Crawford has been one of the most-photographed women in the world since she was in high school. Indeed, the valedictorian of DeKalb High School in Illinois gave up a scholarship to Northwestern University to pursue a modeling career -- and became the top-paid model in the world. She made $6.5 million in 1994 alone, when she topped a Forbes list at age 28.
JUST WATCHED Crawford: Real beauty comes out if you're happy Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Crawford: Real beauty comes out if you're happy 01:03
Crawford hasn't been a full-time model since 2000 and has largely devoted her time to her family -- she has two children with husband Rande Gerber -- and such businesses as the Cindy Crawford Home Collection of furniture.
Read MoreAfter a hugely disappointing regular season, the offseason for the K-State men's basketball team was thought to be about regrouping. That thought quickly changed as Marcus Foster, Tre Harris, and Malek Harris were all dismissed, while Jevon Thomas, and Nigel Johnson decided the transfer. Those departures turned the thoughts from regrouping to BURN IT DOWN.
However, with John Currie clearly supporting his embattled head coach, Bruce Weber was in no hurry to explain how this roster turnover happened. Over this past month there were reports that Weber had turned down multiple requests for interviews, but finally earlier today, Weber addressed the media. Let's examine what he said, and what it means for this team moving forward.
Bruce Weber: "We just felt we had to make some changes. I think it is pretty obvious why we had to make those changes." — Kellis Robinett (@KellisRobinett) April 22, 2015
Bruce Weber extremely upbeat about K-State's huge incoming class: "We are excited about our signees. We got guys that have won." — Kellis Robinett (@KellisRobinett) April 22, 2015
These are the first two tweets from Kellis Robinett following the press conference's conclusion. None of them really tell us anything. Clearly, Weber realized that the current roster makeup was not working and he made the changes he felt necessary. We'll have more on the new recruits coming into Kansas State later, but for now it's safe to say Weber had better love every single player and expect them to be able to contribute right away. Only three of the team's top 10 scorers on the team are returning, so players like Dean Wade, and Barry Brown will need to provide solid scoring punch in order to be competitive next season.
Weber went onto say that he expects "Guys that want to be here and play K-State basketball, play their butts off, act right". Clearly those are attributes that were lacking last season and that Weber is trying to address in the offseason. Weber even went so far as to address the lack of cohesion last season saying:
Bruce Weber said he considered dismissing players mid season, but held off in order to give them every opportunity to fix the situation. — Kellis Robinett (@KellisRobinett) April 22, 2015
Bruce Weber said he considered dismissing players mid season, but held off in order to give them every opportunity to fix the situation. — Kellis Robinett (@KellisRobinett) April 22, 2015
And here's my biggest problem with the offseason dismissals. It was clearly a problem throughout the whole season that players weren't buying in, and were basically doing whatever they wanted, so why not dismiss them during the season? Last season was a train wreck anyway and dismissing the problem players would have sent a clear message to the other players that you had better get in line with the expectations of the program. It also gives you a chance to recruit more players, since the pool of uncommitted players is much bigger during the season, as opposed to the offseason when many players have already signed.
Clearly many players were to blame for not buying in and not giving 100% to the basketball team, and their teammates, and those players are now gone. However, I also find fault with Bruce Weber for not taking care of the situation quickly and sending the message early on that this type of behavior is not acceptable.
Let's end with this:
Bruce Weber does not care about expectations. Says his only request is that if you set high expectations you also work hard to back them up. — Kellis Robinett (@KellisRobinett) April 22, 2015
Main takeaway from today was Bruce Weber didn't seem bothered at all by roster attrition. Went so far as to say next year could be special. — Kellis Robinett (@KellisRobinett) April 22, 2015
These two tweets perfectly summarize Bruce Weber. He has lowered expectations to a level where many fans will accept simply playing hard and being competitive. Which is absurd. Bruce Weber brought this past season upon himself and this upcoming season we should expect no less than a postseason debut, and massive improvement over this season. Anything less and there may need to be a different kind of turnover in the basketball program.Nigerian health authorities are racing to stop the spread of Ebola after a man brought the deadly and highly contagious disease by plane to Lagos, Africa's largest city with 21 million people.
The fact that the traveller from Liberia could board an international flight also raised new fears that other passengers could take the disease beyond Africa due to weak inspection of passengers and the fact Ebola's symptoms are similar to other diseases.
Officials in the country of Togo, where the sick man's flight had a stopover, also went on high alert after learning Ebola could possibly have spread to a fifth country.
Screening people as they enter the country may help slow the spread of the disease, but it is no guarantee Ebola won't travel by airplane, according to Dr. Lance Plyler, who heads Ebola medical efforts in Liberia for aid organization Samaritan's Purse.
"Unfortunately the initial signs of Ebola imitate other diseases, like malaria or typhoid," he said.
The aid organization on Saturday said an American doctor working with Ebola patients in Liberia had tested positive for the deadly virus. A Samaritan's Purse news release said Dr. Kent Brantly was being treated at a hospital in Monrovia, the capital.
Ebola already had caused some 672 deaths across a wide swath of West Africa before the Nigeria case was announced. It is the deadliest outbreak on record for Ebola, and now it threatens Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation. An outbreak in Lagos, Africa's megacity where many live in cramped conditions, could be a major diisaster.
"Lagos is completely different from other cities because we're talking about millions of people," said Plan International's Disaster Response and Preparedness Head, Dr. Unni Krishnan.
Nigerian newspapers describe the effort as a "scramble" to contain the threat after the Liberian arrived in Lagos and then died Friday.
Passengers screened for virus
International airports in Nigeria are screening passengers arriving from foreign countries for symptoms of Ebola, according to Yakubu Dati, the spokesman for Federal Aviation Authority of Nigeria.
Health officials are also working with ports and land borders, he said. "They are giving out information in terms of enlightenment, what to do, what to look out for."
Nigerian airports are setting up holding rooms to ready in case another potential Ebola victim lands in Nigeria.
Airports in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the three other West African countries affected by the current Ebola outbreak, have implemented some preventive measures, according to officials in those countries. But none of the safeguards are foolproof, say health experts.
Variable incubation period
Doctors say health screens could be effective, but Ebola has a variable incubation period of between two and 21 days and cannot be diagnosed on the spot.
Patrick Sawyer, a consultant for the Liberian Ministry of Finance arrived in Nigeria on Tuesday and was immediately detained by health authorities suspecting he might have Ebola, Plyler said.
On his way to Lagos, Sawyer's plane also stopped in Lome, Togo, according to the World Health Organization.
Authorities announced Friday that blood tests from the Lagos University Teaching Hospital confirmed Sawyer died of Ebola earlier that day.
Sawyer reportedly did not show Ebola symptoms when he boarded the plane, Plyler said, but by the time he arrived in Nigeria he was vomiting and had diarrhea. There has not been another recently recorded case of Ebola spreading through air travel, he added.
Nearly 50 other passengers on the flight are being monitored for signs of Ebola but are not being kept in isolation, said an employee at Nigeria's Ministry of Health, who insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.
Sawyer's sister also died of Ebola in Liberia, according to Liberian officials, but he claimed to have had no contact with her. Ebola is highly contagious and kills more than 70 per cent of people infected.
Traditional burials spread disease
Ebola is passed by touching bodily fluids of patients even after they die, he said. Traditional burials that include rubbing the bodies of the dead contribute to the spread of the disease, Krishnan added.
There is no "magic bullet" cure for Ebola, but early detection and treatment of fluids and nutrition can be effective, said Plyler in Liberia. Quickly isolating patients who show symptoms is also crucial in slowing the spread of the disease.
West African hospital systems have weak
|
given to Constantine and the confusion of the arrest warrant, which caused a number of missed opportunities to re-arrest him.
The report also raises major concerns about the communication between difference agencies.
Following the report, Ms Welsh’s daughter, Joanne, said: “It is extremely upsetting to hear the conclusion that my mother could still be alive today had it not been for misdiagnosis, failures in communication between the relevant agencies and a lack of mental health awareness.
“Unfortunately, these failings meant that a very dangerous and unwell man was let down and allowed to commit such a devastating crime. I sincerely hope that all parties involved will take the recommendations made very seriously and make the necessary changes to prevent other innocent lives being lost.”
Chief Executive of HIW Dr Kate Chamberlain said: “Our review highlighted concerns in relation to the assessment and monitoring of Mr J by statutory agencies. In our report of a homicide committed in October 2005 we made a recommendation that the Welsh Government should ensure that the commissioners and providers of mental health services in Wales examine the provision for assessment and treatment of those suffering from personality disorder with a view to putting relevant services in place.
“It is therefore disappointing that Mr J’s initial diagnosis of personality disorder resulted in him being discharged with no care plans or arrangements for further assessment and treatment being put in place.”
Cardiff and Vale University Health Board has apologised to Ms Welsh’s family.
Director of nursing, Ruth Walker, said:“The three years that have passed since these tragic events took place in no way diminishes their enduring impact and we would like to emphasise our sincere apologies and condolences to the victim’s family.
“The unpredictable nature of mental health disorders means that it is not always possible to foresee every potential eventuality and this is recognised by Health Inspectorate Wales in its report.
“Events like these are rare but we understand how important it is that all agencies involved in the delivery of mental health services must continually strive to work more closely together.
“It is clear that communication between statutory agencies fell short of expectation, and, ultimately, both patients were let down by that failure, with tragic consequences. We have worked to correct many of the deficiencies highlighted in the HIW report.
“As a Health Board, we fully accept the recommendations outlined in the HIW report and are working with partners to address any remaining issues raised by HIW as a matter of urgency.”
Chief Medical Officer for Wales Dr Ruth Hussey said that many of the findings of the report had been of concern.
She said: “My thoughts are very much with the families of those affected by this serious and deeply distressing case.
“While risk can never be eliminated entirely, it is vital we do everything possible to identify any shortcomings in care and put in place measures to reduce the risk of such tragic incidents happening again.
“In this complex case, there were several key findings of concern. The Welsh Government expects the local health board involved to work with other partners to take the appropriate actions and learn from this tragic case.”
A statement from the probation service said: “Karen Welsh’s death was an appalling tragedy and we offer our sincere and heartfelt sympathies to her family and friends.
“We would like to reassure the public that all of our professional practice around mental health training and referrals is continually reviewed and developed as part of our ongoing commitment to public protection and Karen Welsh’s tragic death has served to highlight the importance of this.”
South Wales Police said:“South Wales Police conducted a thorough and professional investigation into the tragic death of Karen Welsh in March 2010 which led to the conviction of John Michael Constantine for manslaughter. Our thoughts remain with Karen's family.
“The Healthcare Inspectorate Wales report makes two recommendations for police to review policies and processes for the management of arrest warrants. These reviews have already taken place and we are confident that our systems are robust to ensure individuals who are wanted on warrant are dealt with effectively.”ScoreWiz Help & About
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Created by Ben Tumminaro, the NetherlandsIn fluid dynamics, a stall is a reduction in the lift coefficient generated by a foil as angle of attack increases.[1] This occurs when the critical angle of attack of the foil is exceeded. The critical angle of attack is typically about 15 degrees, but it may vary significantly depending on the fluid, foil, and Reynolds number.
Stalls in fixed-wing flight are often experienced as a sudden reduction in lift as the pilot increases the wing's angle of attack and exceeds its critical angle of attack (which may be due to slowing down below stall speed in level flight). A stall does not mean that the engine(s) have stopped working, or that the aircraft has stopped moving—the effect is the same even in an unpowered glider aircraft. Vectored thrust in manned and unmanned aircraft is used to surpass the stall limit, thereby giving rise to post-stall technology.[2][3]
Because stalls are most commonly discussed in connection with aviation, this article discusses stalls as they relate mainly to aircraft, in particular fixed-wing aircraft. The principles of stall discussed here translate to foils in other fluids as well.
Formal definition [ edit ]
A stall is a condition in aerodynamics and aviation wherein the angle of attack increases beyond a certain point such that lift begins to decrease. The angle at which this occurs is called the critical angle of attack. This critical angle is dependent upon the airfoil section or profile of the wing, its planform, its aspect ratio, and other factors, but is typically in the range of 8 to 20 degrees relative to the incoming wind ("relative wind") for most subsonic airfoils. The critical angle of attack is the angle of attack on the lift coefficient versus angle-of-attack curve at which the maximum lift coefficient occurs.[4]
Flow separation begins to occur at small angles of attack while attached flow over the wing is still dominant. As angle of attack increases, the separated regions on the top of the wing increase in size and hinder the wing's ability to create lift. At the critical angle of attack, separated flow is so dominant that additional increases in angle of attack produce less lift and more drag.[citation needed]
A fixed-wing aircraft during a stall may experience buffeting or a change in attitude. Most aircraft are designed to have a gradual stall with characteristics that will warn the pilot and give them time to react. For example, an aircraft that does not buffet before the stall may have an audible alarm or a stick shaker installed to simulate the feel of a buffet by vibrating the stick fore and aft. The critical angle of attack in steady straight and level flight can be attained only at low airspeed. Attempts to increase the angle of attack at higher airspeeds can cause a high-speed stall or may merely cause the aircraft to climb.[citation needed]
Any yaw of the aircraft as it enters the stall regime can result in autorotation, which is also sometimes referred to as a "spin". As air no longer flows smoothly over the wings during a stall, aileron control of roll becomes less effective, whilst simultaneously the tendency for the ailerons to generate adverse yaw increases. This characteristic increases the lift from the advancing wing and increases the likelihood of the aircraft entering into a spin.[citation needed]
Graph [ edit ]
An example of the relationship between angle of attack and lift on a cambered airfoil. The exact relationship is usually measured in a wind tunnel and depends on the airfoil section. The relationship for an aircraft wing depends on the planform and its aspect ratio.
The graph shows that the greatest amount of lift is produced as the critical angle of attack is reached (which in early-20th century aviation was called the "burble point"). This angle is 17.5 degrees in this case, but it varies from airfoil to airfoil. In particular, for aerodynamically thick airfoils (thickness to chord ratios of around 10%), the critical angle is higher than with a thin airfoil of the same camber. Symmetric airfoils have lower critical angles (but also work efficiently in inverted flight). The graph shows that, as the angle of attack exceeds the critical angle, the lift produced by the airfoil decreases.
The information in a graph of this kind is gathered using a model of the airfoil in a wind tunnel. Because aircraft models are normally used, rather than full-size machines, special care is needed to make sure that data is taken in the same Reynolds number regime (or scale speed) as in free flight. The separation of flow from the upper wing surface at high angles of attack is quite different at low Reynolds number from that at the high Reynolds numbers of real aircraft. High-pressure wind tunnels are one solution to this problem. In general, steady operation of an aircraft at an angle of attack above the critical angle is not possible because, after exceeding the critical angle, the loss of lift from the wing causes the nose of the aircraft to fall, reducing the angle of attack again. This nose drop, independent of control inputs, indicates the pilot has actually stalled the aircraft.[5][6]
This graph shows the stall angle, yet in practice most pilot operating handbooks (POH) or generic flight manuals describe stalling in terms of airspeed. This is because all aircraft are equipped with an airspeed indicator, but fewer aircraft have an angle of attack indicator. An aircraft's stalling speed is published by the manufacturer (and is required for certification by flight testing) for a range of weights and flap positions, but the stalling angle of attack is not published.
As speed reduces, angle of attack has to increase to keep lift constant until the critical angle is reached. The airspeed at which this angle is reached is the (1g, unaccelerated) stalling speed of the aircraft in that particular configuration. Deploying flaps/slats decreases the stall speed to allow the aircraft to take off and land at a lower speed.
Aerodynamic description [ edit ]
Fixed-wing aircraft [ edit ]
A fixed-wing aircraft can be made to stall in any pitch attitude or bank angle or at any airspeed but deliberate stalling is commonly practiced by reducing the speed to the unaccelerated stall speed, at a safe altitude. Unaccelerated (1g) stall speed varies on different fixed-wing aircraft and is represented by colour codes on the airspeed indicator. As the plane flies at this speed, the angle of attack must be increased to prevent any loss of altitude or gain in airspeed (which corresponds to the stall angle described above). The pilot will notice the flight controls have become less responsive and may also notice some buffeting, a result of the turbulent air separated from the wing hitting the tail of the aircraft.
In most light aircraft, as the stall is reached, the aircraft will start to descend (because the wing is no longer producing enough lift to support the aircraft's weight) and the nose will pitch down. Recovery from the stall involves lowering the aircraft nose, to decrease the angle of attack and increase the air speed, until smooth air-flow over the wing is restored. Normal flight can be resumed once recovery is complete.[7] The maneuver is normally quite safe, and, if correctly handled, leads to only a small loss in altitude (20–30 m/50–100 ft). It is taught and practised in order for pilots to recognize, avoid, and recover from stalling the aircraft.[8] A pilot is required to demonstrate competency in controlling an aircraft during and after a stall for certification in the United States,[9] and it is a routine maneuver for pilots when getting to know the handling of an unfamiliar aircraft type. The only dangerous aspect of a stall is a lack of altitude for recovery.
A special form of asymmetric stall in which the aircraft also rotates about its yaw axis is called a spin. A spin can occur if an aircraft is stalled and there is an asymmetric yawing moment applied to it.[10] This yawing moment can be aerodynamic (sideslip angle, rudder, adverse yaw from the ailerons), thrust related (p-factor, one engine inoperative on a multi-engine non-centreline thrust aircraft), or from less likely sources such as severe turbulence. The net effect is that one wing is stalled before the other and the aircraft descends rapidly while rotating, and some aircraft cannot recover from this condition without correct pilot control inputs (which must stop yaw) and loading.[11] A new solution to the problem of difficult (or impossible) stall-spin recovery is provided by the ballistic parachute recovery system.
The most common stall-spin scenarios occur on takeoff (departure stall) and during landing (base to final turn) because of insufficient airspeed during these maneuvers. Stalls also occur during a go-around manoeuvre if the pilot does not properly respond to the out-of-trim situation resulting from the transition from low power setting to high power setting at low speed.[12] Stall speed is increased when the wing surfaces are contaminated with ice or frost creating a rougher surface, and heavier airframe due to ice accumulation.
Stalls occur not only at slow airspeed, but at any speed when the wings exceed their critical angle of attack. Attempting to increase the angle of attack at 1g by moving the control column back normally causes the aircraft to climb. However, aircraft often experience higher g-forces, such as when turning steeply or pulling out of a dive. In these cases, the wings are already operating at a higher angle of attack to create the necessary force (derived from lift) to accelerate in the desired direction. Increasing the g-loading still further, by pulling back on the controls, can cause the stalling angle to be exceeded, even though the aircraft is flying at a high speed.[13] These "high-speed stalls" produce the same buffeting characteristics as 1g stalls and can also initiate a spin if there is also any yawing.
Symptoms of onset [ edit ]
One symptom of an approaching stall is slow and sloppy controls. As the speed of the aircraft decreases approaching the stall, there is less air moving over the wing, and, therefore, less air will be deflected by the control surfaces (ailerons, elevator, and rudder) at this lower speed. Some buffeting may also be felt from the turbulent flow above the wings as the stall is reached. The stall warning will sound, if fitted, in most aircraft 5 to 10 knots above the stall speed.[14]
Characteristics [ edit ]
Different aircraft types have different stalling characteristics. A benign stall is one where the nose drops gently and the wings remain level throughout. Slightly more demanding is a stall in which one wing stalls slightly before the other, causing that wing to drop sharply, with the possibility of entering a spin. A dangerous stall is one in which the nose rises, pushing the wing deeper into the stalled state and potentially leading to an unrecoverable deep stall. This can occur in some T-tailed aircraft wherein the turbulent airflow from the stalled wing can blanket the control surfaces at the tail.[citation needed]
Speed [ edit ]
Left edge is the stall speed curve. Flight envelope of a fast airplane.Left edge is the stall speed curve.
The airspeed indicator is often used to indirectly predict stall conditions.
Stalls depend only on angle of attack, not airspeed.[15] However, the more slowly an airplane goes, the greater the angle of attack it needs to produce lift equal to the aircraft's weight.[16] As the speed decreases further, at some point this angle will be equal to the critical (stall) angle of attack. This speed is called the "stall speed". An aircraft flying at its stall speed cannot climb, and an aircraft flying below its stall speed cannot stop descending. Any attempt to do so by increasing angle of attack, without first increasing airspeed, will result in a stall.
The actual stall speed will vary depending on the airplane's weight, altitude, configuration, and vertical and lateral acceleration. Guidelines for the case of zero acceleration are provided by the following V speeds:
V S : The computed stalling speed with flaps retracted at design speed. Often has the same value as V S1.
: The computed stalling speed with flaps retracted at design speed. Often has the same value as V. V S0 : The stall speed in landing configuration (full flaps, landing gear down, spoilers retracted).
: The stall speed in landing configuration (full flaps, landing gear down, spoilers retracted). V S1 : The stall speed in a "clean" configuration (flaps, landing gear and spoilers all retracted as far as possible).
: The stall speed in a "clean" configuration (flaps, landing gear and spoilers all retracted as far as possible). V SR : Reference stall speed. [17]
: Reference stall speed. V SR0 : Reference stall speed in the landing configuration.
: Reference stall speed in the landing configuration. V SR1 : Reference stall speed in the clean configuration.
: Reference stall speed in the clean configuration. V SW : Speed at which onset of natural or artificial stall warning occurs.
On an airspeed indicator, the bottom of the white arc indicates V S0 at maximum weight, while the bottom of the green arc indicates V S1 at maximum weight. While an aircraft's V S speed is computed by design, its V S0 and V S1 speeds must be demonstrated empirically by flight testing.[18]
In accelerated and turning flight [ edit ]
Illustration of a turning flight stall, occurring during a co-ordinated turn with progressively increasing angle of bank.
The normal stall speed, specified by the V S values above, always refers to straight and level flight, where the load factor is equal to 1g. However, if the aircraft is turning or pulling up from a dive, additional lift is required to provide the vertical or lateral acceleration, and so the stall speed is higher. An accelerated stall is a stall that occurs under such conditions.[19]
Considering, for example, a banked turn, the lift required is equal to the weight of the aircraft plus extra lift to provide the centripetal force necessary to perform the turn; that is:[20][21]
L = n W {\displaystyle L=nW}
where:
L {\displaystyle L} n {\displaystyle n} W {\displaystyle W}
To achieve the extra lift, the lift coefficient, and so the angle of attack, will have to be higher than it would be in straight and level flight at the same speed. Therefore, given that the stall always occurs at the same critical angle of attack,[22] by increasing the load factor (e.g., by tightening the turn) such critical angle – and the stall – will be reached with the airspeed remaining well above the normal stall speed,[20] that is:[23][24][25]
V st = V s n {\displaystyle V_{\text{st}}=V_{\text{s}}{\sqrt {n}}}
where:
V st {\displaystyle V_{\text{st}}} V s {\displaystyle V_{\text{s}}} n {\displaystyle n}
The table that follows gives some examples of the relation between the angle of bank and the square root of the load factor. It derives from the trigonometric relation (secant) between L {\displaystyle L} and W {\displaystyle W}.
Bank angle n {\displaystyle {\sqrt {n}}} 30° 1.07 45° 1.19 60° 1.41
For example, in a turn with bank angle of 45°, V st is 19% higher than V s.
It should be noted that, according to Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) terminology, the above example illustrates a so-called turning flight stall, while the term accelerated is used to indicate an accelerated turning stall only, that is, a turning flight stall where the airspeed decreases at a given rate.[26]
A notable example of air accident involving a low-altitude turning flight stall is the 1994 Fairchild Air Force Base B-52 crash.
Types [ edit ]
Dynamic stall [ edit ]
Dynamic stall is a non-linear unsteady aerodynamic effect that occurs when airfoils rapidly change the angle of attack. The rapid change can cause a strong vortex to be shed from the leading edge of the aerofoil, and travel backwards above the wing.[27] The vortex, containing high-velocity airflows, briefly increases the lift produced by the wing. As soon as it passes behind the trailing edge, however, the lift reduces dramatically, and the wing is in normal stall.[28]
Dynamic stall is an effect most associated with helicopters and flapping wings, though also occurs in wind turbines[29], and due to gusting airflow. During forward flight, some regions of a helicopter blade may incur flow that reverses (compared to the direction of blade movement), and thus includes rapidly changing angles of attack. Oscillating (flapping) wings, such as those of insects—including the most famous one, the bumblebee—may rely almost entirely on dynamic stall for lift production, provided the oscillations are fast compared to the speed of flight, and the angle of the wing changes rapidly compared to airflow direction.[28]
Stall delay can occur on airfoils subject to a high angle of attack and a three-dimensional flow. When the angle of attack on an airfoil is increasing rapidly, the flow will remain substantially attached to the airfoil to a significantly higher angle of attack than can be achieved in steady-state conditions. As a result, the stall is delayed momentarily and a lift coefficient significantly higher than the steady-state maximum is achieved. The effect was first noticed on propellers.[30]
Deep stall [ edit ]
Normal flight Deep stall condition – T-tail in "shadow" of wing The deep stall affects aircraft with a T-tail configuration.
A deep stall (or super-stall) is a dangerous type of stall that affects certain aircraft designs,[31] notably jet aircraft with a T-tail configuration and rear-mounted engines. In these designs, the turbulent wake of a stalled main wing, nacelle-pylon wakes and the wake from the fuselage[32] "blanket" the horizontal stabilizer, rendering the elevators ineffective and preventing the aircraft from recovering from the stall. Taylor[33] states T-tail propeller aircraft, unlike jet aircraft, do not usually require a stall recovery system during stall flight testing due to increased airflow over the wing root from the prop wash. Nor do they have rear mounted nacelles which can contribute substantially to the problem.[34] The A400M was fitted with a vertical tail booster for some flight tests in case of deep stall.[35]
Trubshaw[36] gives a broad definition of deep stall as penetrating to such angles of attack α {\textstyle \alpha } that pitch control effectiveness is reduced by the wing and nacelle wakes. He also gives a definition that relates deep stall to a locked-in condition where recovery is impossible. This is a single value of α {\textstyle \alpha }, for a given aircraft configuration, where there is no pitching moment, i.e. a trim point.
Typical values both for the range of deep stall, as defined above, and the locked-in trim point are given for the Douglas DC-9 Series 10 by Schaufele.[37] These values are from wind tunnel tests for an early design. The final design had no locked in trim point so recovery from the deep stall region was possible, as required to meet certification rules. Normal stall beginning at the 'g' break (sudden decrease of the vertical load factor[35]) was at 18 degrees α {\textstyle \alpha }, deep stall started at about 30 degrees and the locked-in unrecoverable trim point was at 47 degrees.
The very high α {\textstyle \alpha } for a deep stall locked-in condition occurs well beyond the normal stall but can be attained very rapidly as the aircraft is unstable beyond the normal stall and requires immediate action to arrest it. The loss of lift causes high sink rates which, together with the low forward speed at the normal stall, give a high α {\textstyle \alpha } with little or no rotation of the aircraft.[38] BAC 1-11 G-ASHG, during stall flight tests before the type was modified to prevent a locked-in deep stall condition, descended at over 10,000 feet per minute (50 m/s) and struck the ground in a flat attitude moving only 70 feet (20 m) forward after initial impact.[38] Sketches which show how the wing wake blankets the tail may be misleading if they imply that deep stall requires a high body angle. Taylor and Ray[39] show how the aircraft attitude in the deep stall is relatively flat, even less than during the normal stall, with very high negative flight path angles.
Effects similar to deep stall had been known to occur on some aircraft designs before the term was coined. A prototype Gloster Javelin (serial WD808) was lost in a crash on 11 June 1953, to a "locked in" stall.[40] However, Waterton[41] states that the trimming tailplane was found to be the wrong way for recovery. Low speed handling tests were being done to assess a new wing.[41] Handley Page Victor XL159 was lost to a "stable stall" on 23 March 1962.[42] It had been clearing the fixed droop leading edge with the test being stall approach, landing configuration, C of G aft. The brake parachute had not been streamed as it may have hindered rear crew escape.[43]
The name "deep stall" first came into widespread use after the crash of the prototype BAC 1-11 G-ASHG on 22 October 1963, which killed its crew.[44] This led to changes to the aircraft, including the installation of a stick shaker (see below) to clearly warn the pilot of an impending stall. Stick shakers are now a standard part of commercial airliners. Nevertheless, the problem continues to cause accidents; on 3 June 1966, a Hawker Siddeley Trident (G-ARPY), was lost to deep stall;[45] deep stall is suspected to be cause of another Trident (the British European Airways Flight 548 G-ARPI) crash – known as the "Staines Disaster" – on 18 June 1972 when the crew failed to notice the conditions and had disabled the stall recovery system.[46] On 3 April 1980, a prototype of the Canadair Challenger business jet crashed after initially entering a deep stall from 17,000 ft and having both engines flame-out. It recovered from the deep stall after deploying the anti-spin parachute but crashed after being unable to jettison the chute or relight the engines. One of the test pilots was unable to escape from the aircraft in time and was killed.[47] On the 26 July 1993, a Canadair CRJ-100 was lost in flight testing due to a deep stall.[48] It has been reported that a Boeing 727 entered a deep stall in a flight test, but the pilot was able to rock the airplane to increasingly higher bank angles until the nose finally fell through and normal control response was recovered.[49] A 727 accident on 1 December 1974, has also been attributed to a deep stall.[50] The crash of West Caribbean Airways Flight 708 in 2005 was also attributed to a deep stall.
Reports on the crash of Air France Flight 447 have stated that the accident involved a deep stall entered at 38,000 ft (11,582 m) and continued for more than three minutes until impact,[51] but this was a steady state conventional stall[52][53] because the aircraft (an Airbus A330) did not have a T-tail.[54]
Canard-configured aircraft are also at risk of getting into a deep stall. Two Velocity aircraft crashed due to locked-in deep stalls.[55] Testing revealed that the addition of leading-edge cuffs to the outboard wing prevented the aircraft from getting into a deep stall. The Piper Advanced Technologies PAT-1, N15PT, another canard-configured aircraft, also crashed in an accident attributed to a deep stall.[56] Wind tunnel testing of the design at the NASA Langley Research Center showed that it was vulnerable to a deep stall.[57]
In the early 1980s, a Schweizer SGS 1-36 sailplane was modified for NASA's controlled deep-stall flight program.[58]
Tip stall [ edit ]
Aircraft with a swept wing suffer from a particular form of stalling behaviour at low speed. At high speed the airflow over the wing tends to progress directly along the chord, but as the speed is reduced a sideways component due to the angle of the leading edge has time to build up. Airflow at the root is affected only by the angle of the wing, but at a point further along the span, the airflow is affected both by the angle as well as any sideways component of the airflow from the air closer to the root. This results in a pattern of airflow that is progressively "sideways" as one moves toward the wingtip.
As it is only the airflow along the chord that contributes to lift, this means that the wing begins to develop less lift at the tip than the root. In extreme cases, this can lead to the wingtip entering stall long before the wing as a whole. In this case the average lift of the wing as a whole moves forward; the inboard sections are continuing to generate lift and are generally in front of the center of gravity (C of G), while the tips are no longer contributing and are behind the C of G. This produces a strong nose-up pitch in the aircraft, which can lead to more of the wing stalling, the lift moving further forward, and so forth. This chain reaction is considered very dangerous and was known as the pitch-up.
Tip stall can be prevented in a number of ways, at least one of which is found on almost all modern aircraft. An early solution was the addition of wing fences to re-direct sideways moving air back towards the rear of the wing. A similar solution is the dog-tooth notch seen on some aircraft, like the Avro Arrow. A more common modern solution is to use some degree of washout.
Warning and safety devices [ edit ]
Fixed-wing aircraft can be equipped with devices to prevent or postpone a stall or to make it less (or in some cases more) severe, or to make recovery easier.
An aerodynamic twist can be introduced to the wing with the leading edge near the wing tip twisted downward. This is called washout and causes the wing root to stall before the wing tip. This makes the stall gentle and progressive. Since the stall is delayed at the wing tips, where the ailerons are, roll control is maintained when the stall begins.
can be introduced to the wing with the leading edge near the wing tip twisted downward. This is called and causes the wing root to stall before the wing tip. This makes the stall gentle and progressive. Since the stall is delayed at the wing tips, where the ailerons are, roll control is maintained when the stall begins. A stall strip is a small sharp-edged device that, when attached to the leading edge of a wing, encourages the stall to start there in preference to any other location on the wing. If attached close to the wing root, it makes the stall gentle and progressive; if attached near the wing tip, it encourages the aircraft to drop a wing when stalling.
is a small sharp-edged device that, when attached to the leading edge of a wing, encourages the stall to start there in preference to any other location on the wing. If attached close to the wing root, it makes the stall gentle and progressive; if attached near the wing tip, it encourages the aircraft to drop a wing when stalling. A stall fence is a flat plate in the direction of the chord to stop separated flow progressing out along the wing [59]
is a flat plate in the direction of the chord to stop separated flow progressing out along the wing Vortex generators, tiny strips of metal or plastic placed on top of the wing near the leading edge that protrude past the boundary layer into the free stream. As the name implies, they energize the boundary layer by mixing free stream airflow with boundary layer flow thereby creating vortices, this increases the momentum in the boundary layer. By increasing the momentum of the boundary layer, airflow separation and the resulting stall may be delayed.
, tiny strips of metal or plastic placed on top of the wing near the leading edge that protrude past the boundary layer into the free stream. As the name implies, they energize the boundary layer by mixing free stream airflow with boundary layer flow thereby creating vortices, this increases the momentum in the boundary layer. By increasing the momentum of the boundary layer, airflow separation and the resulting stall may be delayed. An anti-stall strake is a leading edge extension that generates a vortex on the wing upper surface to postpone the stall.
is a leading edge extension that generates a vortex on the wing upper surface to postpone the stall. A stick pusher is a mechanical device that prevents the pilot from stalling an aircraft. It pushes the elevator control forward as the stall is approached, causing a reduction in the angle of attack. In generic terms, a stick pusher is known as a stall identification device or stall identification system. [60]
is a mechanical device that prevents the pilot from stalling an aircraft. It pushes the elevator control forward as the stall is approached, causing a reduction in the angle of attack. In generic terms, a stick pusher is known as a or. A stick shaker is a mechanical device that shakes the pilot's controls to warn of the onset of stall.
is a mechanical device that shakes the pilot's controls to warn of the onset of stall. A stall warning is an electronic or mechanical device that sounds an audible warning as the stall speed is approached. The majority of aircraft contain some form of this device that warns the pilot of an impending stall. The simplest such device is a stall warning horn, which consists of either a pressure sensor or a movable metal tab that actuates a switch, and produces an audible warning in response.
is an electronic or mechanical device that sounds an audible warning as the stall speed is approached. The majority of aircraft contain some form of this device that warns the pilot of an impending stall. The simplest such device is a, which consists of either a pressure sensor or a movable metal tab that actuates a switch, and produces an audible warning in response. An angle-of-attack indicator for light aircraft, the "AlphaSystemsAOA" and a nearly identical " Lift Reserve Indicator ", are both pressure differential instruments that display margin above stall and/or angle of attack on an instantaneous, continuous readout. The General Technics CYA-100 displays true angle of attack via a magnetically coupled vane. An AOA indicator provides a visual display of the amount of available lift throughout its slow speed envelope regardless of the many variables that act upon an aircraft. This indicator is immediately responsive to changes in speed, angle of attack, and wind conditions, and automatically compensates for aircraft weight, altitude, and temperature.
for light aircraft, the "AlphaSystemsAOA" and a nearly identical " ", are both pressure differential instruments that display margin above stall and/or angle of attack on an instantaneous, continuous readout. The General Technics CYA-100 displays true angle of attack via a magnetically coupled vane. An AOA indicator provides a visual display of the amount of available lift throughout its slow speed envelope regardless of the many variables that act upon an aircraft. This indicator is immediately responsive to changes in speed, angle of attack, and wind conditions, and automatically compensates for aircraft weight, altitude, and temperature. An angle of attack limiter or an "alpha" limiter is a flight computer that automatically prevents pilot input from causing the plane to rise over the stall angle. Some alpha limiters can be disabled by the pilot.
Stall warning systems often involve inputs from a broad range of sensors and systems to include a dedicated angle of attack sensor.
Blockage, damage, or inoperation of stall and angle of attack (AOA) probes can lead to unreliability of the stall warning, and cause the stick pusher, overspeed warning, autopilot, and yaw damper to malfunction.[61]
If a forward canard is used for pitch control, rather than an aft tail, the canard is designed to meet the airflow at a slightly greater angle of attack than the wing. Therefore, when the aircraft pitch increases abnormally, the canard will usually stall first, causing the nose to drop and so preventing the wing from reaching its critical AOA. Thus, the risk of main wing stalling is greatly reduced. However, if the main wing stalls, recovery becomes difficult, as the canard is more deeply stalled and angle of attack increases rapidly.[62]
If an aft tail is used, the wing is designed to stall before the tail. In this case, the wing can be flown at higher lift coefficient (closer to stall) to produce more overall lift.
Most military combat aircraft have an angle of attack indicator among the pilot's instruments, which lets the pilot know precisely how close to the stall point the aircraft is. Modern airliner instrumentation may also measure angle of attack, although this information may not be directly displayed on the pilot's display, instead driving a stall warning indicator or giving performance information to the flight computer (for fly by wire systems).
Flight beyond the stall [ edit ]
As a wing stalls, aileron effectiveness is reduced, making the plane hard to control and increasing the risk of a spin starting. Post stall, steady flight beyond the stalling angle (where the coefficient of lift is largest) requires engine thrust to replace lift as well as alternative controls to replace the loss of effectiveness of the ailerons. For high-powered aircraft, the loss of lift (and increase in drag) beyond the stall angle is less of a problem than maintaining control. Some aircraft may be subject to post-stall gyration (e.g. the F-4) or susceptible to entering a flat-spin (e.g. F-14). Control beyond-stall can be provided by reaction control systems (e.g. NF-104A), vectored thrust, as well as a rolling stabilator (or taileron). The enhanced manoeuvering capability by flights at very high angles of attack can provide a tactical advantage for military fighters such as the F-22 Raptor. Short term stalls at 90–120° (e.g. Pugachev's Cobra) are sometimes performed at airshows.[63] The highest angle of attack in sustained flight so far demonstrated was 70 degrees in the X-31 at the Dryden Flight Research Center.[64] Sustained post-stall flight is a type of supermaneuverability.
Spoilers [ edit ]
Except for flight training, airplane testing, and aerobatics, a stall is usually an undesirable event.
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up to a quarter of the 35- to 40-man roster will be former Haggis players, with possibly 12 more in a training-academy program, depending on what Warriors coaches are looking for.
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On top of Haggis' skill (the team won the Division II nationals in 2005 and has made it to the National playoffs six times), team members say Haggis is valuable to MLR because it is stable. The team has played consistently since 1974 while other Utah teams have blinked in and out of existence.
Over that time, it has drawn top talent from an area known for its rugby.
"You get a lot of guys here for the (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) aspect for it," said Jason Hoke, Haggis team manager. "The sport is the sport of countries that have high LDS bases, so Tonga, Fiji, New Zealand, Samoa, have a lot of LDS people and it's also their national sport. So when you have guys that moved here for the religious aspect, you also get guys that have played rugby before."
He said players that emigrate from Pacific Islands that play rugby tend to have much more experience than American players, because they started at a much younger age due to the sport's cultural significance.
That significance has been partially instilled in Utah, where high school and college rugby are taken seriously – a rarity in the U.S., Hoke said. The University of Utah, Brigham Young University and Utah Valley University all have top-ranking rugby squads.
As with any new league, though, the legitimacy and longevity of MLR are topics of speculation.
"It's one of those things that, you don't get your hopes up too high," said Robert Lopez, a long-time Haggis rugby player and coach. "You just have to trudge through it and try and get it really consistent and professional."
League officials did not reply to requests for comment. Lopez said the resources are available in terms of coaching staff and player talent, but the league still must be developed so it looks profitable to invest in.
"It's getting there, it will probably take a couple years to get the buzz really hyped up," Hoke said. "But we're all excited about it, we're all hoping good things for it."
Hoke added that a successful professional league would help raise interest in the sport.
"We all saw how it looked when Real Salt Lake came and it took a while to get established," he said. "But given a couple years, they turned into a powerhouse and it's a great sport and has a great fan base."
Hoke said he hopes to see MLR progress in that way, too.
"It gives the guys something to work for and look forward to," Hoke said. "They are starting from scratch, so I think everyone would like to have a shot at it."
On Tuesday, Oct. 31, Park City Haggis was scheduled to have its own tryout for the Warriors. According to Cullen, the Warriors will start practicing in February or March, with MLR games tentatively slated for April.Throughout the last couple of months, we’ve been looking into conversational interfaces as the next big revolution, asking ourselves how design is being transformed by things we cannot see, and looking into how different countries approach messaging. Today, we want to take a step closer to the action with a little experiment.
We started by asking ourselves, which interfaces of today might be replaced by conversational interfaces tomorrow?
The web form
We interact with interfaces every day—from cash withdrawal at the ATM to pressing floor buttons in an elevator. However, one of the most common interactions with interfaces are the ones happening when you browse the Internet and fill out web forms.
A webform, web form or HTML form on a web page allows a user to enter data that is sent to a server for processing. Forms can resemble paper or database forms because web users fill out the forms using checkboxes, radio buttons, or text fields. For example, forms can be used to enter shipping or credit card data to order a product, or can be used to retrieve search results from a search engine. — Wikipedia
Boring web form
Basically, web forms are a means of exchanging information with a web server. Whether you’re searching for content or logging in to your e-mail account or Facebook page, you interact with simple web forms. These have been around since the birth of the Internet, and there’s no doubt that you interact with at least one on the Web every day.
In our opinion, it’s about time someone did something to freshen them up.
Introducing the conversational form
We believe we can do better than the forms we meet around the Web today. So we decided to build an open-source framework for turning web forms into conversations, making it easy for developers and designers to engage with users in a more compelling and conversational way.
Getting started
Getting started is fairly easy. Start by including the script:
<script type="text/javascript" src="https://rawgit.com/space10-community/conversational-form/master/dist/conversational-form.min.js" crossorigin></script>
And then instantiate it either automatically…
<form cf-form-element action="/post">
Or manually…
new cf.ConversationalForm({
formEl: <HTMLFormElement>
});
Or via jQuery…
$("form").conversationalForm();
And boom — your form is now conversational 👍
Injecting personality
We’ve added a few ways of injecting personality into the conversation. One of the simplest ways is to set a custom picture for either the robot or the human:
new cf.ConversationalForm({
formEl: <HTMLFormElement>,
userImage: "http://example.com/user.png"
});
Since variation is part of what makes us human, we’ve included an easy way to add variation to the conversation. Just use the cf-questions tag and separate each variation with a pipe symbol. Like this:
<input cf-questions=”Hi there!|Hello!|Sup?” type=”text”>
The last option is to reuse answers from previous questions:
<input cf-questions="Great to meet you, {previous-answer}! I'm a web form, what do you do?" type="text">President Donald Trump’s appointment of Attorney General Jeff Sessions has led people to speculate about the fate of recent police reform efforts.
Early into his tenure, Sessions said he intended to “pull back on” the Justice Department’s investigations of police department abuses, saying they diminish effectiveness.
Americans have mobilized extensively in the past three years against police brutality, militarization and corruption through the Black Lives Matter and related movements. Government officials at the federal level have responded to these demands by creating specialized task forces to recommend best practices, and investigating troubled police departments and enforcing reforms. Courts have also worked to roll back unconstitutional stop-and-frisk policies, while city governments have created independent oversight agencies and enacted robust community policing programs.
But will it stick?
My research on police reform in Latin America shows that such reforms are highly vulnerable to political reversals. These cases reveal how they can be quickly rolled back before they can take hold and demonstrate results.
Understanding the politics of police reform in Latin America may be informative for those who hope for changes in policing in the U.S.
Police reform and politics
Leaders in Colombia and Buenos Aires Province, Argentina, overhauled their police institutions in 1993 and 1998, respectively. These reforms were a response to rising crime rates, as well as pervasive police violence, corruption and ineffectiveness in fighting crime.
Comprehensive police reform laws were crafted through broad political consensus. Lawmakers in the Colombian congress and the Buenos Aires provincial legislature enacted sweeping legislation to demilitarize, decentralize and professionalize Colombia’s National Police and the Police of Buenos Aires Province. The reforms also improved recruitment standards and training, strengthened oversight agencies and created formal spaces for community participation.
Reuters/Jose Gomez
Only one year after reforms were passed, however, Ernesto Samper was elected president of Colombia. He vowed to undermine his predecessor’s dramatic overhaul of the National Police, saying his government would “let the police regulate itself.”
Similarly in Buenos Aires Province, Carlos Ruckauf was elected governor in 1999. He left his predecessor’s police reform legislation intact. However, he made his preferred approach to crime-fighting clear: “we have to hit the criminals with bullets.”
Both politicians used citizens’ concerns over rising crime to lead calls for greater police autonomy, in order to be “tougher” on crime. Under their administrations, hard-fought police reform gave way to periods of “counter-reform.” These were characterized by increased police autonomy, weakened accountability, militarization, unchecked corruption and extrajudicial killings.
Other research on policing in Latin America has provided compelling evidence of the impact of such political rhetoric. When politicians promoting “tougher” police strategies are elected, police killings and repression of citizens increase.
These examples reveal how the long-term aims of police reforms can be difficult to reconcile with the short-term goals of politicians.
Police support for reform
My research also demonstrates that police forces that are resistant to reforms have considerable power to undermine them. In Buenos Aires Province, police officials succeeded in dismantling a system of neighborhood security forums that allowed citizens to conduct oversight of police. Police officials felt the forums gave citizens too much control over police affairs. As a result, they lobbied the governor and security minister to reduce the funding and staff needed to implement them.
By contrast, a similar participatory system in São Paulo, Brazil, has endured for three decades. There, police are incorporated into the governance structure of the community councils, allowing for a more collaborative relationship. As a result, many police officers have come to see forum members as their advocates. Although citizens in São Paulo do not have oversight authority, the police’s cooperation has contributed to the persistence of these participatory spaces.
Thus, reformers must identify and bolster police officials with a stake in sustaining reforms. Without support from insiders, reform is unlikely to last.
Sustaining momentum
Police reform is also made vulnerable by the fact that, after reform passes, its proponents demobilize. In Buenos Aires and Colombia, human rights and activist organizations remained active when politicians began to reverse reforms. But the broadly shared societal outrage that led to reform in the first place dissipated. With it went the momentum needed to sustain reform in the long term.
Research from both the U.S. and Latin America has shown that campaigning for “tough on crime” policies, or “penal populism,” is a highly successful strategy for winning elections. As scholars have shown, such policies can generate broad support among a diverse set of voters. So-called “pro-order” coalitions, the collection of civil society organizations, media outlets and politicians that advocate for “law and order” policies, have similarly demonstrated great capacity to mobilize resources and public support.
Failing to sustain reform coalitions means there is little counterweight to these pressures.
‘Counter-reform’ in the US?
Is the U.S. entering a period of “counter-reform” similar to that observed in Colombia and Argentina?
Opponents of reform, including Sessions, warn of “a longer-term trend of violent crime going up.” They have also floated theories such as the “Ferguson effect,” the idea that growing scrutiny of police activity has made police more timid. Such arguments may scare voters into believing that police reform may make police less effective in fighting crime.
Meanwhile, President Trump has engaged in rhetoric similar to his Colombian and Argentine counterparts. As a candidate, he called on police to be “very much tougher” in fighting crime. As president, he has said his will be “a law-and-order administration” that will “empower” police.
It is too early to tell whether these police reform efforts will backslide. While the U.S. context differs in some ways from Latin America, these examples demonstrate that police reform is a continuous and contentious process that is difficult to achieve and highly prone to reversal.There could be a scientific explanation for the failure of some international pivots to "get their kicks" in Dunedin's stadium. Mark Geenty reports.
Dunedin's house of horrors will continue to haunt visiting goalkickers as long as it remains under a roof, a Wellington scientist says.
Brian Wilkins, who has written books on how atmospheric conditions assist a cricket ball to swing, says it's no coincidence that New Zealand's only covered rugby stadium causes nightmares for some of the best kickers.
Photosport Scientist Brian Wilkins says the roof on Dunedin's Forsyth Barr Stadium will continue to make life difficult for goal kickers.
He says the lack of air turbulence under the Forsyth Barr Stadium roof means any ball hit slightly off centre will deviate further than it would outside.
Springbok Morne Steyn was the latest sharpshooter to discover that in Saturday's test defeat to the All Blacks when he kicked just one from five attempts, some of them skewing wildly.
Wilkins says it relates to the lateral Magnus/Robins force, which makes any spun ball curve when the air flowing around it leaves the surface earlier on one side than on the other.
"In rugby, most kickers don't strike the ball dead centre and their boot doesn't come through straight in line with the target; they come around the ball slightly," Wilkins said.
"They're almost guaranteed to put a slight sideways spin on the ball. It's the same sort of thing as table tennis, when you put side spin on the ball it swerves.
"It's the smooth non-turbulent air [under the roof] which accentuates all these phenomena. It's only got to be a very slight rotation for it to take off and develop into a big curve."
After reading yesterday's story in the Dominion Post on the kicking woes, Wilkins wrote in with his low turbulence theory and offered some free advice for visiting kickers in Dunedin: straighten your approach and if you don't hit the ball low and dead centre, and follow through straight, you could be in trouble.
Springboks captain Jean de Villiers suggested the switch from the Gilbert ball which is used in South Africa, to the adidas ball used in New Zealand, was a factor.
England's Jonny Wilkinson also blamed the ball during his struggles during last year's World Cup, when he kicked seven from 14 in Dunedin.
Wilkins said the atmospheric conditions would play a much bigger part and left far less margin for error, regardless of which ball was used. It was during the World Cup that he took a keen interest in why the kickers struggled in Dunedin and he soon settled on the low turbulence theory.
"Only those who kick straight through to send the ball tumbling straight, under and over, around a horizontal axis, will succeed... in low turbulence air."
The statistics back up the theory. At the World Cup, kickers made 32 of 59 attempts (54 per cent) and in this year's Super Rugby it was 64 from 97 (65 per cent).
Wilkins' previous experiments with cricket balls, using a specially made bowling machine in varying wind conditions, proved they swung much more in still, non-turbulent air.
Another theory offered up at Saturday's test was that gaps at the top and bottom of the stadium, to encourage grass growth, created a tricky breeze. But Forsyth Barr Stadium chief executive David Davies booted any atmospheric theories into touch.
"My view is there was nothing atmospherically [to blame]. The reality is that, at times, people kick badly and are looking for any excuse."by
Mrs. Trump, you sent ten picture books, so I will recommend ten as well — but there are so many more! My wish is that these books will help you see:
the beautiful resilience of children who stand up to racism and oppression and for social justice and reform;
children who are trying to connect with parents who are incarcerated simply because of their immigration status;
children who integrate aspects of their own cultures and countries of origin into their new country;
children whose parents risked everything to enter the U.S. so they can have a chance at a future free from violence and/or poverty;
children who challenge society’s social constraints and are accepted and loved as who they say they are.
(Horn Book reviews included, where available.)
Auntie Yang’s Great Soybean Picnic written by Ginnie Lo; illus. by Beth Lo (Lee & Low, 2012).
Author and illustrator (sisters) retell how their aunt, a Chinese immigrant to the Midwest, created a family tradition. On a family outing in the 1950s, Auntie Yang discovers a field of soybeans–and a way to overcome homesickness for China while sharing a very special food. The heartfelt story is accompanied by enamel on porcelain art carefully drawn with colored glazes. Glos.
The Boy & the Bindi written by Vivek Shraya; illus. by Rajni Perera (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2016). [Not reviewed by the Horn Book.]
Drum Dream Girl: How One Girl’s Courage Changed Music written by Margarita Engle; illus. by Rafael López (Houghton, 2015).
A young girl “on an island of music” dreams of becoming a drummer, but only boys play drums. The story is based on Millo Castro Zaldarriaga, a “Chinese-African-Cuban girl who broke Cuba’s traditional taboo against female drummers.” Poetic text takes its cues from Zaldarriaga’s chosen instrument. Saturated acrylic-on-wood illustrations capture the island’s musicality and the surreal dream-images that inspire young Millo.
King for a Day written by Rukhsana Khan; illus. by Christiane Krömer (Lee & Low, 2014).
Action-filled collages of traditional fabrics, textured paper, yarn, and more display intricate sky- and cityscapes of Lahore, Pakistan, during Basant, the spring kite festival. Malik, skillfully using his handmade small kite to conquer the bully next door in the kite battle, is a real hero; that he uses a wheelchair is incidental to the story. Useful contextual information is appended.
Mama’s Nightingale: A Story of Immigration and Separation written by Edwidge Danticat; illus. by Leslie Staub (Dial, 2015).
In this gentle story, Haitian American Saya’s mother is incarcerated because she has no papers. Danticat’s direct, resonant prose doesn’t shy away from the realities–telling of the loneliness of missing your mother and the trauma of saying goodbye at the detention facility. Staub’s naive-style oil paintings keep the focus on the child; the larger issue of the plight of refugees and immigrants makes the story universal.
My Cold Plum Lemon Pie Bluesy Mood written by Tameka Fryer Brown; illus. by Shane Evans (Penguin Random House, 2013).
Jamie expresses his shifting emotions in a rainbow of colors. His cool purple “Grape-juice drinking…Bobbing to the beat kind of mood” shifts to a “Gloomy gray kind of place” when his brothers are mean, and so on. The stuttering free verse can be difficult to follow; Evans’s hue-specific digital-collage illustrations provide most of this conceptually smart book’s expression.
Red: A Crayon’s Story written and illus. by Michael Hall (Greenwillow, 2015).
Crayon Red is labeled red, but he colors blue, which creates frustration for the other crayons and thus Red himself. Red struggles until new friend Berry asks him to make a blue ocean. Once he lets go of his label, everything turns around, including the other crayons’ minds. Smart design and sharp details keep the story effective and amusing.
Separate Is Never Equal: Sylvia Mendez & Her Family’s Fight for Desegregation written and illus. by Duncan Tonatiuh (Scholastic, 2014).
In 1947 the Mendez family fought for–and won–the desegregation of schools in California. Tonatiuh uses a child’s viewpoint to succinctly capture the segregated reality of Mexican Americans. The straightforward narrative is well matched with illustrations in Tonatiuh’s signature style, their two-dimensional perspective reminiscent of the Mixtec codex but collaged with paper, wood, etc. to provide textural variation. An author’s note with photos is appended. Bib., glos., ind.
Somos Como Las Nubes / We Are like the Clouds written by Jorge Argueta; illus. by Alfonso Ruano; translated by Elisa Amado (Groundwood, 2016).
Argueta’s bilingual collection gives voice to refugee children who emigrate from Central American countries to the United States in search of safety or better lives. The poems, written in the first person, present the candid perspective of the children’s experiences; they include whimsical imagery but also scary threats. Delicate illustrations present both realistic portrayals and surreal depictions that complement the textual imagery.
Two White Rabbits written by Jairo Buitrago; illus. by Rafael Yockteng; translated by Elisa Amado (Groundwood, 2015).
A girl and her father travel by foot, by raft, and by train. As they travel, the girl counts the things she sees: “I count the people who live by the train tracks.” Originally published in Spanish, this quiet picture book highlights the experience of a child refugee or immigrant; Yockteng’s contemplative graphic illustrations clearly depict the pain, frustration, and boredom of the journey.Bayer Leverkusen prodigy Kai Havertz has signed a five-year contract with the Bundesliga club, tying himself to Die Werkself until 2022.
Havertz became the youngest player to start a Bundesliga game for Leverkusen when he was named in the line-up to take on Darmstadt on Matchday 10 last season.
The 18-year-old played 24 top-flight games in all during the 2016/17 campaign, and impressed so much, Leverkusen have ensured his immediate future lies at the BayArena.
"I have worked for this moment in the past year," Havertz, who was previously on a youth team contract, told his club's official website.
"It fills me with great satisfaction and pride. I'm happy to finally be set after the last season in which I also had to finish school. Now I have my school leaving exam in my pocket and a professional contract with Leverkusen, it's a great feeling."
Havertz was awarded the prestigious silver Fritz Walter Medal as the country's second-best U17 player in 2016, and Leverkusen's sporting director, Rudi Völler, fully expects him to exploit his enormous potential still further next term.
"Kai has exceptional abilities and is already blessed with a footballing maturity that sets him apart from other players of his age," Völler said.
"He is technically good, dangerous in front of goal, and good with his head. After his great start in professional football, we want to push Kai's development even further. He has huge potential, which will come to the fore even more in the coming years."
Watch: Kai Havertz's Matchday 34 Goal of the Week
Click here for more Bayer Leverkusen club newsI have spent over 130 hours playing the Mass Effect series, and I truly think that this story is one of the best science fiction epics of all time, or at least the best story within a video game. Throughout the series, you face increasingly critical situations where you are the last hope for not only humanity, but all the races of the galaxy as you try to find some way of defeating an artificial race of giant aliens bent on destroying all sentient life in the galaxy: the Reapers. I use the word “you” instead of “John Shepard,” because Mass Effect 3 can bring your own morality into question as the game encourages you to consider the consequences of each decision. While each game in the Mass Effect series has delivered amazing stories, the third installment brings to a close the story you have crafted from the beginning. Mass Effect 3 delivers the extraordinary tale of one man (or woman if you prefer) bearing the burden of the entire galaxy while giving the player a fantastic action shooter with the perfect balance of RPG elements. This game is by far the best game of the series, of the year, and one of my personal favorites of this past decade.
Since this is the third installment of the series, most of the battle systems and RPG elements are familiar. However, these elements have been tweaked and improved upon as well. The weapons and armor have different upgrades and customizations that improve damage, accuracy, etc. While the biotic powers have more branches of ability choices to provide more options to fit any play style. As an Engineer, I relied more on my biotic powers than weapons. I had abilities that let me create a combat drone or combat turret in a blink that supplemented my arsenal, yet I still carried around a lightweight assault rifle and a pistol because it suited me. The combat is as exhilarating as ever and still drives the narrative through communicator conversation and small talk with your team. However the enemies generally keep you from sitting still for very long. The AI forces you to think and change tactics every time a new enemy is introduced, or when they change their approach. Instead of feeling like a pause in the story to fight off some bad guys, you’re given a good challenge that makes all your customization and upgrading worth the investment.
The story is one that is almost is too big to fit in this game. There are some aspects of the story and gameplay that can go unnoticed if the player has not completed the first and second Mass Effect games. So much of the buildup and drama come from the previous games and how your decisions affect what happens in ME3. There were many times where I actually sat the controller down and thought for a minute because I was considering the implications of my decision and what it meant going forward. Instead of making a decision based on how it would better my score in the game, I was considering the implications of saving a race from extinction or stopping a war to wipe out a species. By the time I was finished, I was truly sad to see this story end. Through my many hours of talking to the characters and learning more about them, I had invested time and emotion into these characters as if they were real. By the end of the game, I was attached to these characters, feeling sad when saying solemn goodbyes and knowing that that a nod of respect from one of my crew members could be their last. While your paragon(good) and renegade(bad) score still affect your options in conversation, they combine together to give you a reputation score that is the sum of your choices. This is a good choice on Biowares’ part, as in a way, it subconsciously drives home the idea that your game experience is the sum of your decisions, both good and bad. In my play through of each game, I was mostly paragon, but there were some choices in which I went with the renegade option because my conscience actually played a role in my decisions. I actively chose based off my own morality and character, instead of going paragon across the board. This is the best example of how the game delivers truly great narrative and character development through not only character interaction and dialogue choices, but also putting the player in the “hot seat” and making them decide how the story plays out. That’s why you really develop a relationship with your crew and have an emotional investment by the time you’re done… because you spent so much time personally crafting each relationship through every dialogue choice and action you made.
Throughout the game, the story presses the conviction that the galaxy is on the teetering edge of destruction. As Shepard, you are tasked to unite the galaxy in the war against the reapers. However, sometimes you really don’t feel like you’re saving the galaxy. Often, I felt like an errand boy doing favors for various ambassadors to get the help I needed. But every time I did a favor or solved someone’s’ problem, I found one more favor that must be done in order to get aid. This-temporarily-turned into a cycle of “favors for favors” between politicians while I frequently received increasingly grave reports of how bad the situation on earth was. Fortunately these favors put me in the middle of battles and discussion that shaped the fate of the galaxy. Every set piece and large conflict made me shed a tear or stare in awe as I watched the results of my choices. One of the main hubs in the game, The Citadel, constantly changes as the war continues, and you constantly find new quests and tasks to complete. Sometimes I found side missions simply by standing and listening to a conversation that I triggered by walking near someone. This applies even to non-quest related conversation. Sometimes you walk by and hear a conversation take place, and each time you come back and walk by them you hear another part of the conversation: another part of the story. Every little event or story or conversation drives home the grim times that you are in. Even the scanning you do in reaper controlled systems-inconsequential as it may be-shows off the state of the galaxy while giving you an opportunity to net experience points and credits. Not only does Bioware do a great job of introducing new characters and flesh them out, they bring old characters back like Garrus and Liara and provide even more reason for you to like the characters and care about them. As I keep mentioning, every little detail drive home the story and theme throughout the game and its major (and minor) set pieces.
Throughout this review I haven’t spoke much to Mass Effect 3’s flaws. That’s because what few flaws it has are quite small and inconsequential in comparison to the mountain of successes Bioware has. Throughout my play through, I did notice some frames per second lag or a few texture rendering problems. However, as I look at these problems I tend to think that this isn’t a flaw or bug that Bioware didn’t fix. I think it is proof that games are getting almost too large for current technology to keep up. I noticed similar things in games like Batman: Arkham City, and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Each game was quite large in scope, magnitude, and size on a disc. Mass Effect 3 comes in a two disc format for the 360, and I think through playing the game, it shows how much the developers are really pushing these machines to their limit. I can’t say the PS3 is having the same problem, but the 360 is definitely being pushed to its technical limits through games like ME3. On another point, I think the dialogue circle is something that should be revised. Generally you figure out after the first few conversations that the top right option is the paragon or “good guy” option, the bottom right one is the renegade or “jerk” option, the middle is somehow “riding the fence”, and everything on the left is informational. Sometimes the placement of the dialogue choice doesn’t actually reflect the sentiment of what is said. It’s not necessarily a flaw in the design of the wheel or something that really affects gameplay, but it is displaying the fact that even though Bioware has given us control over the story and conversation in an innovative way, there is still room for improvement. Bioware has done a fantastic job with this game in so many areas and it isn’t perfect. But it comes as close as any other game has to being the best it could be.
The multiplayer side of Mass Effect 3 is quite interesting and fun. It gives the generic wave defense “Horde Mode” gameplay a new twist by using weapons and biotics fighting the various enemies from the ME Universe. For something that could have been tacked on to satisfy the publisher, Bioware did a good job in creating a fleshed out multiplayer experience, while tying it into the story of the game. As more and more systems are invaded by the reapers, your Galactic Readiness is measured (in the single player story) by the recourses you acquire through quests and the various areas fighting off the reaper invasion. The more your readiness is increased, the better off you are and at 100% readiness you unlock different endings. Here’s where the multiplayer comes in. You are in those key areas and your squad has to defend against the enemy waves to finish the mission. By doing so your overall Galactic Readiness increases as does you characters’ level letting you put more skills into your biotic powers and giving you credits to buy “Equipment Packs”, the games way of getting upgrades and new weapons. While the packs contain different upgrades, items, and boosts and is incredibly useful, it is woefully random. You could be using a sniper rifle and an assault rifle, and get packs with only 2 or 3 useful items or upgrades that can be applied to your weapons, essentially making your purchase worth half or less of what you were originally intended. I’m not to comfy with the idea of using Microsoft points or in game credits to purchase these packs, but I like even less that these packs aren’t guaranteed at all to give you anything that could be really useful. Usually you get a few useful things like med packs or shield regenerators, but when you really want a new scope for you sniper and get an extended clip for a shotgun, that can be more that a little annoying. The gameplay itself is quite good and fun to play around with for a few hours, especially when you want to get the 100% to get a different ending in the game. However I wouldn’t expect to be playing any more than a few weeks.
While there has been some heated discussion about the ending, I tend to like it overall. While the “multiple” endings were really just the same ending tweaked with a few different cinematic scenes and color changes, The ending is good and made me think about the choices I had made up to that point and was as riveting as the events that led up to this point. I agree that there should be more different endings that would be based on your overall score and the decisions from all three games, but I can only imagine how difficult that would be, and how many different “endings” that would make. In the end the ending is what the artists have given us and as fans we either like or dislike it. Personally, I am okay with the ending, but not enthusiastic about seeing the same ending tweaked a little to make it “different.”A woman protesting the robocall scandal on Parliament Hill
The 2011 Canadian federal election voter suppression scandal (also known as the Robocall scandal, Robogate, or RoboCon) is a political scandal stemming from events during the 2011 Canadian federal election.[1][2][3][4][5][6] It involved robocalls and real-person calls that were designed to result in voter suppression. Elections Canada and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) conducted investigations into the claims that calls were made to dissuade voters from casting ballots by falsely telling them that the location of their polling stations had changed.[7] Further possible electoral law violations were alleged as the evidence unfolded. Under the Canada Elections Act, it is an offence to wilfully prevent or endeavour to prevent an elector from voting in an election.[8][9]
On Election Day, May 2, 2011, reports of voter suppression, mostly centered on the riding of Guelph, led to the discovery that a computer in the Guelph Conservative campaign office had possibly been used to make the calls.[10] While the Elections Canada investigation initially focused on calls sent into Guelph amidst nationwide complaints, the investigation expanded to complaints in other ridings across the country. Court documents filed in mid-August 2012 by the Commissioner of Canada Elections indicated that the elections watchdog had received complaints of fraudulent or misleading calls in 247 of Canada's 308 ridings, recorded in all ten provinces and at least one territory.[11][12][13][14] The allegations received widespread national media attention, and led to a series of protests in March and April 2012 in at least 27 Canadian cities. April 29, 2012, was termed by protest organizers a "National Day Against Election Fraud."[15]
On April 24, 2014, Commissioner of Canada Elections Yves Cote issued a press release that stated, "the Commissioner has concluded that, following a thorough investigation by his Office, the evidence is not sufficient to provide reasonable grounds to believe that an offence was committed. Therefore, the Commissioner will not refer the matter to the Director of Public Prosecutions".[16] However, in August 2014 former junior Conservative staffer Michael Sona was found guilty of one violation of the Elections Act.
Voter suppression in Guelph [ edit ]
In February 2012, Postmedia News and the Ottawa Citizen reported that, during the 2011 Canadian federal election, misleading phone calls were made in at least 14 ridings, including Guelph, Ontario. The calls directed voters to the wrong polling stations.[17] The fraudulent automated calls displayed the phone number of a prepaid "burner phone", registered to a "Pierre Poutine" of "Separatist Street" in Joliette, Quebec. In addition, "Pierre Poutine" also used the alias "Pierre Jones" of pierres1630 at gmail.com, living at the fictional address of 54 Lajoie Nord in Joliette, Quebec.
The day before Election Day, "Pierre Poutine" sent out a series of messages using 2call.ca, an automated call company subsidiary of Edmonton-based Internet service provider RackNine, which directed voters to the wrong voting locations. The calls were falsely displayed as originating from Liberal candidate Frank Valeriote's campaign office. A PayPal account was used to pay for the calls to RackNine, and logged Poutine's credit card information. Both RackNine and Paypal turned over activity and transaction logs to investigators.[18]
A transcript of the false Robocall in Guelph, used during Election Day to impersonate an Elections Canada official, reads: "This is an automated message from Elections Canada. Due to a projected increase in voter turnout, your poll location has been changed. Your new voting location is at the Old Quebec Street Mall, at 55 Wyndham Street North. Once again, your new poll location is at the Old Quebec Street Mall, at 55 Wyndham Street North. If you have any questions, please call our hotline at 1-800-443-4456. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. (French version recorded in another woman's voice follows.)"[19]
Elections Canada emails were revealed under Access to Information requests, and exposed internal communications on the matter. At 11:06 am on election day election officer Anita Hawdur sent an email to legal counsel Karen McNeil titled: "URGENT Conservative campaign office communication with electors". Hawdur reported that returning officers also called to ask about the calls. Another email was sent from legal counsel to Ronnie Molnar, the deputy Chief Electoral Officer who in turn emailed a senior director: "This one is far more serious. They have actually disrupted the voting process."[7][20]
In response to the Guelph robocalls alone, 281 people called back Pierre Poutine's cellphone. A voice broadcasting expert contracted by Al Mathews of Elections Canada, estimated that at a typical one-percent call-back rate, the 281 call-backs indicated that many thousands of electors were affected, even considering that the nature of these calls would probably have resulted in a
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Mr Khadr help him stay on in Guantanamo. "The weather's nice [in Guantanamo]," the Canadian agent says. "No snow."
Later, a distraught Mr Khadr says "I lost my eyes. I lost my feet," referring to his battlefield injuries. "No, you still have your eyes, and your feet are still at the ends of your legs," the agent responds.
Nathan Whitling and Dennis Edney, Mr Khadr's lawyers are not claiming he was tortured during the interrogation. The mistreatment happened in the run-up to the interrogation. They said: "Guantanamo Bay authorities manipulated Omar's environment outside the interrogation room before Canadian interrogations to induce co-operation within the room."
Sleep deprivation is considered torture under international law and Mr Khadr was woken every three hours for 21 days before the interrogation. The former US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld wrote a memo explicitly allowing what he called "sleep adjustment," defined as "[adjusting] the sleeping times of the detainee... e.g. reversing sleep cycles from night to day."
Despite Mr Khadr's young age when captured and the evidence of mistreatment, Canada's Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, said he will not seek his return. Although Canadian officials say they were told by the US that Mr Khadr was being treated humanely, documents dating from 2003 and 2004 (when Mr Khadr was 17) indicate officials knew of mistreatment.
Lt-Cdr William Kuebler, Mr Khadr's US military lawyer, said: "What is being done to Omar Khadr right now rests squarely on the shoulders of Prime Minister Harper. There is very little question that if Canada demanded Mr Khadr's repatriation to face due process under Canadian law, that the US would heed that request."
* One of Osama bin Laden's former drivers told a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay yesterday that he was groped by a female interrogator – conduct that his lawyers say should prompt a judge to throw out statements he made to officials during his confinement.
Prosecutors deny the claims of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, arguing that the Yemeni has lied about details of his capture. He is due to face trial next week.
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 nowDr. M.G. Sheftall, professor of modern Japanese history at Shizuoka University and author of “Blossoms in the Wind: Human Legacies of the Kamikaze,” was in Honolulu last month for the dedication of a temporary exhibition about the Tokkō kamikaze suicide pilots aboard the battleship USS Missouri, the site of Japan’s surrender at the end of World War II. JBC sat down for an interview with Dr. Sheftall about the kamikaze phenomenon and what makes this exhibition unique.
So, what’s going on here?
You’ve witnessed something very historic, because the exhibit is the first about any kind of Japanese military activity in the modern era ever held outside of Japan with Japanese cooperation — in this case, with the Chiran Peace Museum on the kamikaze in southern Kyushu.
What makes the USS Missouri an especially relevant venue is that it is to my knowledge only one of two still-existing ships — the other being the USS Intrepid — that were actually hit by kamikaze during the war. The USS Missouri was hit on April 12, 1945, exactly 70 years ago.
There’s a feel-good aspect to this story — very hard to do when you’re talking about kamikaze attacks. The bomb on the plane that hit the Missouri did not detonate. The wreckage spilled onto the deck and amidst that was the pilot’s remains. When the crew was putting out the fire, the initial reaction had been to hose his remains off the deck. But the captain of the USS Missouri, William Callaghan, announced to the crew: “No, we’re going to give him a proper military burial. Now that he’s dead, he’s not the enemy anymore. He’s just another human being, like you and me, who died for his country.”
The next day the crew formed on deck to consign their fallen former enemy to the depths with full naval honors. They even made a Japanese flag shroud from old unused signal flags.
I think that’s a nice story. If there can be some recognition of humanity even in such circumstances, that shows hope for human beings in an otherwise insane and irrational situation dominated by hatred and fear.
How many ships were sunk in the kamikaze campaigns?
I believe they sank about 40 ships, damaged or sank about 200 ships altogether, and killed or wounded about 15,000 Allied servicemen, mostly U.S. Navy sailors. And close to 6,000 kamikaze, mostly aviation pilots, but also manned torpedoes and suicide motorboats, died.
Dispel some myths about the kamikaze.
First, about the term “kamikaze”: I generally use the Japanese term, Special Attack Forces, or Tokubetsu Kōgeki Tai, shortened to Tokkō. “Kamikaze” comes with a lot of baggage — negative imagery and, obviously, stereotypes, and a lot of tacky usage as a slang term. It’s synonymous with irrational insanity.
Now, the myths: One is that they were “brainwashed.” That was not true and not necessary. The world view, value system and psychology of any Japanese military man at the time was such that it wouldn’t take much mental or emotional preparation to get ready for a kamikaze mission. In many cases, guys were just told they were just getting assigned to Tokkō, say, from tomorrow. And aside from some special technical training, that would be all the preparation time given.
People were always chosen in large units, which leads to another myth — that they were all volunteers. I don’t even know if the term “volunteer” has any relevance in a 1944-45 Japanese military context.
They would gather personnel in unit groups and then an officer would say, depending on the knowledge level of the pilots, “You know how bad the war situation is going now,” or, if they were kids fresh out of pilot school, who have only heard good things about the war, he’d tell them how developments haven’t been to Japan’s advantage. And then they would ask people to take on these Tokkō missions, with everyone in full view of everyone else — their comrades-in-arms and, of course, the commanding officers.
They’d be asked to circle chits of paper, or take a step forward — when they’re already standing in tight ranks. Imagine the peer pressure and face-threat involved in that atmosphere of adolescent testosterone and fatalistic heroism and macho posturing. You’re standing in ranks with guys you’ve bled, sweated and wept with for the past six months to a year. By now you’ve made your primary identity as a man in uniform. If you were to give that up by refusing to “volunteer,” you’d suffer huge psychological injury. For a young Japanese man in uniform at the time, such a scenario must have promised a fate worse than death — without the luxury of a world view accommodating the possibility that refusing orders in such circumstances could be as or more courageous than following them.
Some of my Tokkō informants even reported feeling insulted about being asked to go through the rigmarole of ceremonies. Their thinking was, “I’m a pilot in His Majesty’s Army/Navy, how dare they consider the possibility that I might not want a Tokkō mission!”
Some might call this brainwashing, but if that is your criteria, then at this time everyone in the country was brainwashed and therefore the Tokkō were nothing unusual. There was not much difference in the preparedness to sacrifice between someone in or out of uniform in Japan at the time.
Especially after the end of the Battle of Okinawa, all military personnel were Tokkō and they didn’t even bother with the formality of “volunteering ceremonies” anymore. The understanding at all ranks and in both services was that all planes and pilots were now slated for Tokkō — if you’re a trained pilot, be ready for Tokkō.
That was actually related to the relative paucity of air defense efforts over Japanese cities. When Allied planes started making bombing raids in force and strength over Japan from fall 1944, the numbers of Japanese fighters engaging the B-29s fell off drastically after the first few months — almost to zero once the bombers started having fighter escorts after the fall of Iwo Jima. This was not because the Japanese military ran out of planes. Between the Japanese army and navy they had something like 6,000 planes at the time Japan’s surrender happened. They had been holding back those planes for Tokkō.
So they let the cities burn, basically, because the Japanese military looked at air defense against the B-29s and their fighter escorts as a waste of pilots and aircraft. Better to save them for Tokkō to use when the Americans invaded Kyushu and Kanto.
Another myth is that the kamikaze pilots only had enough fuel for one-way missions. Two reasons that’s wrong. One, especially true for army pilots insufficiently trained in over-water navigation, was they were often sent out to find targets — and couldn’t find them. If you did that only with enough fuel to reach the target area, you don’t incur any damage against the enemy, and you lose a pilot and the plane.
The other reason is that the bombs the planes carried were not particularly large. Thus, the damage a kamikaze plane could inflict on its target was greatly augmented by the fuel that it was carrying. It’s in effect a 4-ton Molotov cocktail. It would hit, the bomb would go off, and the fuel for the return trip turns into extra explosive charge — napalm, basically. It would spread fires far away from the point of impact, and wreak havoc on human flesh.
How has your reception in Hawaii been regarding this event?
Without exception, 100 percent positive. News coverage has included front-page coverage on April 10’s Honolulu Star-Advertiser, [and reports in] the Los Angeles Times, Stars and Stripes, The Japan Times, the Sankei Shimbun and some local Japanese newspapers.
We were also interviewed by the Japanese-language radio in Hawaii. The DJ didn’t dwell on Tokkō topics; it was more of a nostalgic travelogue about the charms of Kagoshima Prefecture, and Chiran in particular.
We’ve recently seen interference from the Japanese government in how historians have portrayed Japanese history. Also, foreign journalists critical of Japan in their coverage are being harassed. Has the Japanese government interfered?
No. We contacted the USS Missouri people and, recalling the Smithsonian Enola Gay exhibition fiasco — the one that included the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and which was delayed and reworked amid controversy — we all agreed to keep this under wraps until two weeks before opening, [so as not to] give anyone a chance to mount a counter-offensive. That included governments on both ends.
I think if the Japanese government had known, they would have tried to stop it in some way or another — one less thing to worry about in a diplomatic year with a lot of people thinking about the war and looking at an ostensibly unrepentant Japan askance, right? But everyone was caught by surprise by how positive the visitors and the news coverage have been. Even me. Initially, we feared negative public reaction. I was expecting more resistance from conservatives on both sides of the Pacific.
About two days before we departed for Hawaii, we were invited by the [Japanese] consul-general in Honolulu to a formal dinner at the consulate to be held on the day we arrived. They couldn’t really tell us to go back to the USS Missouri and change anything — for one thing they didn’t even know what was there, or about the tone of the exhibit — but they didn’t seem upset by the project itself. I didn’t get any sort of negative feeling at all from the consul. I think his mission was just to check us out and report back to headquarters.
Last question: What is the takeaway message from the Tokkō phenomenon?
The takeaway message from the phenomenon itself should be one of terror — to realize to what extremes the condition of total war is capable of driving humans psychologically. I want visitors to the exhibit to realize that when you have societies with modern industrial capacity and mass media resources at hand to control information and mobilize their respective populaces to join a shooting war, this is how crazy things can get. The human race cannot let that happen again.
As John F. Kennedy once said, “Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind.” The Chiran collection is an historically priceless time capsule from a world which humanity must not and cannot inhabit again.
Our species’ sick love affair with the phenomenon of total war is over. Period. To think otherwise — to plan and prepare for something like that again, in an era when our species shares the planet with some 16,000 nuclear warheads — is sheer madness.
The exhibition on the USS Missouri runs through November at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu. See www.nps.gov/valr. The full interview transcript will be online at Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus in a few days. Twitter @arudoudebito. Comments: [email protected]: This essay is meant to be less of a review and more of analysis of the show being examined. It contains plot spoilers for the Re:Zero anime.
So there’s a number of games floating out there that market themselves on their permadeath mechanics or ironman modes. A member of your team or party dies, you make a misjudgment that locks you into an end you didn’t want, or something otherwise unfortunate happens during your run. If he/she doesn’t want to start a new game, all the player can do in response is suck it up and plow forward. The appeal of these punishing features is a sense of engagement, a sense of challenge that’s absent in a system that would allow you to re-do a serious mistake. If death gives life meaning, then its threat despite your best efforts at the time makes the lives of protagonists and friendly NPCs that much more precious, when combined with a narrative that makes them likeable, relatable. Of course, permadeath mechanics and ironman modes aren’t appealing to everyone. Not everyone sits down to play a game so they can get stressed from harsh challenges. Some of them want to relax. Some of them want to feel heroic.
My excuse was story. I’m not going to make a game unnecessarily hard on myself, I says. It’ll get in the way of me enjoying the narrative, I says. There are those games though, like Dark Souls, where the difficulty of the challenge and the appreciation of the story is intended to be inseparable from each other. Every normal playthrough of Dark Souls functions as an ironman-style run, and in the process of dying and reviving over and over during one of them, I began to scrutinize why I played like a save scummer. I would characterize myself as one. I often returned back to moments in games just before I made what I perceived to be a grave error. Thing was, though, the mistakes I made in Dark Souls never ended with a “Game Over” screen. The game would acknowledge where you perceived that you failed, resurrect you somewhere, and carry on — with all the consequences your failure would realistically entail. I wasn’t so much being locked out of the game’s narrative as I was stumbling into a new narrative branch, one where, for example, I did let someone die. Out of multiple narrative possibilities, that possibility became my narrative. Those kinds of narratives always troubled me though, and as I sought to reset the run, it occurred to me that, like Re:Zero’s Subaru Natsuki, I also tend to roleplay.
For Subaru and I, roleplay is projection. I don’t roleplay dispassionately like some folks do when they come up with and act through different character archetypes that aren’t them in real-life, like an evil sorcerer or something. I doubt most people are deliberately malicious. That kind of diabolical play also isn’t me. I’m open to playing a wizard, but I’m not open to being dastardly or insidiously evil. I play like myself, or more precisely, I play an idealized version of myself. Through the knowledge of guides or the power of reloading a save, I get to set the terms of my game destiny in a way that most people can’t in real life.
Re:Zero takes that “roleplay is projection” dynamic and makes audience members like myself, through Subaru’s travails, contemplate why they play like save scummers. Subaru is blessed (and cursed) by a condition he refers to as “Return by Death.” Subaru is stuck in an Act, Stage, or Arc that’s grounded by a checkpoint. If Subaru doesn’t meet the stipulations needed to progress to the next Arc before he dies, he returns back to the most recent checkpoint. All progress affecting events after that checkpoint are reset to zero. So are all memories, with the exception of Subaru’s. The stipulations are hard to meet, and bad ends are easy to run into.
When the power of saving and reloading to an earlier checkpoint is flipped on its head from being this relatively quick and painless procedure (so long as you save often enough) to becoming extremely traumatic to unlock and access (and have no say in setting where), what compels or is compelling enough to people like Subaru to continue playing this dangerous game? It’s not just the frustration of re-doing an Arc over and over that’s traumatizing, which in the grand scheme of things, seems quite petty. It’s the experience of seeing his friends dying horribly and dying horribly himself that eats away at his will. Subaru might not have the ability to return back to his former world — or the ability to get himself killed for good and end his chronic spate of acute miseries — but he doesn’t have to play the game of thrones connected to all his suffering. He doesn’t have to continue protecting Emilia. He could, for instance, run away from it all. But despite all of these punishing experiences, he pushes and pushes and ultimately progresses forward.
Subaru wants to be a better version of himself. He wavers at times, especially in moments when the odds seem insurmountable and the trauma really begins to mount. But time and again, he either convinces himself or others convince him to continue. He wants to be more than the drifting waste of space that he admits he was in his old world, and more than the impotent waste of space that he often feels he is in his new one. He wants to protect everyone he cares about and ensure that they all reach a happy ending. He wants to realize his ideal: a hero.
While the more vain perks associated with heroism don’t quite appeal to me, to a certain extent, I can emphasize with Subaru’s desire to become his ideal. When I play RPGs, I do everything in my power to play in the way that I think is right. I mete out justice to people that I deem villainous, protect everyone that I care about, and always strive for what I interpret is the best of good ends. I wrote a Dark Souls fanfic at one point, out of frustration that the game forced me to kill a character that I sympathized with, that I believed didn’t deserve to die (and I was forced to slay myself, no less). I’m not claiming that Re: Zero is the Dark Souls of anime, but Dark Souls and Re: Zero have provided clarity in my reflections about why I engage with games the way I do. I’ve contemplated more than once why I’m otherwise uninterested in other kinds of roleplay, why I am repulsed by the idea of doing anything resembling an evil playthrough even if that means forgoing new narrative content. I claim to prioritize story, but in these games, what I actually prioritize is my kind of story. It is a narrative featuring the character that I project onto going through all the heroic motions she can to save the day.
It is this kind of narrative I want to realize that grants me the strength and resolve to make a difference in the game world, a difference that I have trouble working up the effort and fortitude to even imagine in the real one. I scum my way out of failure to achieve my ideal way of playing. I don’t have to sacrifice much to achieve my ideal end in a game, and I can always reload a save if I make a mistake. Subaru can do much the same if he ends up overlooking something, but it costs him something hellish. For all of his character flaws, of which there are many (and of which I see parts of in myself), he endures betrayal, torture, and the throes of death itself so he can achieve a happy end for everyone he cares about. For me anyway, who more than dabbles in his share of escapism, I found his desire to become a more idealized version of himself relatable, even if I find his current version less than completely likeable.
Advertisements“They felt the pain of Tyler,” he said.
Mr. Ravi, 20, wearing a dark suit over his slight frame, sat expressionless as the jury forewoman read the verdict on the first count, of invasion of privacy. But he seemed surprised when she pronounced him guilty on the next charge, of bias intimidation. His eyes popped and he quickly turned his head from the jury. As he left the courtroom in a swarm of television cameras, his mother clutching his arm, he looked straight ahead and said nothing.
The jury also found him guilty of lying to investigators, trying to influence a witness and tampering with evidence after he tried to cover up Twitter and text messages inviting others to join in the viewing.
Some of the charges carry penalties of 5 to 10 years in prison. Mr. Ravi has surrendered his passport; prosecutors said he could face possible deportation to his native India, but that decision would be left to immigration officials. Judge Glenn Berman set sentencing for May 21.
The case was a rare one in which almost none of the facts were in dispute. Mr. Ravi’s lawyers agreed that he had set up a webcam on his computer, and had then gone into a friend’s room and viewed Mr. Clementi kissing a man he met a few weeks earlier on a Web site for gay men. He sent Twitter and text messages urging others to watch when Mr. Clementi invited the man again two nights later, then deleted messages after Mr. Clementi killed himself.
That account had been established by a long trail of electronic evidence — from Twitter feeds and cellphone records, dormitory surveillance cameras, dining hall swipe cards and a “net flow” analysis showing when and how computers in the dormitory connected.
What the jury had to decide, and what set off debate outside as well as inside the courtroom, was what Mr. Ravi and Mr. Clementi were thinking.
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Had Mr. Ravi set up the webcam because he had a pretty good idea that he would see Mr. Clementi in an intimate moment? Had he targeted Mr. Clementi and the man he was with because they were gay? And had Mr. Clementi been in fear?
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Without Mr. Clementi to speak for himself, that last question was perhaps the most difficult to determine, and jurors struggled with it.
“That was the hardest because you really can’t get into someone’s head,” said one, Bruno Ferreira, as he left the court. The jury deliberated longest — for well more than an hour, he said — on the bias intimidation charge.
Mr. Ferreira said he ultimately voted guilty on the bias intimidation charge because Mr. Ravi had sent multiple Twitter messages about Mr. Clementi.
“They were being done twice, not just one day,” he said.
Another juror, Kashad Leverett, himself a student and a Twitter user, said he could relate to Mr. Ravi’s constant stream of Twitter and text messages.
But the defense’s insistence that Mr. Ravi had set up the webcam because he was afraid Mr. Clementi’s visitor would steal something, he said, rang hollow.
“If I knew someone was going to steal something from me, I would definitely take it with me,” Mr. Leverett said, adding, “Just from the fact of the second incident, it seemed that it was intentional.”
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The jury of seven women and five men deliberated for 13 hours over 3 days after 13 days of testimony.
Reflecting the difficulty of defining hate crimes, it had taken the judge more than an hour simply to instruct the jury on the questions they had to answer to reach a verdict.
The jury concluded that Mr. Ravi had not knowingly or purposely intimidated the men when he watched the first time, on Sept. 19, 2010.
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But it found him guilty of the charge because Mr. Clementi “reasonably believed” he had been made a target because he was gay.
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The prosecution had pointed out that Mr. Clementi had checked Mr. Ravi’s Twitter feed — where Mr. Ravi told others he had seen his roommate “kissing a dude” — 38 times in the days after the first webcam viewing. Records showed that Mr. Clementi had gone online to request a room change, and a resident assistant testified that Mr. Clementi had complained to him.
Mr. Clementi’s parents, Joe and Jane, attended the trial each day, sitting in the front row and showing little emotion.
After the verdict, Joe Clementi, the director of public works in the northern New Jersey town of Hawthorne, read a brief statement, saying the trial had been “painful for us, as it would be for any parent who must sit and listen to people talk about bad and inappropriate things that were done to their child.”
Mostly, he said, he wanted to deliver a message to middle- and high-school students.
“You’re going to meet a lot of people in your lifetime,” he said. “Some of these people you may not like. Just because you don’t like them doesn’t mean you have to work against them. When you see somebody doing something wrong, tell them: ‘That’s not right. Stop it.’ The change you want to see in the world begins with you.”
Mr. Clementi’s suicide came up only in passing during the trial. Still, the death defined the trial, turning what might have been a peeping Tom case or, as the resident assistant said, “a roommate issue” into something far more grave.
The testimony painted a picture of two college freshmen, both from top-performing high schools in well-off suburbs, who could not have been more different. Mr. Clementi was shy and awkward, an accomplished violinist who had only recently told his parents he was gay. Mr. Ravi was popular but boastful, a computer wizard and ultimate Frisbee player who communicated with friends constantly via Twitter, text message and iChat.
Mr. Ravi’s parents, who brought him here from India when he was young, sat vigil behind him each day, with a large group of friends, including several who had served as character witnesses for Mr. Ravi, testifying he was not biased against gay people.
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Mr. Ravi had rejected plea deals, because prosecutors would have required him to admit to bias intimidation. His lawyers said he simply did not believe he had committed a hate crime. They argued that he was “a kid” with little experience of homosexuality who had stumbled into a situation that scared him.
His lead lawyer, Steven Altman, made only a brief statement via e-mail following the verdict, saying “rest assured” he would appeal.
Gay rights advocates, who had used the example of Mr. Clementi’s suicide to push New Jersey to pass what is considered the nation’s toughest antibullying law, hailed the jury’s decision.
“This verdict sends the important message that a ‘kids will be kids’ defense is no excuse to bully another student,” said Steven Goldstein, the chairman of Garden State Equality.
Mr. Kaplan, the county prosecutor, rejected suggestions that Mr. Ravi would not have been on trial if Mr. Clementi had not killed himself. Even if he had not, he said, “under these facts, under this evidence, we would prosecute this case.”It’s always striking to see a tiny sliver of the New Moon. But you’ve probably never seen a sliver this tiny or a Moon this “new” before. This brand new image by astrophotographer extraordinaire Thierry Legault was taken this morning and is the youngest possible lunar crescent, with the “age” of the Moon at this instant being exactly zero — at the precise moment of the New Moon. The image was taken in full daylight at 07:14 UTC on July 8, 2013.
Normally it is just about impossible (and dangerous) to see this, as when the Moon is this “new,” the Moon is between the Earth and the Sun and it is so close to the Sun in our sky that it can’t be seen because of the Sun’s glare. Plus, the New Moon appears as an extremely thin crescent which is barely brighter than the blue sky. But Thierry has designed a special sunshade to prevent sunlight from entering the telescope (see it below).
Thierry says the irregularities and discontinuities seen in the edge of the crescent are caused by the relief at the edge of the lunar disk; i.e. mountains and craters on the Moon. Very cool!
The “New Moon” is defined as the instant when the Moon is at the same ecliptic longitude as the Sun. When we refer to the “age” of the Moon, it is the number of hours (or days) since New Moon.
From Thierry’s shooting site in Elancourt, France (a suburb of Paris), the angular separation between the Moon and the Sun was only 4.4° (nine solar diameters).
“At this very small separation, the crescent is extremely thin (a few arc seconds at maximum) and, above all, it is drowned in the solar glare, the blue sky being about 400 times brighter than the crescent itself in infrared (and probably more than 1000 times in visible light),” Thierry writes on his website. “In order to reduce the glare, the images have been taken in close infrared and a pierced screen, placed just in front of the telescope, prevents the sunlight from entering directly in the telescope.”
Thierry cautions anyone trying to see this with the naked eye. Basically, don’t try it.
“The very thin crescent of the New Moon cannot be observed visually whatever the instrument (naked eye, binoculars, telescope, etc),” he said. “Moreover, pointing a celestial object that close to the Sun is dangerous for the observer and his equipment if it is not performed under the control of an experienced astronomer and with the proper equipment.”
See more information at Thierry’s website. He also took another image of the New Moon at the exact moment back in 2010.
If you want to keep track of what the Moon will look like each night (or day!), Universe Today has a great app for that, our Phases of the Moon app, available for iOS or Android.How many jobs did the United States add last month?
It shouldn't be a hard question. But the answer depends on when you ask it.
Today's jobs report says the economy added 80,000 jobs in June. Subsequent monthly reports will fine-tune the number, as the Bureau of Labor Statistics collects further data and issues revisions.
But "revision" may sell short the actual yo-yo effect that often happens with the jobs number, which can swing by up to 100,000 jobs any given month. Just look at where we were one year ago.
When the June 2011 jobs report was released on July 8, 2011, we were told that the economy had added 18,000 jobs the previous month. It was a terrible number—the worst in nearly a year—that sparked a wave of political second-guessing and help tie up negotiations over the debt ceiling.
But between regular revisions and BLS structural changes, we now have a different picture of June 2011's actual gains. Finding out that employers added 66,000 more jobs than originally reported didn't retroactively transform the economy, but it's a heck of a lot better than the alternative.
This kind of tweaking, which gets very little media coverage, is among the three major reasons why the jobs report data misleads and confuses us the first Friday of every month. Of course, there's value in extensively covering today's report and looking at what it means in context. And once you can string a few months of more-accurate jobs data together, it's possible to pull out real takeaways. For example, it does seem clear that national hiring has hit a broad slowdown this summer.
Yet this jobs report—really, every jobs report—should be read with one key caveat: the White House's own mantra. "It is important not to read too much into any one monthly report," they warn every month.
And they're right.
Follow Dan on Twitter at @ddiamond.(Newser) – Our latest weapon in the battle against superbugs comes from... giant pandas? Apparently. Scientists have discovered a potent antibiotic called cathelicidin-AM in the animal's blood. It's released by immune cells there, and Chinese researchers now think it could be used to develop treatments for human diseases—including drug-resistant superbugs. Among their proof: Cathelicidin-AM took less than an hour to kill bacteria that other, more well-known antibiotics took more than six hours to destroy.
Explains the lead researcher of the substance, "It showed potential antimicrobial activities against a wide spectrum of microorganisms including bacteria and fungi, both standard and drug-resistant strains." Of course, there are just 1,600 giant pandas in the wild, and they're well known for being poor breeders. But we may not be forced to harvest the compound from natural sources: Scientists have been able to decode the genes and produce an artificial version of the antibiotic in a lab setting, the Telegraph reports. (Read more giant pandas stories.)It's the second time in little over a month that healthy trees have been illegally cut down in Vancouver's Dunbar neighbourhood.
The city says three healthy Douglas fir trees on the lot of a home under construction on West 38th Avenue were illegally cut down this weekend.
Cutting down mature trees, even on private property, outside of a home's footprint is illegal without a permit in Vancouver.
The developer would not talk to the CBC, but the city says the developer didn't have a permit and could now face a court-ordered fine worth thousands of dollars.
Fines aren't a deterrent
The fines, however, do little to deter people who are already spending millions on a property, says real estate agent Andrew Hasman. He says some homes with trees are selling for less, so developers are getting rid of them.
It's the second time in little over a month that healthy trees have been illegally cut down in Vancouver's Dunbar neighbourhood. (Kiran Dhillon/CBC)
"Those trees may provide a lot of shade, may dump a lot of needles," he says. "If they can remove that tree, they can add tremendous value."
Hassman says he's seen some properties go for 10 per cent less than what they're worth because of the trees on the lot.
But the city and enraged Dunbar residents say that's not a good enough reason to cut trees.
"This is the wildlife around here," says one neighbour, Nola Frost. "We're in a city, and it's so beautiful and it's being destroyed."
Last week, the city said it is considering how to increase penalties for those who cut down trees on their property illegally. This comes in reaction to a "chainsaw massacre" of six trees — five of which were old growth — on a Dunbar property at the corner of West 37th Avenue and Collingwood Street.Best Ways to Eat on Maui
If you are reading this you either made it or are planning to make it into paradise. Lucky you. Lucky us, because thanks to the generosity of my in-laws, this is the fifth time we’ve been here. There are a lot of fun activities to enjoy or even hurt yourself, but because this is a food blog, let’s talk food.
The first time we visited I was a bit paranoid, because Maui is not cheap and I wanted to avoid tourist traps. Also please keep in mind that I am not a professional food critic and in many cases my family disagreed with me, so this is a very personal guide. On the other hand, I am known to have a good tasting palate (thanks to my coffee tasting practice) and I am very demanding when it comes to providing quality for the price. In my case it is connected with my passion for finding and providing high quality coffee and I demand the same from others. Ok, sometimes I can be a jerk about this. I understand that many people go to Maui and are ready to splurge, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing, etc. I am listing only places we visited and experienced. There are a few we really wanted to try, but did not have the chance yet, Like the Shark Pit food truck. I love this chef’s mission statement. Perhaps next time.
Pineapple from a street vendor – anywhere
This is the best thing you can do to feed your foodie. The “Maui Gold” pineapples are amazing. You will see this pineapple at “Pineapple Express” stands all over Maui, in grocery stores, the airport but they are always green and not “gold”. This is why you should do a pineapple hunt! Find a street vendor. We stopped at several different ones, usually just a card table set out on the roadside in front of their house with a pile of pineapples other fruit and a small box for honor system payment. This year we saw them 1 for $2/3 or 3 for $5. Be sure to choose carefully – pick them up, look them over, sniff and pull a leaf to check for ripeness (the leaf should pull out easily if it’s ripe). These vendors appear and disappear so it’s best to have a designated lookout while you’re driving, or ask someone
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understandable to see such responses to the visible usurpation being displayed by the RNC apparatus writ large. However, we cannot defeat the GOPe UniParty objectives by allowing them to control the battle-space. We must elevate our thinking, elevate our approach and remain committed to a much larger objective.
When the MSM Corporate Media-Machine says, Trump is destroying the RNC/GOPe party apparatus, don’t go on defense; instead say: Yeah, so – it needs to be torn down.
When the pearl-clutching RINO class of cocktail republicans decry the vulgarian uprising, don’t defend it, put it right back in their face. We vulgarians are the majority, deal with it.
When the ruling class want to dictate the terms of national discourse, refute them; don’t apologize for your terms being 180° divergent from their desired approach. This is an insurgency.
We are part of the largest political upheaval in the history of modern politics. Embrace this fact. Embrace each victory. Break the cycle of “battered conservative syndrome“, and feel empowered by your position in the common sense majority.
The non-Trump coalition will have a much harder time getting to the 1237 delegates they need to ‘block trump’, than we will getting the 1237 delegates we need to destroy them. They are in the minority.
Recently Speaker Paul Ryan was talking to the House of Representatives leadership when he was quoted as saying:
“we are the last line of defense to stop Donald Trump, from fundamentally destroying the modern republican [conservative] party”.
Think about this carefully. Speaker Ryan is essentially confirming his intention to usurp the will of the larger electorate in order to protect their cloistered Vichy Republican power and position at the trough.
We’ve got these bastards right where we want them, out in the open. Now is not the time to bail out of the fight or party.
Have Tar – Need Feathers.
AdvertisementsNext year's technical regulations overhaul is the most comprehensive since the move to hybrid power-units in 2014, making the timing of when to begin focusing on 2017 a particularly sensitive issue.
Force India was one of the few teams in 2013 decided to begin work early on its 2014 car, thereby limiting work on that year's VJM06.
With a decision likely to be made in the coming weeks, Force India deputy team principal Robert Fernley has full faith in his team to take the best judgement on when to shift its focus.
“I think our technical team is experienced enough to determine when the switchover is,” he said to Motorsport.com. “It will be sooner rather than later.”
“[But] I think there’s still more to come out of this [year's] car as it is.
“I think that’s what we have been working on, but 2017 is another opportunity for us, and we have got to make sure we take that with both hands."
Force India achieved its best constructors’ result in 2015 by finishing fifth, and while targeting fourth would be a natural progression, Fernley thinks consolidating fifth will be key amid tough competition.
“First priority is to retain fifth [which is] a minimum, we will never stop racing,” he said.
“We should never underestimate the quality of teams like Williams who are ahead of us, so it will hard [to attain fourth]. But of course we will give the best shot we can.”
Underlying pace strong
By virtue of Sergio Perez’s podium in Monaco, the Silverstone-based team has clawed its way back to fifth in the constructors' after having started the season behind Toro Rosso and Haas.
And Fernley reckons Force India has now found its natural place in the pecking order after suffering bad luck in the first few races of the new campaign.
“I think we had the pace at the beginning of the season, the problem we had was that we were just at the wrong place at the wrong time," said Fernley.
“[In the] first four races, two of the races we had both cars out on the first lap and if you position things with red flags or safety cars, that has done the most damage, we didn’t get the chance to do even better.
“Barcelona was little bit of turnaround with the upgrades coming in, but the car was good for first four races, we were just not being able to capitalise."
He added: “I think what you saw in Monaco is the optimisation of the Barcelona package. We have been lucky to get one car in the points even though in some cases we damaged ourselves.
“And to get both cars in points and score a significant number in Monaco and to get back into fifth, which is where we wanted to start from, I think we can push from now on and see what we can do through the whole season."
Interview by Jonathan NobleAnd while there's no obvious Turnbull-style challenger to the throne just yet, Abbott is clearly trying to set himself up as the sensible, firm-but-fair alternative to the man that can currently do no right. He's been calling for greater transparency and democracy in the NSW Liberals (which, conveniently, would also weaken Turnbull's local support base while bolstering his own) and apologising for not supporting the Malaysian Solution proposed by the Gillard government when he was leader of the opposition. And hey, who doesn't love a good redemption story?
Abbott's not popular enough to be reinstated as yet, but after six months of Turnbull failing to get anything through the impossible new Parliament created by his double dissolution there are going to be even more backbenchers eager to buy into the delusional belief that they would have romped into a greater majority victory if only they'd kept good old Tony at the helm. So the plebiscite will be perfect timing.
The majority of the Coalition - or, more accurately, less than half of the Liberals but almost all of the Nationals - oppose same sex marriage. And that group of Liberals are overwhelming folks that a) supported Abbott and b) do not much care for Turnbull. Indeed, among their number are those who have been perfectly happy to indicate that they have no intention of respecting the result of the plebiscite.
And, since plebiscites are non-binding, MPs and senators are under no obligation to even acknowledge the result of the vote, beyond out of respect for the leadership of their party.
Those same people, however, are also among the the folks who've been most outspokenly critical of their leader in recent times. Abbott loyalist Eric Abetz has been outspoken about the government's terrible election result, while Cory Bernardi is planning to reintroduce doomed legislation to water down the Racial Discrimination Act, despite the Prime Minister insisting that it won't get up.Draft mode is now here! Vainglory is many players’ first experience with the MOBA genre, which also means that this is their first time using draft mode. For others, it may be their first time using draft mode in a 3v3 style MOBA. We at Broken Myth are excited to present a drafting guide to help prepare everyone for this big change! As an added bonus, we’ve also made sure to cover the most common team comp archetypes.
For those of you who don’t know me, I’m fedmattisgg. I have been playing different MOBAs competitively over the course of six years and have served as a head analyst/coach in the semi-pro League of Legends scene. Over the course of my gaming career, the draft phase has become one of my specialties. My objective is to impart as much of my knowledge to you as possible, with the remainder being learned through your own firsthand experience.
To help this guide remain relevant and timeless, it has been written to not be specific to any particular meta. Additionally, this guide will be focused on ranked queue – where you do not know the identities of your opponents. Tournament strategy is a different animal and will be covered in a separate guide.
Key Terms and Phrases:
Flex Pick A flex pick is exactly what it sounds like: a hero that is flexible with which roles can be played. Flex picks are very strong in a draft because they can throw your opponents off-guard. A hero that is equally as strong in lane as they are in the jungle can put a lot of pressure on the opponents decisions and strategies. As an example, Glaive can be played as a laner, a jungler, or even as a roamer. This can create uncertainty for opponents and make it difficult for them to react. For example, if your opponents assume you’ll be running Glaive in lane and pick a good lane counter for him, you could simply place Glaive in the jungle instead and use it as an opportunity to pick a counter to their laner. Comfort Pick Comfort picks are heroes in the game that you and/or your teammates are comfortable playing. These are your strongest heroes, the ones you have played and practiced the most. Comfort picks are very important in the draft phase because you know the strengths and weaknesses of your hero in a large variety of situations and against a large variety of opponents. This allows you to play smarter, even in tough circumstances. Priority Pick/Ban For purposes of ranked queue, priority picks and bans are just another name for OP – “overpowered” – heroes. For the most part, these consist of the really strong meta picks; the heroes that have to be taken away in the ban phase or the heroes that have to be picked when left open. These picks or bans are simply a priority. They can also be picks that “make or break” certain team comps or players. Luxury Pick Luxury picks are when it’s your turn to select two heroes – often contested picks – and you’re able to lock in a powerful hero combo as the foundation of your team comp. Oftentimes this synergistic double pick can be used as a counter to your opponents’ pick(s). Vulnerability Ban Some players just have that one hero that is just the bane of their existence. For whatever reason, they just can’t seem to ever do well against this hero or it is just by far the one they have the most trouble with. A vulnerability ban is dedicated to taking away this hero specifically, so that you (or your teammate) does not need to deal with hit. However, it comes with great cost because it also takes away the option of a priority or “top of the meta” ban. Power Spike Different heroes hit “power spikes” at different points in the game when they level up crucial skills or pick up certain items which make them much stronger. Generally speaking, you can categorize a hero’s power spike into early, mid, or late-game, but power spikes can come earlier or later depending on the pace of the game. Knowing when different heroes hit power spikes can be crucial for a good draft; good comps need to be cohesive, not just made of strong picks. For example, if you pick two heroes who are are strong in the early-game and one hero who is strong in the late-game, your power spikes will be out of sync and make it difficult to have a strong presence at either phase of the game.
If you’re experienced with drafting, you may have noticed that I did not include target bans or steals. For the purposes of this article, we are assuming that our opponents are completely unknown. If you have the luxury of sniping someone in ranked queue, then it is definitely a strong option to target ban or steal that hero away to prevent that player from getting their best power pick.
Now that we have some important key phrases down, we can start going over some strategies.
Step 1: Assessing Your Team
The absolute first thing you need to do before even worrying about the draft phase is finding out who and how your teammates play. Getting one of the most overpowered compositions in the game is great, but could be a bad idea if your teammates are playing roles they aren’t used to. While it is not essential that everyone always play the same role, it is important to know your teammates’ capabilities. Make sure that each of you understand each others’ hero pools and preferred roles so that you can draft effectively.
Voice communication is highly encouraged, as it will greatly increase your drafting effectiveness! My best advice if you are not using voice is to talk about these strategies before queuing up, so that you have a generic idea of what your team wants to do. From there, use the “thumbs up” option and role indicator to try to communicate which strategies you are using.
Reminder: don’t forget you can trade heroes once the draft is over, so it’s very possible you may end up picking a hero for one of your teammates and vice versa.
Step 2: The Bans and First Round Draft
Important drafting principles
While still maintaining a cohesive team comp of your own, attack your opponents’ strategy whenever possible. Your picks should usually be aimed at countering your opponent, even when not explicitly stated.
For the most part, it is nearly impossible to stop your opponent from getting a priority pick, and this is not something to worry about. When that happens, it is your opportunity to manage the situation and turn things back in your favor – competitive teams do this all the time. Priority picks are much stronger when they have a proper composition, and you can try to prevent them from making that happen. Additionally, some priority picks have strong counters which you can draft to shut down a priority pick. One way or another, when your opponent obtains a priority pick, the draft gives you some control over how strong that pick will be.
No strategy is perfect. All of these strategies have pros and cons. They are here to give you some basic ideas and concepts that can be used when drafting. Use the ones you like the best or have the most success with. ANY of them can work. However, it is important to know the strong and weak points of your approach.
Strategies for First Ban/Pick
The general strategy is to leverage your tempo, either keeping your opponents guessing and forcing them to react.
Flex picks are strongest at this part of the drafting phase
This is your best opportunity to guarantee a priority pick.
Priority Ban (Roam) | Priority Pick (Roam) Pros: Forces your opponents onto second-tier roam picks. Gives very little competitive insight to help your opponents with their drafting strategy – roam picks often don’t point to a direct style of team composition. Allows you to stall out the drafting phase to get a better feel for what your opponent wants to run. Cons: Allows your opponent to get strong luxury picks (remember what I said above). While stealing away the good roam heroes can force your opponent onto a less favorable pick, they are generally not the powerhouses of compositions. A team can be very strong with the combination of a good jungler and laner who mesh well. This is one of the most popular strategies in competitive play when first-picking. At most points in the meta, there are usually two really strong roam picks, with the remaining options not as favorable. The strategy here is to ban one of the strongest roamers and pick the other one. Priority Ban | Flex Pick Pros: Flex picks usually don’t give your opponents much insight into your drafting strategy. Since flex picks can be shifted to fit multiple roles, they can be a method of preemptively countering your opponent. The priority ban limits your opponents’ options for luxury picks. Cons: While flex picks are very strong in draft, they can also lead to your own downfall. The biggest mistake that teams make when using flex picks is that they don’t line up a good comp around it. You must be aware that you need an overarching theme for your team comp, not just strong picks. For example, Glaive is a great flex pick and has different match up strengths in each role. Even if the optimal spot for him is in the jungle, there may not be any laners available that complement a Glaive duo jungle pair.
Is someone on your team good with strong flex pick hero? A good strategy is to ban an strong meta pick and then pick a hero that can effectively play multiple roles. Vulnerability Ban | Priority Comfort Pick Pros: Your teammate gets their favorite comfort pick and you remove their least favorite opposition from the picture. This puts your teammate is a great position to have a massive impact for your team. If it turns out that this pick happens to be the crux of a desired team composition, this is an important victory. Locking in a priority pick prevents your opponents from getting it. Cons: By revealing a priority pick so early, it may make you susceptible to other counter picks. By locking in a lane or jungle carry first, it can signal to your opponents what you might be intending for a team composition or draft strategy, allowing them to craft a counter strategy. This strategy is for scenarios where you or one of your teammates is fantastic with an in-meta hero, but it is a highly contested priority pick. To complicate matters further, there’s one opposing hero that almost always makes their life a nightmare. This strategy revolves around getting a specific hero for a specific member at all costs and banning out that teammate’s vulnerability. Priority or Vulnerability Ban | Priority Pick Pros: Simply put, you can get a really strong meta pick (possibly the strongest), prevent your opponents from having it, and then force your opponent to deal with it.
Cons: As mentioned earlier in the guide, having a top priority pick doesn’t guarantee success – it usually requires a synergistic team comp. After your priority pick, your opponents have two picks they can use to steal away key heroes you might need for a good team comp.
The main point of this simple strategy is to steal a very strong meta pick from the other team. The ban is flexible, depending on what you want to prevent the opposition from having.
Strategies for Second Ban/Double-Pick
The general strategy is to use your double pick to either counter your opponent or establish a strong foundation for your team comp – maybe both.
establish a strong foundation for your team comp – maybe both. Do your best to force your opponent to react to your picks rather than having them proceed as planned.
If the other team first-picks a hero that is not flexible – i.e. a hero who is always played in a certain role – do not fear another hero of that same role may be taken away. As an example, if your opponent first-picks a roamer, you could safely pick your jungle and lane and save your roam pick for last without worrying that the other team will take it.
Flex picks are not as effective because you only have one pick left to flex, which generally does not throw a big curve ball for the other team.
Priority Ban | Double Luxury Pick Pros: Prevents your opponent from getting a strong priority pick Enables you to secure a strong team composition. Certain combination of lane and jungle heroes can make any composition strong. Cons: You reveal your composition and purpose in the first round. The opposing team can respond by selecting viable counters. Probably the most popular strategy when second pick. The idea of this strategy is to priority ban one of the strongest heroes of the meta and pick two heroes that have great synergy, thus forming the core of your team comp. Priority Ban | Roam + Priority Pick Pros: In contrast to the strategy above, by picking a roam instead of two carries, you don’t completely reveal your composition. By saving a jungle or lane pick for last, it gives your team one last opportunity to counter your opponents once they have chosen all three of their heroes. Cons: You give your opponents more room for luxury picks, possibly stealing away one of the heroes that you could have used for your own team comp. You may unintentionally give your opponents the freedom to make a ideal team composition. The idea of this strategy is very similar to the first. Ban away a very strong meta hero, but this time pick up your roam and either lane or jungle pick. Vulnerability Ban | Double Luxury Pick Pros: Great for bringing out specific compositions. Banning out a pick that causes a lot of problems in lane or is the bane of a certain jungle combo can help magnify this further. Cons: In spite of your ban, you still give a lot of room for your opponents to select good counter picks. This is my personal favorite strategy. Ban out the pick that your team absolutely hates the most and has the lowest success against. From there, pick two very well-rounded heroes and create a solid foundation for your team. This is also a great way to counter the enemy team when they first-pick a strong hero.
Step 3: Rounding Out the Composition
At this point you are now entering the second round of draft. Specific examples cannot realistically be provided because they are dependent on both your picks and your opponents. However, both teams at this point will have the needed information to effectively round out their composition as planned or counter their opponents.
First Pick – Round Two
If you were first pick and choose an option that revolved around strong neutral picks or flex picks, now is the time to consider the best way to counter the opponents’ team with what you know. Try to be proactive and predict what you think your opponents might pick. Weigh each option quickly and determine what additional heroes best suit that particular situation.
Remember: make sure your team is balanced! It is not enough to JUST pick counters! Ensure that your team still has a main theme and complementary power spikes. If you picked a strategy which revolves around a certain hero or player, make sure that your next picks compliment that player. As stated before, strong heroes become even stronger when they have a synergistic composition around them.
Second Pick – Round Two
Second pick isn’t all that different from first pick, with the exception that by this point you have seen the entire enemy team. If your last pick is a roamer, make sure that you pick a roam hero that specifically has synergy with either your laner or your jungler. Try your best to construct that common theme between your heroes. Don’t just pick a certain roam hero because it the only “conventional” pick left! There are tons of heroes out there that don’t “normally” roam, but make great roam heroes for certain compositions (think Koshka).
If you chose to pick your roamer and either your laner or jungler, make a pick that you guys are most comfortable with as a team. If you are uncomfortable sending Vox against a Celeste, try picking a different laner or flex as necessary.
Remember: you know their entire team! Nothing will change for them. Counter them as necessary!
Once again, do not forget that when the draft is over you can trade picks (and roles) with your teammates.
Team Comp Archetypes
Now that you are familiar with drafting strategies, it is now time to get a little bit more advanced. We’ve assembled the Sinister Seven, or the seven most common and effective team composition styles in Vainglory. Each has a clear theme and is independent of the heroes in the meta. Use this list as a resource to help carve out your team comps given the pick and ban strategies you are using. We will not be going over in-game strategies on how to use these comps, but rather provide you with a simple description. These are not the only team composition styles that exist, but are simply the ones that are most prevalent throughout the game. Feel free to experiment with your team!
These styles will likely persist throughout the existence of Vainglory and can be formed using many different combinations of heroes. Utilizing these compositions directly in the draft phase is much more advanced and can take practice mastering; however, it drastically improves your drafting strengths when implemented. Also, many of these styles might involve the same or similar heroes, allowing these compositions to be flexed around during the draft phase. In fact, some hero combinations can even fall under more than one style of play.
Wombo Combo Playstyle(s): Late mid- to late-game (passive)
Strength(s): Synergy, AOE, burst
Weakness(es): Early-game aggression, poke, engage, opportunity
Difficulty (1-10): 10 This style of composition revolves around picking massive AOE heroes that can chain certain abilities together to create a massive combo. Wombo combos are often fairly difficult to pull off because they require a near perfect setup and timing. Usually this involves finding optimal engages, not falling behind early, enemies standing in optimal places, etc. However, wombo combos generally do not require much gold to pull off because the combo itself generates the majority of the damage, not necessarily how well built any particular hero is. That being said, it is easy to fall behind when playing this comp, despite its strength in team fights. Death Ball Playstyle: Late mid- to late-game (aggressive)
Strength(s): Burst, damage, late-game objective pressure
Weakness(es): Burst, early-game aggression, pick off
Difficulty (1-10): 8 This composition has gone through many names, such as the buff comp and the ticking time bomb. This composition is directly focused on buffing up one or two heroes on your team to greatly increase their damage capabilities. Teams have used this comp to make a specific hero completely blow up the enemy team, seemingly on his own. It can turn a passive, backline laner, into an aggressive, front line wrecking ball. While one particular hero’s damage may drastically increase, it does not necessarily increase their survivability. Therefore, picking off any heroes in this comp, or bursting them down, can make this comp nearly useless. This comp also has a fairly long ramp up time, so early-game aggression can take counter this style of play. This comp is fairly difficult to pull off. One Man Army Playstyle(s): Mid- to late-game (aggressive)
Strength(s): Durability, extended fights, carry pressure
Weakness(es): Pick off, silence (with burst), kite
Difficulty (1-10): 5 As a twist on Death Ball, instead of pumping up the carry with damage buffs, the point is to keep the carry alive for as long as possible, letting their high base damage do the work. This composition is generally run with a bruiser style hero that excels in extended team fights and is great at pressuring squishy carries. This comp typically hits its power spike in the mid- and early late-game and is fairly easy to pull off, but can be kited and picked off fairly easily. Double Damage Threat Playstyle(s): Varying (very aggressive)
Strength(s): Tank buster, high DPS, objective pressure, jungle/rotation pressure
Weakness(es): Pick off, hard CC, engage, dive, burst
Difficulty (1-10): 3 This is the easiest style to pull off. While this comp has a clear theme, it doesn’t necessarily require synergistic heroes. This comp must have two high squishy damage threats to be considered double threat. The idea is that both the jungler and the laner are synonymous threats, which makes it difficult to decide which one to focus. However, coordinated engagements and dives can lead to an easy removal of one of these threats, which can make the comp fall apart. That being said, a strong showing in the early game or other relative power spiking moment can lead to taking over the game. Focus Comp Playstyle(s): Varying (very aggressive)
Strengths: Lockdown, carry pressure, burst, single target, chase
Weakness: Engage, hard CC, fast heroes, tanks
Difficulty (1-10): 5 This comp also has multiple names, most commonly known as the dive comp. This composition is strong at picking off individuals or just killing a priority target. When running this comp, your heroes should specialize in single target crowd control and bursting down the desired target. It is also strong at quickly and efficiently diving turrets. This composition requires good communication and team focus, but is otherwise easy to pull off. Poke Comp Playstyle(s): Mid-game (very passive)
Strengths: Poke, disengage, objective control, jungle control, rotation pressure
Weakness(es): Dive, engage, tanks, lock down, burst
Difficulty (1-10): 9 This composition functions around poking the enemy team with multiple heroes. This comp usually lacks engage, but instead relies on shoving opponents away from objectives via poke damage before the fight even starts. This can be one of the most deadly styles in the game because you essentially cause your opponent to “bleed out.” However, these compositions are countered fairly hard by aggressive gameplay with good engage. This is one of the hardest styles to pull off successfully. Kite Comp Playstyle(s): Varying (passive to aggressive)
Strength(s): Kiting, extended team fights, tank busting, chase, melee heroes
Weakness(es): Lockdown, chase, ranged Heroes, dive
Difficulty (1-10): 8 This composition is mainly made up of slippery heroes. Some heroes are strong at extending out fights and dealing lots of damage over time, while still remaining out of the enemy’s grasp. Generally, this style is good at killing off and kiting tanks, specifically melee tanks. However, opponents with good crowd control and dive/chase can prevent this comp from kiting successfully. This style is fairly hard to pull off because it relies on the skill of your teammates rather than simply the coordination. However, this composition can be one of the strongest when functioning correctly.
That wraps up our guide to drafting strategies. Keep in mind that these are simply guidelines. They are not meant to be set in stone. Feel free to tweak and experiment with them. Hopefully, this guide will help prepare those newer to draft mode and stimulate the minds of those who have experienced it. We hope to see all of you out there wreaking havoc in the Fold with the new draft mode!
Have any questions, comments or concerns? Leave your comments below.
— I’m Matt and when I’m fed, it’s GG.The British poet Simon Armitage has seen off an international field to be chosen as Oxford’s latest professor of poetry.
Speaking to the Guardian after the announcement, Armitage said he was “delighted and very excited and suitably daunted as well”.
“It’s been such a long process,” he said. “In the time it’s taken we’ve had a general election, Sepp Blatter has come and gone and come again, and we’ve nearly got a new leader of the Labour party.”
He said he would try to give students an insight into “what is occasionally quite a muddy world, and a muddy art form, remembering that the audience are primarily students, and not to see it as a platform for professorial grandstanding”.
“For me, it’s a chance to say something a little bit more contemporary,” he said. “Often it’s been professors talking about previous generations. I feel as if I’d like to bring thing up to date. To look at poetry today, in dialogue with the poetry of the past.”
The award-winning author of more than 12 collections of poetry, Armitage has been hailed by fellow poet Sean O’Brien as “the first poet of serious artistic intent since Philip Larkin to have achieved popularity”. Combining linguistic inventiveness, streetwise flair and contemporary subjects, he has reached an audience far beyond the literary ghetto with poems, novels, translations of medieval verse and scripts for radio and television.
The poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, welcomed the announcement, calling Armitage “a fine, vocational poet and a brilliant communicator for the modern age who never forgets the roots and ancestry of poetry”.
“Oxford is lucky to have gained his time and commitment to this post and should prepare itself to be shook, rattled and rolled,” she said.
Five candidates were competing for the position, a post second only in prestige to the poet laureate which was first established in 1708. Candidates “of sufficient distinction to be able to fulfil the duties of the post” – which include a lecture a term – must assemble nominations from at least 50 Oxford graduates.
Armitage was joined on the shortlist by the Nigerian playwright and poet Wole Soyinka, the American AE Stallings – the only woman in the running for a position which has been held by men for all but two weeks of the last 300 years – Ian Gregson and Seán Haldane. Armitage received 1,221 of the 3,340 votes cast, with Wole Soyinka in second place on 920 just ahead of AE Stallings on 918.
Armitage was backed by 58 names, including John Carey and Melvyn Bragg. Bragg had previously supported Soyinka, but later publicly switched his allegiance to Armitage, telling the Sunday Times of his concerns that the 80-year-old might not “bother to come to Oxford” if he were to win. Soyinka hit back, saying: “How curious that anyone would even speculate that I would allow busy and committed people – friends, colleagues and total strangers – to waste their time nominating and campaigning on my behalf for such a prestigious position if I were not serious about contesting.”
Speaking to the Guardian after the announcement, Bragg said he was “delighted for him, and for Oxford, and for poetry”.
“This is one of the few posts in this country which recognises the value of poetry on a national scale,” Bragg said, “even though it comes from just one university. It has become a post that’s nationally recognised, and we should applaud recognition of poetry on this scale.” Armitage is “a very fine poet”, Bragg continued, who “has a direct connection with a very large, young audience who like poetry, and feel he speaks to them. And I feel he’ll take it very seriously, and be available for undergraduates,” he said.
Bragg added that he backed Soyinka initially because he wasn’t aware of Armitage’s candidacy. “As soon as I registered that, I changed my mind,” he explained. “And one of the things you learn at university is that when you think about things, you are allowed to change your mind.”
The election is not the first race for the professorship to have been dogged by scandal: in 2009, Ruth Padel was elected by Oxford graduates to the post, but remained in position for less than two weeks, resigning in the wake of charges that she had leaked to journalists the allegations of sexual harassment which had been made against her rival, the St Lucian writer Derek Walcott.
The first ever professor of poetry at the university was Joseph Trapp, in 1708, with names including Matthew Arnold, Seamus Heaney, WH Auden and Robert Graves also filling the role. English poet Geoffrey Hill is the current incumbent, and will step down at the end of this academic term.
In a statement provided by Armitage laying out his hopes for the professorship, the poet and translator of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight said he had decided to run because “after so many years in the field, I feel I have plenty to say on the subject and a desire to talk and write about” poetry.
Simon Armitage: making poetry pay | Aida Edemariam Read more
He would, he said, use the platform “to discuss the situation of poetry and poets in the 21st century, to address the obstacles and opportunities brought about by changes in education, changes in reading habits, the internet, poetry’s decreasing ‘market share’, poetry’s relationship with the civilian world and the (alleged) long, lingering death of the book”.
And he would, he ended, be “greatly excited and deeply honoured” if Oxford graduates “saw fit to appoint a self-schooled poet who views poetry from a hill above a Yorkshire village”.
“A former Oxford professor of poetry, Robert Graves, once described poetry as a continual, lifelong apprenticeship, and to that end it would be an adventure and an education,” said Armitage, who has held the role of professor of poetry at Sheffield University since 2011.
In his 2013 poem The Unthinkable, Armitage imagines a “huge purple door” washing up in a bay, “its paintwork blistered and peeled from weeks at sea”. The poem ends with a glimpse of an unnamed “non-swimmer”, “last seen sailing out, / riding the current and rounding the point in a small boat / with tell-tale flashes of almost certainly purple paint”. Students at Oxford university can look forward to seeing if their new professor of poetry sinks or swims later this year.Ah, the 1990s were a simpler time, weren't they?
Life was easier, the toughest choice you had to make was which Spice Girl you liked the most; Turkey Twizzlers were a dietary staple and the Freddo was re-launched in 1994, after a 15-year break. They were good times. Optimistic times. In fact, we had so little to worry about we felt the need to burden ourselves with little robo-pets.
The Tamagotchi, which was released in 1996, was the ideal pet for anyone who wanted to be bossed around by a bit of plastic - which turned out to be a lot of us.
I remember my older brother getting one of these for his birthday and I cried for 36 hours straight. until my mum relented and got me one too.
via GIPHY
I'm going to assume you're all familiar with the concept of a Tamagotchi - it was a little egg-shaped device that you had to 'feed' and 'clean up' after. It was like a cyber goldfish, people went wild for them; they sold out across the world. In fact, there was that one kid in every school who collected the full set of them, even though they were basically all the same.
What was it about this wonderful little things that catapulted them top the top of every kid's wish list?
Peter Jenkinson, editor of Toyologist told LADbible: "It was the first truly'real time' toy - you didn't need to make IT do stuff, it did stuff that you then had to react to. It was always on, always with you, you had little/no control over it and it was without doubt the first truly virtual pet that behaved like it had its own personality/destiny. In a way, a very early example of how AI might pan out.
"It was ahead of its time and although tech has evolved hugely this past two decades our love of nostalgia hasn't diminished, in fact, there is an upsurge of nostalgia everywhere - boardgames, beards, cereal cafes bringing back favourites, retro merchandise and gifting all over the place, old-films getting CGI updates, bloody hell even Mary Poppins is being upgraded!"
Toy fads come and go, but the Tamagotchi will always forever hold a place in the hearts of millions of 90s kids.
Peter continued: "At its heart Tamagotchi hasn't really dated has it? Pretty much everyone remembers what happened to their Tamagotchi or it being around, stealing their siblings - it really is only natural now that adults will tap into that nostalgia again."
Fans who are hoping for a trip down memory lane can now get their paws on a re-released Original Tamagotchi. AND I NEED ONE.
Credit: PA
I'm guessing this is going to be a bit like when Pokémon Go came out and we all reverted to kids again.
They're currently only available in Japan and are retailing for around 2,000 yen (£14) but for such a low price, its tempting to just get one shipped over, isn't it?
If you don't want to pay the import costs on the retro toy,
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? And what does that mean for everything else?
The questions have become relentless and fundamental ones. Why was Negredo left out? Why, knowing that he was leaving, did Nuno drop Jaume Domenech for his final game, when Jaume has been probably their best player this season? Were they Nuno’s decisions? What’s the plan for Valencia? What’s the criteria when it comes to signing? What are they really hoping to achieve? And why isn’t that explained? What lies beneath?
“We’ll explain more tomorrow,” Nuno said on Sunday night, yet few expect a real explanation. If supporters were given answers, if the model could be demonstrated to be beneficial, it might be different. If there were results, if good players came and stayed and won, they would accept it. If there was communication, they might be convinced. Instead, it is opaque, not open. Instead, their manager walks at almost midnight on a Sunday night, without telling anyone, without a formal statement from the club, despite the decision having been made hours earlier. Instead, he stands on the touchline one last time watching players who he knows are no longer his team but who don’t know that he is no longer their manager.
(More on Valencia and the backgr
Talking points
• Left foot, right foot, head. Athletic Bilbao’s Aritz Aduriz scored the perfect hat-trick to beat Rayo Vallecano 3-0 and take him to 20 goals in all competitions this season, ahead of Luis Suárez (on 18) and anyone else. “We’re extremely lucky to have him: he’s a jewel,” Ernesto Valverde said. “I hope Barcelona don’t sign him.”
• So, Sevilla did it again. Another Champions League crisis, another La Liga resurrection. Four days after a European hammering, they beat Barcelona. Four days after another European hammering, they beat Madrid. And four days after another European hammering, they’ve now beaten Valencia. “We need to continue this away from home now,” Emery said.
• Another assist and another goal from Lucas Pérez and Deportivo are up to fifth, and deservedly so.
• Neymar had scored and Suárez had scored and they weren’t going to stop until Messi scored. Which, eventually, he did. It’s not just that these three are ridiculously good, it is that they are ridiculously good together.
• Real Madrid won and … and, erm, that’s pretty much it, really. There was a header from a corner routine – Gareth Bale’s first goal since August – and a penalty from Ronaldo and not very much else. Still, Rafael Benítez was very pleased with the first goal: “We’ve worked on that,” he said proudly.
• Atlético won the game but lost a lot more: Tiago, their cleverest player, broke his leg.
Results: Levante 0-1 Betis, Barcelona 4-0 Real Sociedad, Atlético 1-0 Espanyol, Málaga 2-2 Granada, Las Palmas 0-2 Deportivo, Celta 2-1 Sporting, Getafe 2-0 Villarreal, Eibar 0-2 Real Madrid, Rayo 0-3 Athletic, Sevilla 1-0 Valencia.Here’s the problem with being a hockey fan in Boston: it’s wicked expensive to see it played live, especially at a professional level. I’m not even a Bruins fan (sorry, guys), and just attempting to see [team name redacted because I want you to like me enough to keep reading this article] maybe once a year was something I very quickly decided was not worth it.
I got into hockey about five years ago, and women’s hockey was something I settled on as a way to see good hockey without NHL prices. Conveniently, Boston also had a team that had all my favorite Olympian players, and by going I supported women instead of Jeremy Jacobs, real-life Scrooge McDuck, so it was a win-win. In terms of gameplay, the only real difference between women’s and men’s hockey is that there’s technically no hitting or fighting in women’s hockey. (Technically.) Checking still happens a lot, and once in a blue moon, there’s even a fight. Personally, though, I’ve never really enjoyed the "physical game" aspect of hockey, I much prefer the speed and skill aspects of it, which women’s hockey has in spades.
Hopefully by now you’re thinking "hey, that does sound like a great time, how do see one of these games?" Good news! Thanks to the NWHL starting this year, it’s now really, really easy. Just follow my handy tips:
One: Check It Out On NESN (But Don’t Judge On That Alone)
If you have NESN, you can see most Pride home games for zero extra dollars from the comfort of your very own favorite hockey-watching spot. (Here’s the schedule for NESN.) Also, the NWHL website streams every single game for free through Youtube and keeps them all archived to watch at any time. If you want to see if the no-hitting aspect of women’s hockey is going to turn you off, I suggest starting there.
(EDIT: Some Pride games are on ESPN3, and those are NOT archived on Youtube.)
I also suggest watching a taped women’s game with the knowledge that it’s going to seem low-budget. If you are expecting NHL-style coverage with NHL cameras, angles, and re-play quality, you're going to be disappointed. The setup at the game is comparitively low-tech - I normally see about three cameras when I go, and all in roughly similar locations but zoomed into different parts of the rink, and that’s for being broadcast on NESN. It’s probably even less than that for the Youtube streams. This is the NWHL’s inaugural season, and while they are improving the streams every week, they’re still missing a lot, like a scoring or timekeeping widget in the corner. Until recently, they were even missing play-by-play announcing, which is a huge handicap if you’re not live at a game. That has already improved just since October.
Compared to an NHL game, it’s going to look a lot less intense on TV, too. There aren’t as many people there (Bright Center’s capacity is 3,095, compared to TD Garden at 17,565 and Dunkin Donuts Center at 12,400), there’s no organ (though they do play a lot of Beyonce, so really I consider this a plus), and while the crowd screams and cheers, and sometimes a few ambitious girl’s hockey teams try to start the wave, people are mostly focused on the game. If you tune in and think "look how few people there are, and they’re so quiet", it honestly doesn’t feel that way when you’re there, so don’t let that be the reason you don’t go. There is just as much passion at a women’s game, there are just fewer people there to express it. (Hey, you know what can change that? You going!)
Two: Get There Early
Like at all hockey games, don’t aim to come at puck drop. I would suggest coming between an hour and 45 minutes earlier. When I came for the opener, I got there 15 minutes before puck drop because my bus was late, and the will call ticket line wrapped around the building. This weekend, I was there an hour early, and there was no line at all. I didn’t get to see if one formed while I was inside, but keep in mind that unless you purchase tickets in advance, that might be something to plan for. Even if ticket buying is quick or you buy in advance, the 45-60 minute padding gives you enough time to find a seat you like (there is no assigned seating), go to the bathroom, watch warmups, get concessions, and get merch if you are so moved.
The merch is the one thing I would say is important to do before the game and not during a period break. The booth is well-stocked, but even in a low-attendance game, there’s still a couple hundred people there. A lot of people prefer to pick stuff up in person so they don’t have to spring for shipping. Popular sizes go fast.
Three: Take Public Transport
There are lots of reasons I support the NWHL over the CWHL (a women’s league that also has a Boston team, the Blades). There are too many to get into, but a huge reason is that I don’t have any way to get to CWHL games. The Blades don’t have a home rink, and where they’re based out of changes every season. This year, they’re mostly playing out of NESC in Marlborough. I live near Riverside and don’t drive. How the heck would I get to Marlborough? Why would I want to bother?
The Pride play every single home game out of the Bright-Landry Hockey Center at Harvard (which is not on their main campus, but in the athletic area off Soldier’s Field Road). That’s a 10-15 minute walk from the Harvard Square stop on the Red Line, even closer to more bus routes than I can name, and also two stops on the Red Line away from Porter, where you can take the Commuter Rail in.
This is not to say you can’t drive, but you should be prepared for a literal bottleneck getting out. I had the dubious honor of first seeing then experiencing this when a kind friend offered to drop me in Harvard Square to catch my bus. There’s tons of space to park, but only one lane to enter and leave.
Four: Bring Cash
While the NWHL is nice and modern and lets you do almost everything by credit card (including buy merch - they have a very snazzy iPad setup), the concessions are run by Harvard, and they are expensive, and most of the registers only accept cash. If you’re going to pony up for some arena food, bring at least a twenty per person, more if you have an antsy kid with you. Which reminds me...
Five: Eat Beforehand (Or Be Prepared To Shell Out That Cash You Brought)
Officially speaking, you are not allowed to bring food or beverages into the arena with you, and there’s a bag check to make sure you don’t. Unofficially, there are ways to get around that, but I of course would never suggest doing such a thing, nor would I tell you all the techniques my mother has passed down to me for sneaking food places where you shouldn’t. Some things are matrilineal and also sacred.
The concessions are the normal amounts of ridiculously priced, which is to say it’s $4.00 for a bottle of water and $8.00 for a normal-sized hot dog. The pros of buying food there is that it’s convenient, they do have a really nice array of options (including a few healthy ones, like fruit salad, but let’s be real here, did you wait in line for ten minutes to pay $5.00 for a Hoodsie Cup-sized serving of over-ripe melon? No), and it probably goes to support the NWHL (and if not, it goes to support Harvard and the people who work at the rink), which is nice. The cons are that it’s a lot of money to spend on food that isn’t even that great in quality, the line is always long even during a low attendance game if you go during period breaks, and if you, like me, think you can outsmart everyone by getting in line during the period, you may miss something important. I missed a beauty of a Hilary Knight goal, and no hot dog in the world could soothe that pain.
Since the arena is so close to Harvard Square, there are tons of amazing places to eat very close by. I suggest going to those. I would recommend you specific restaurants, but it is a known fact that you can ask five Bostonians for their favorite place to eat in Harvard Square and will get at least ten different answers, so I’ll leave selection up to you.
Six: Dress Warm
Sometimes, rinks are nice and toasty. Sometimes, rinks are so cold you can see your breath. Bright Center is about two thirds down the spectrum towards the "freezing" end, but insidiously cold. It’s the kind of cold you’ll get in and think is not so bad, but by the second period you’re curled in the fetal position wishing you had a giant down comforter. Don’t wear thin socks (I made that mistake), bring multiple layers, and bring whatever scarves/hats/gloves you usually use when it’s snowing. Unlike a big rink like the Garden or even the Dunkin Donuts Center in Providence, there isn’t enough seating for such that, even when full, the combined body heat of the fans cuts the rink chill.
Seven: Stay After If You Want To Meet The Players (But Be Cool About It)
It is an objective fact that meeting the people you just saw play a really awesome game of sportsball is cool. And since women’s hockey is a lot lower key than men’s hockey, you can make this happen. The Pride players all come out to sign autographs and take pictures at designated tables as a matter of course, but the opposing team usually comes out too, often because they have family or friends there to see them play. Most of the players, when they come out are still wearing some team gear or Underarmor that makes it clear they’re a player, so it’s okay if you don’t know them by face because they all wear full masks during the game or because you’re new. The Pride wear their jerseys so they can be identified easier when they sit down at the tables set up for doing autographs.
As always when meeting athletes (or anyone), be polite. Every player I’ve met has been warm, friendly, and professional. They remember you if they’ve talked to you on social media and are really happy to see you there. Return the favor and be equally courteous back to them. The best part about meeting them, though, is if you bring a kid with you, especially if that kid is a girl - the players will go out of their way to make that kid happy. Which reminds me...
Eight: Bring All The Kids You Know (Especially The Girls)
I am a comically terrible athlete. When they made everyone do the timed mile run in high school, they cut me off at 15 minutes even though I still had a quarter of it left to run, partially out of mercy, and partially because the period was over and we had to go inside.
As a kid, I played sports, and one of those sports was basketball. (I am full grown and 4’11", so you can figure out how that went.) When I was maybe seven years old, I went to a women’s college basketball game to be one of the sideshow amusements, the way mite players come out during period breaks to be adorably bad at hockey. Twenty years later, I still remember that game vividly. That was the first time in my life I had seen women play sports that were not about being pretty or graceful, like ice skating or gymnastics or dance. (I was and still am also bad at being pretty and graceful.)
The women were tall and muscular, they were sweaty and grunted and yelled and made weird faces, and they were awesome. I obviously did not go on to play sports in any capacity, and I don’t even enjoy watching basketball as an adult. But I still remember that game, because seeing women look openly "unfeminine" do "ugly" things was, at the time, important to me. In the twenty years since that basketball game, being a little girl hasn’t changed much. A girl now is just as unlikely to have seen women being cheered while being "ugly" as I was.
I didn’t stick around for signatures and photos after the second Pride game, but when I stuck around after the home opener, the line for signatures was mobbed by girls of all ages in oversized jerseys for their own teams, beside themselves at the chance to meet their heroes. And the hockey players were just as excited to talk to and make sure she got exactly what she had come to get. Every time an NWHL player is interviewed, they all say the same thing - they’re playing to show little girls something they themselves never got to see: women playing competitive sports well.
This weekend, I struck up a conversation with one of the guys who was there to take official pictures. He was a father of a teenaged girl who played at Kimball Union Academy, and she was coached by Molly Engstrom, who plays for the Connecticut Whale. He’d volunteered to bring her and some of her teammates so they could see their coach play in a real game. "It’s been so important for these girls to see women playing sports at this elite a level," he told me. "These women just get it. They mean everything to them."
You could tell exactly where Engstrom’s players were seated the entire game, because that row of seats erupted whenever she so much as set a blade on the ice. When she scored a goal (and it was a beauty), their cheering became deafening.
If you know a girl, bring her. She doesn’t have to play sports, be good at sports, or even like sports - when I was younger, neither did I, sports were something I endured to seem less nerdy than I really was. But there is no girl in the entire world who doesn’t deserve to see women celebrated for reasons other than being pretty and pleasing and traditionally feminine. Heck, if you know a boy, bring him. It’s just as important for him to know girls can do whatever they want and look however they want doing it. And if you don’t know any kids at all, just bring you. Great hockey plays don’t cheer for themselves.There's going to be a documentary!
Lucy Lowe - my sister and Dave's daughter, is a very talented actress and Voice Artist but now she's going t'other side of the lens and gonna make a documentary of the making of a Temporal Shift!! Yay! But don't take my word for it: see her say it for herself!
So it's going to be excellent! It's not a stretch goal it's part of the main funding target and it's Free to ALL BACKERS as a digital download and any backers at £55 and above get credited in the film too, because we won't get to make this film if we don't get to make this album!! And we only get to make all of this if we hit our funding target!! So it's only right that our bigger backers get credited too!
THUNDERCLAP!!
We still really need people to join our Thunderclap too - we need 39 more people if it's going to go at all. We have 280 backers and only 61 people have joined the Thunderclap so far, so please if you want to see the album and the film get made - please join the Thunderclap to help get it in front of as many people as possible. It only takes 5 secs to join up and will only post ONCE tomorrow night and that's it! It would really help us a lot so please join up and get your mates to join up too. https://www.thunderclap.it/projects/24831-uncle-art-kickstarter-midway
There's quite a bit of press lined up in the coming weeks including a radio interview and all sorts so there's lots to look out for. We're also making the front cover of the album which I'll share with you later this week - I think it looks AMAZING! We've got such a cool artist working with us. But more about that in the next update!!
In the meantime, share Lucy's video, join and share the Thunderclap and most importantly try and find new backers for the Kickstarter!
It's just another Lowe!
Cheers all,
Holly :)New Jersey Governor Chris Christie introduces U.S. President Barack Obama (not pictured) to speak on the rebuilding of the Jersey Shore following Hurricane Sandy, from Asbury Park in New Jersey, May 28, 2013. REUTERS/Jason Reed
(Reuters) - New Jersey Governor Chris Christie on Friday vetoed a bill that attempted to make the state’s expansion of Medicaid eligibility permanent under the healthcare law known as Obamacare, his office said on Friday.
Christie’s office announced he vetoed eight bills that “would add potentially hundreds of millions of dollars to state and local budgets.” He also signed a $32.9 billion budget and three other bills, his office said in a statement.
Among the bills he vetoed was one dealing with Medicaid expansion under the U.S. Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law known as Obamacare.
Christie, a critic of Obamacare, said in February he would accept federal money to expand Medicaid in New Jersey, and the state budget he signed on Friday included $227 million in such funds.
Democrats in the state Senate and Assembly had passed a bill seeking to make that Medicaid expansion permanent, but Christie vetoed it, a spokesman for the governor said.
The vetoed bill would have removed the flexibility to opt out of the Medicaid expansion if the federal government changed the terms of the current favorable matching rate, the spokesman said. The governor had discussed publicly his intention to maintain this flexibility when he signed onto the expansion, the spokesman said.
(Reporting by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Eric Walsh)Spread the love
Pawtucket, RI — At Toleman High School on Wednesday, a brief video sparked outrage showing a police officer violently arresting a 14 -year-old boy.
Police said that student was acting unruly before the incident, allegedly trying to fight another student, so they moved in. According to police, while the officer was trying to arrest the 14-year-old, the student’s 17-year-old brother attacked the officer.
The video does not show the attack; it only shows the 17-year-old boy face down on the floor. At this point, the 14-year-old approached the officer, and he’s immediately and violently slammed to the ground.
On Wednesday, the video quickly went viral sparking a subsequent protest at Toleman high on Thursday. The protest was entirely peaceful at first but became a bit chaotic when the fire alarm went off inside the school, and all the students were forced to evacuate.
As the protest grew, the mayor got involved. “I’m asking you to put your trust in me,” Mayor Don Grebien said to the students. “I’m going to listen to you.”
According to WDAM, Grebien pleaded for the students to head back to class. He decided to meet with a few students at city hall.
As the police presence increased, so did the tension, and a window was allegedly broken.
After police arrested two adults and eight teenagers, they then began to move in on the crowd, dousing them with pepper spray in the process. Police say they were forced to pepper spray the crowd of high schoolers because they were “being threatened.”
“Myself along with Chief King, the Pawtucket Police Chief, spoke with State Colonel Steven O’Donnell and we had conversations and we all agreed that the Pawtucket Police Department and Rhode Island State Police will be jointly conducting a full investigation of the video that we’ve all seen and the issue at hand,” Grebien said. “I believe that we need to make sure this is a transparent process, there needs to be some open dialogue.”
The protest wrapped up by 11:30 am and there were no further incidents.
On Thursday, WRPI spoke with the two teens who said there was no need for the police brutality.BG Seminary AKA Church Of A: Italy May 2015
An abandoned seminary found somewhere in Italy.
From the outside the place looks in quite a state. The stairs are collapsed and extremely risky to climb so not much exploring was done here. In fact I only took images in two rooms.
The chapel here if rather ornate and covered in frescos, the beautiful arches have quite a lot of water damage which certainly adds to the images.
We was rather lucky with the light here and it was constantly changing from hard to soft to add variety to the images.
Sadly I can't find any info on this location, in fact even information on the village is fairly scarce so I will just leave you to enjoy the images.A vegan named Antoni Da Campo was discharged from the Swiss army for his refusal to wear leather boots. The 19-year-old has taken his case to court and revealed that the number of vegetarians in the country is growing, stating that the army is not “account[ing] for changes in society.” Army representative Gabriela Zimmer said that “special treatment cannot be given to every recruit for food and clothing.” Another army represenatitve Caspar Zimmerman admitted that Da Campo was not discharged because he was physically unable to serve his mandatory duty, but rather because “the army operates from the efficiency of large groups, it cannot adapt itself to each individual.” Had this occurred in Canada, Da Campo would have standing in court with a claim of discrimination based on “creed” due to the recent legislation that expanded the term to include veganism as a belief system. As is the case in many countries, military service is mandatory for of-age males in Switzerland and discharge comes with a hefty fine—namely, that one must relinquish three percent of his income to the military until the age of 30.
Want more of today’s best plant-based news, recipes, and lifestyle?
Get our award-winning magazine! SubscribeWASHINGTON -- Employees of religious organizations whose job duties reflect "a role in conveying the Church's message and carrying out its mission" are barred by the First Amendment from suing over employment discrimination, said the Supreme Court in a unanimous opinion handed down Wednesday morning.
The decision in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was the first time the Supreme Court had endorsed the "ministerial exception" to discrimination protections that many courts of appeals have come to recognize over the past several decades.
"Requiring a church to accept or retain an unwanted minister, or punishing a church for failing to do so, intrudes upon more than a mere employment decision," wrote Chief Justice John Roberts on behalf of the entire Court. "By imposing an unwanted minister, the state infringes the Free Exercise Clause, which protects a religious group's right to shape its own faith and mission through its appointments."
Paul Horwitz, a constitutional law professor at the University of Alabama and and author of "The Agnostic Age: Law, Religion, and the Constitution," told HuffPost that the Court's decision backed up the central constitutional principle that "the church cannot administer the state, and the state cannot administer churches."
The unwanted minister in this case was Cheryl Perich, a "called" -- or ordained -- teacher at Hosanna-Tabor, a Michigan church and grade school that is part of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. In 2004, she went on disability leave for what was soon diagnosed as narcolepsy. Per its policy, the school asked her to resign once her absence exceeded six months, but she refused. Rather than submit to the school's request that her complaint be handled according to the church's tenet of internal dispute resolution, Perich threatened to file a complaint with the EEOC under the Americans with Disabilities Act. In response, the Hosanna-Tabor congregation rescinded Perich's call, which drove her to follow through on her EEOC threat.
Perich disputed Hosanna-Tabor's claim that she was subject to the ministerial exception, arguing that she mainly taught secular subjects and that the synod's preference to settle its disputes internally hardly rose to the level of church doctrine.
Conceding its reluctance to "adopt a rigid formula for deciding when an employee qualifies as a minister," the Supreme Court went on to reject Perich's argument based on the overall context of her employment. Perich, the Court noted, underwent intensive religious training in order to receive her call. As a teacher, she conducted religion classes four times a week, led her classes in prayer three times a week and took her students to chapel services once a week. That those duties took up only a small portion of her time was immaterial to the justices.
"The issue before us," wrote Roberts, "is not one that can be resolved by a stopwatch. The amount of time an employee spends on particular activities is relevant in assessing that employee's status, but that factor cannot be considered in isolation, without regard to the nature of the religious functions performed."
Although unanimous, Roberts' opinion did come supplemented by a couple of concurrences that were in slight tension with one another. Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for himself, said that the First Amendment requires civil courts "to defer to a religious organization's good-faith understanding of who qualifies as its minister," regardless of the employee's actual work duties.
Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justice Elena Kagan, took the opposite approach, attempting to define what a minister is. The ministerial exception, Alito wrote, should apply to any person "who leads a religious organization, conducts worship services or important religious ceremonies or rituals, or serves as a messenger or teacher of its faith."
The concurrences touch upon a fault line that some of the justices exposed during the case's oral argument last year: To what extent can religious organizations shield themselves from employment laws by simply deeming all of their employees to be ministers?
This time, the other justices seemed satisfied by their chief's language pointing to "the formal title given Perich by the Church, the substance reflected in that title, her own use of that title, and the important religious functions she performed for the Church," leading them to conclude that "Perich was a minister covered by the ministerial exception."Interview by Richard Marshall.
‘Truth is taken to be a primitive notion. The axiomatic approach differs from traditional definitional approaches such as the correspondence or coherence theory of truth that it is not assumed from the outset that truth is definable.‘
‘Deflationists about truth usually don’t assume that truth is definable, while proponents of substantial theories such as the correspondence theory often believe that truth can be defined away in terms of correspondence.‘
‘‘Believe only what is true!’ is a useless epistemic norm. It’s correct, but it cannot guide us, because what we need are criteria we can actually apply; truth, however, isn’t a criterion we can directly test. ‘Believe only what is consistent with your entire belief system!’ is similarly useless. By Church’s theorem we cannot test a given set of axioms for its consistency. In general, this is beyond the computational powers of the best ideal computer.‘
Volker Halbach works in the philosophy of Logic, Philosophy of Mathematics, Philosophy of Language and Epistemology. With talk of ‘post-truth’ and ‘fake news’ all around us it seems right to talk to an expert about the nature of truth. So here he talks about the difference between axiomatic and semantic approaches to truth, why he thinks the axiomatic approach is superior, what conditions this approach must satisfy, the interplay between the two approaches, whether his approach is a kind of deflationary theory of truth, whether deflationists should be conservative, why consistency is out of reach of any knowledge theory, on voluntarism and whether Descartes was a voluntarist, what is meant when it is said that arithmetic is a computational structure, and self reference in mathematics.
3:AM: What made you become a philosopher?
Volker Halbach: till at school I became fascinated by Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and other German classics. I went to university in Munich to study them; butbecame quickly disappointed by the way classical German philosophy wastaught. Analytic philosophy looked more open minded and outwardlooking. I very quickly switched to logic and analytic philosophy. Eversince I have been enjoying doing logic and have been lucky enough to getpaid for it.
3:AM: From the beginning you have been investigating the nature of truth. One of the big distinctions that you’ve been working with is approaches to truth that are axiomatic and approaches that are semantic. So can we begin by asking you to sketch what the distinction is, and what is at stake?
VH: The axiomatic approach is very simple: We stipulate axioms for the truth predicate that look plausible and that avoid the paradoxes. Truth is taken to be a primitive notion. The axiomatic approach differs from traditional definitional approaches such as the correspondence or coherence theory of truth that it is not assumed from the outset that truth is definable.
Semantic theories of truth provide methods for defining semantics or models for a language with a truth predicate. The semantic definition of a model is usually carried out in set theory for a language that is essentially weaker. Semantic theories cannot provide models for the language in which the model is defined. In philosophical logic this is a standard approach that has been applied to many other notions: Toy languages with symbols for necessity, knowledge, or the like are given a suitable semantics. In semantic theories of truth the same strategy is applied to the truth predicate. Kripke’s theory and the revision semantics of truth by Gupta and Herzberger belong into this category, but also Tarski’s extremely
successful model-theoretic account of truth that is the starting point for all later accounts.
3:AM: The axiomatic theories seem to have been a central focus of your work. Is this the type of theory of truth that you favour and if so what do you think are its advantages over the semantic alternative?
VH: In semantic theories the ultimate framework is usually set theory. The goal is to define a model for a toy language containing a truth predicate. In axiomatic theories we aim at a notion of truth for our overall language without the need of ascending to a stronger metalanguage. For philosophical purposes ranging from epistemology or the definition of logical consequence to moral philosophy, this is the kind of notion of truth that is needed. For instance, when we say that knowledge implies truth, we don’t restrict ourselves to beliefs that can be formulated in some restricted object language; we want to claim factivity of knowledge without any restriction. Moreover, in semantic theories, truth is defined relative to a model, not truth simpliciter. But truth simpliciter is required and used in philosophy all the time.
The motivation behind semantic theories of truth is often the belief that a notion is only well understood if we can define a semantics for it in set theory. I don’t share that belief. In the case of truth the approach is especially strange: Truth is the central notion of semantics. To think that it can only be understood if we can define a set-theoretic semantics for it over and beyond the central notion of semantics strikes me as implausible. This is not to say that semantic approaches aren’t useful. I only reject semantic theories as ultimate analyses of truth.
3:AM: What are the conditions that any axiomatic truth theory must satisfy?
VH: Axiomatic theories of truth have been designed for various purposes. They can be used to provide foundations for mathematical theories or frameworks for thinking about the Gödel incompleteness phenomena. Which theory is the best may depend on the purpose. My preferred theory of truth must be able to serve the purposes for which truth is used in philosophy as much as possible. Part of this purpose is the expression of infinite generalizations. To return to an example mentioned earlier, an epistemologist may assert the factivity of knowledge by saying: ‘Everything that is known is true’ and reason with this claim. A good theory of truth should support this reasoning. Our theory of truth should also prove generalizations such as ‘a conjunction is true if and only if both conjuncts are true’. Only then the theory of truth can serve its purpose in the definition of logical consequence, as given in an introductory logic class.
3:AM: Is there an interplay between the two types of theory? How can an axiomatic theory capture a semantic construction? Is it important that it can?
VH: There are many links between axiomatic and semantic theories. One way to go about constructing an axiomatic theory is to look at a semantic theory and try to ‘capture’ the semantic construction. By thinking about how certain features of the semantic construction can be captured by the axiomatization, we can find new axiomatic theories. In many cases semantic constructions can give us confidence that certain axioms are consistent.
3:AM: Are all deflationist theories of truth axiomatic, and if they’re not, do you think they are nevertheless more appropriately applied to a deflationist theory? Are you a type of deflationist?
VH: It’s not easy to say what deflationism is, but I’d say yes, all deflationist theories of truth rely on axiomatic theories. I don’t say that they *are* axiomatic theories of truth, because there is often more to a deflationist theory than just axioms for truth. Deflationist theories often contain claims about the status of these axioms and their purpose.
Deflationists about truth usually don’t assume that truth is definable, while proponents of substantial theories such as the correspondence theory often believe that truth can be defined away in terms of correspondence. So deflationists don’t assume that truth can be eliminated by a definition. In this sense the deflationists’ notion of truth is more ‘expensive’ than that of many correspondence theorists.
Stewart Shapiro once told me: ‘You are trying to be a deflationist, but you aren’t.’ He may have been right. I share the deflationists’ view that truth should be treated as a primitive axiomatized notion, but I don’t share the belief of many deflationists that truth is a harmless notion. All the logical research over the last decade has shown that truth is a very powerful notion.
3:AM: Should the deflationist be conservative in that its theory shouldn’t add anything non-trivial to what we already know or is being conservative just a suggestion from the shadows that the deflationist doesn’t have to agree to? Are there deflationist theories that actually yield important new facts?
VH: Some deflationists expect that truth doesn’t yield any new insights outside semantics. Technically speaking, this amounts to the following requirement: All new sentences that can be proved with the deflationist axioms of truth must contain the truth predicate; no new purely mathematical, linguistic, physical, epistemological, and so on claims must become provable. However, logicians realized early on that adding certain plausible axioms for truth allows us to prove new mathematical sentences such as the Gödel sentence or the consistency of the starting theory. They aren’t provable without using the truth axioms or other additional assumptions. Over the last decades a lot of highly sophisticated work has been done that explores which new sentences become provable, depending on which axioms are added.
I don’t believe that the conservativeness claim should be taken as part of deflationism. Starting with the assumption that there are useful truth theories that are conservative strikes me as unnecessarily restrictive. The deflationist should specify truth axioms and then see what happens and not stick to the
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continue to increase.
Petrosso and his seamstress have updated some of their technology, and Faunce is grateful for help from an apparel company that has so much wisdom and history to share. “Because really business is a relationship, that’s what I’m always connected with," says Faunce.
Story continuesIn this week’s edition of Florida Football Friday Final, OnlyGators.com takes a look at the Florida Gators (3-3, 2-3 SEC) as they prepare to lay it all on the line against the No. 11 Georgia Bulldogs (6-1, 4-1 SEC) on Saturday afternoon at EverBank Field in Jacksonville, Florida. The game will kick off at 3:30 p.m. and air live on CBS.
THIS WEEK ON ONLYGATORS.COM
Notebook: Will Muschamp previews Florida-Georgia, talks starting Treon Harris, fixing Florida’s numerous offensive issues during bye
Story: Gators adopt “bunker mentality” as players support coach
Story: Tim Tebow on Treon Harris: We’ll see what he’s made of
Notebok: Kurt Roper talks Harris starting, Florida’s progress on offense
Notebook: Gators defense ready to stop Bulldogs rush, more from D.J. Durkin
The Silver Lining: Florida players exuding confidence entering Georgia game
WORLD’S LARGEST OUTDOOR COCKTAIL PARTY
Every player on the Florida roster always has and always will get geared up for Georgia game, no matter how either team is playing entering the contest.
Head coach Will Muschamp announced Thursday that four redshirt senior Peach State natives – linebacker Neiron Ball, running back Mack Brown, center Max Garcia and LB Michael Taylor – will be captains for the game. Two of them, along with a couple other players, spoke with the media this week about what the UF-UGA game means to them.
» Garcia on the rivalry: “I’m a Georgia boy. One of the first memories I have is watching this game. I just feel like this game is just so much hype, so much tension around it. I don’t even know how to describe the atmosphere. It’s just so much antsiness and anxiousness around the game. It’s a huge game. I feel like our guys are really locked in, really just focused on trying to get better.”
» Taylor on the atmosphere: “It’s a big rivalry game. It’s probably one of the best college atmospheres you can play in. Knowing that it’s just split down the middle, Georgia on one side, Florida on the other side. Coming out of the tunnel and on the field in a neutral site, it’s just something that you pride yourself on playing in and you want to have a good game and a big game in this game.”
» Sophomore RB Kelvin Taylor on his father (Fred Taylor) and his excitement level: “Oh my gosh. This week right here, man, my dad is going crazy in the house right now. He’s ready to just, my dad’s just ready for us to have fun and try and get a win this week.”
» Junior left tackle D.J. Humphries on the intensity: “I’m from North Carolina, so I kind of just inherited it, this hate. I never really understood it, you know what I mean. It’s kind of like Florida State. I never knew anything about Florida-Florida State, but as soon as I got here my freshman year, like automatically hate them. It’s just like an aura when you get there. It’s like, ‘We don’t like you all at all. Period. … It’s definitely personal, one of those physical, personal games. … When you’re in that stadium, that’s when you figure it out. That’s when you feel it. Like when you feel those fans looking at you when you’re coming out of the tunnel, and they’re yelling at you from under the tunnel, that’s when you feel it. That’s a little different than Tennessee or Alabama and everyone else. It’s a little different.”
» Sophomore wide receiver Ahmad Fulwood, a Jacksonville native, on the game’s significance to him: “Usually I’d be outside the stadium. I never really started going inside until my freshman year in high school. But it’s been a big deal. I mean, being from Jacksonville, I get to see hundreds of thousands of people just flood the scene with Florida and Georgia stuff. It’s the biggest cocktail party in the country. I love seeing it inside and out and playing across the river from the stadium, I got to look at that stadium every day in high school. It’s amazing now that I get to play in it.”
» Sophomore LB Jarrad Davis, another Georgia native, on the overall game: “It’s Florida-Georgia. It’s just they’re right next to each other. It’s a big game. It’s been a big game forever, it seems like. It’s always personal. I mean, just from watching it growing up, you can tell it’s personal — how the athletes play in the game, how huge the atmosphere is at that game. It’s just always been a personal, personal matter. … Last year coming in, I didn’t really know about the severity, I didn’t know the severity of it as a player. But once I stepped on that field, then I realized how big this was. Now I have that in mind, and I’m ready to go again this year. I don’t want to fall to them ever again. … It’s just this game. When this game comes up, it’s all about this game from both sides, that’s what it seems like.”
» Redshirt senior right tackle Chaz Green on his last chance to beat UGA: “This weekend is huge for us. The rivalry speaks for itself. Like Muschamp has said, the last few years it has come down to the last drive. They’ve got the upper hand those last few years and we want to be on the other side this year. It’s huge for us. … It’s definitely more emotional than other games, more physical. There’s something about playing them. This game is different from other games.”
» Junior defensive end Dante Fowler Jr. on driving into Jacksonville: “it’s really crazy how it is. You go over the bridge, first of all it’s a nice bridge. Just being able to see an NFL stadium that you’re about to play in. just seeing the cocktail party tailgate thing going on. Seeing the Georgia fans and how they react. I like things like that, it gets me pumped up. Then you see your fans and you see for your family. It’s really emotional, again, being able to see the blue and red split.”
RUNNING GAME, BLOCKING AND TREON HARRIS
If the Gators have any chance to upset the Bulldogs, it will be with Florida’s defense doing its job, the special teams finding some renewed consistency and the offense taking a major step forward. In order to do that, UF must find a way to succeed on the ground and compliment rushing success with an effective, turnover-free passing game.
“I think [the offense will] be a little different. It’ll be fun to watch. I’m ready to see how different it’s going to be, how it’s going to look,” said Humphries this week.
For a Gators squad with so much talent in the backfield, and a coach who insists on controlling the line of scrimmage, that’s where things will start for the Gators.
“I know this week, we’re going to pound the ball,” said Kelvin Taylor. “We’re going to play good offense. We’re just very excited to get out there and just try to get a win. All of the backs hope we can contribute a whole lot. Me, Matt Jones, Mack Brown, all of us. We’re just ready to take the load and ready to pretty much have probably the best game of our season.”
Added Humphries: “We definitely need to get back to our run game and getting it on the ground and just being physical, out-physicaling some guys. It’s Florida-Georgia, you know what I mean, it’s time to hit somebody in the mouth.”
Next will be Florida finding a way to put freshman quarterback Treon Harris to succeed. Humphries believes “any change can spark an offense that’s kind of been standstill” and therefore thinks Harris can make an impact right away.
“I like him when the play breaks down, how he just doesn’t let the play die. He makes something happen once the play breaks down. Once he feels a little pressure in the pocket he just makes something happen with it,” said Humphries of the freshman. “He’s definitely a calm kid. That’s one thing I noticed about him. Coach yells at him or anything like that, he never gets rattled or nothing like that. He comes back to the line and calls the play the same way every time, just keeps moving.”
Kelvin Taylor, who is close friends with Harris, is already impressed with the signal caller’s intelligence, noting that he makes good decisions on the field and really has a way about him in the huddle. He is also confident that Harris can help turn things around for the offense.
“I think Treon’s going to go out there and he’s going to play his game. He’s going to have fun and he’s going to make plays. And I think we’re just going to play great as a team. We’re just ready to get things rolling,” he said.
“Treon, he’s a great competitor, so he’s going to go out there with a lot of passion. He’s just going to play his heart out. I think he’s going to do a great job. He can run the ball great, so that’s going to give us another thing on offense that we need at the quarterback position. Jeff [Driskel] kind of did the same thing as well, but I think Treon’s going to do a great job.”
Fulwood and Green both pointed to Harris’s poise and maturity as a huge reason why he is being trusted to take on leading the offense, with Green pointing out some specific examples of things Harris does well even when under pressure.
“If it’s a bad snap or something happens, something that’s not expected, he’s able to respond pretty well and he shows that in practice,” he said. “We got to stay on our blocks. We know that he can scramble the pocket, so we have to keep our blocks and keep going until the whistle blows.”
Muschamp and offensive coordinator Kurt Roper both noted that while Harris is starting this week, there could still be a role carved out for Driskel. However, Driskel missed an entire week of practice with back spasms and Muschamp also said Wednesday that Saturday’s contest is Harris’s “game to play.” Nevertheless, he indicated that Driskel could still see the field at some point.
“Just depending on the situation. We’ve got some things that we feel like he certainly can help us with, but it’s Treon’s game to play,” he said.
NOTES AND QUOTES
» Freshman defensive lineman Gerald Willis sprained his ankle in practice on Tuesday but was deemed probable for Saturday’s game.
» Muschamp on finding a way to get players some additional money: “Hopefully we’ll move forward with some cost of attendance situation for our players. There’s no question the amount of money that we’re making in college football and all of college athletics [that we should] be able to give these guys a little money on the side to help take care of themselves and transportation for families to games. People don’t realize how difficult and how much it costs to be able to travel to an away game or even come to a home game, travel four or five hours away and being able to pay for all that. There’s no question hopefully we’ll be able to move forward in being able to help the players.”
» Muschamp on Florida’s preparation for Georgia: “I think our attitude has been outstanding. You go on the open week, and we had very physical practices on Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday. We had 6 a.m. meetings on Thursday, everybody is there 20 minutes early getting ready to go. They understand what’s at stake in this game playing Georgia. We had a great practice Monday and Tuesday and look forward to another good day [Wednesday]. Our attitude has been outstanding. I don’t think for a second that our guys don’t have confidence in what we’re doing. You can’t turn the ball over six times and win. That’s the bottom line. I think when are able to point to situations where we inflict ourselves and for them to understand what we need to do to be successful it starts on taking care of the football.”
» Kelvin Taylor on not seeing much action this season: “I’ve just pretty much been playing my role and helping my team get wins. That’s all that we’re looking for and really all that we’re thinking about. Other than that, keep working hard and everything else will fall into place. I’ve just been going to practice with the same mentality to just keep working hard and I know everything else will fall in place. I’m just ready to go.”
» Kelvin Taylor on freshman RB Brandon Powell: “BP, he’s going to be great. The guy can catch the ball; he’s like a receiver in the backfield. He’s got great hands and he can do it all. He’s going to be a great player. I’m looking forward to him keeping having a great year.”
» Kelvin Taylor on Muschamp: “We love coach. He’s a great guy. He’s a players’ coach. He loves his team. We’ve got to go play our best for him. Coach is awesome. We’re going to play hard and everything else will turn out fine. Coach will be fine. We’re just worried about winning this game and everything else will be fine. … He’s just a great guy. He’s a funny guy. He coaches you hard. He’s always on your butt. I could break for a 70-yard run in practice, but he’ll tell me there’s something I could’ve done better. Coach is just going to get the best out of you no matter what and keep working you hard. I love Coach. He’s going to be fine.”
» Humphries on former Florida offensive lineman Mo Collins, a fellow North Carolina native, passing away: “Aw man, he pretty much taught me the craft, you know what I mean? He took me from being a left tackle with a right-handed stance and showed me all the stuff to become an All-American in high school. That was pretty tough when I found I lost him this week. That was a big deal.”
» Davis on the defense’s overall improvement: “We took that [Alabama loss] personally. You never want to be in a situation where you give up that many yards. We try to go out there every week and try to just go as hard as we can for as long as we can. You try not to worry about anything after that. We just try to go get the ball and make sure we make the stops on defense so we can get our offense on the field and they can produce.”
» Fulwood on why the wide receivers have struggled: “I would just have to say a lack of focus. As a unit, we just haven’t had the greatest focus. We have been trying to calm down lately though, get back on track. I would probably say focus.0
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Oscar-winning actor J.K. Simmons now has the distinction of playing two iconic comics characters on screen from both the Marvel and DC Universe. He is widely regarded as the definitive J. Jonah Jameson from Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy, and filmmaker Zack Snyder enlisted the Whiplash actor to play Commissioner James Gordon in the upcoming Justice League and, hopefully, future DC Extended Universe films—like Ben Affleck’s standalone The Batman.
Collider’s own Steve Weintraub recently spoke with Simmons in anticipation of the upcoming thriller The Accountant, and Steve mentioned that when he visited the set of Justice League earlier this summer, he got to see Simmons’ first day on set. As opposed to a small scene to get his feet wet as the new Gordon, the scene in question took place on the rooftop of police headquarters and featured Gordon conversing with Affleck’s Batman, Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman, Ezra Miller’s The Flash, Ray Fisher’s Cyborg, and Jason Momoa’s Aquaman. So, the entire Justice League. How did he feel about diving into the deep end like that on his first day?
“Yeah well there’s not a lot of ‘small’ on those kinds of sets. When you’re working with Zack Snyder ‘small’ is not the word that comes to mind, or any of those DC Universe kinds of projects. I mean there are two schools of thought about that for actors. It is kind of nice, in a way—especially when you’re playing a supporting part—to start out just kind of doing a little ‘Oh and then you’re gonna walk down this hall, say hi to this guy, and that’s your day’s work.’ Kinda get your feet wet. Or whether it’s better to just dive into the deep end and get some of the heavy stuff out of the way. It was fun, I mean that whole universe is something I’m really excited to be a part of for a while down the road hopefully.”
And while we’ve only seen one semi-dark photo of Simmons as Gordon, Steve mentioned that he’s very much sporting a comics-accurate look, which Simmons said was the goal:
“And that’s what I wanted very much to do. As we sort of went back and forth with Zack and I and the wardrobe and hair and makeup and all those people, saying how we wanted the look to be, I think we all ended up being very much on the same page.”
If you missed what Affleck had to say about choosing Deathstroke as the villain for The Batman, click here. Look for the full Accountant interviews on Collider soon.
For more on Justice League, check out our set visit coverage below:It’s come to this. via Northeast Tennessee Legislative Delegation Files Bill “To Stop Islamic Religious Indoctrination In Tennessee Schools” – Chattanoogan.com h/t Shoebat
The Northeast Tennessee legislative delegation, including Rep. Matthew Hill (R-Jonesborough), Rep. Timothy Hill (R-Blountville) and Rep. Micah Van Huss (-Johnson City) announced they have filed legislation “to officially stop Islamic religious indoctrination in Tennessee schools.”
They said the decision comes “after intense public outcry from parents, students, and school administrators that current school textbooks overemphasize Islam while excluding other religions like Christianity and Judaism.”
Rep. Hill said, “I have heard from people all over our community who share my deep concern about the leeway that is allowed in the current standards. “We have been working on this issue for almost two years now, with no clear solution. My colleagues and I in the General Assembly see there is now a direct need to file legislation on behalf of citizens across Tennessee if we hope to solve this problem once and for all.
“No one has a problem with world religions being taught from a historical perspective. The problem is that right now in Tennessee, the standards are so broad they open the door to proselytizing our public school students. While other bills have been filed in an attempt to fix this problem, this piece of legislation has real teeth, and we believe it will be a giant step forward in fixing this important issue.”
“I did not fight radical Islam in Iraq just to come home and find our children being indoctrinated,” Rep. Van Huss said.
They said, In 2015, middle school parents in Maury County were up in arms after learning their children were being instructed to recite and write “Allah is the only god” as part of a world history project. In another section of their work, students were assigned a Five Pillars of Islam project that included the translation of the pillar of “Shahada” as being, “There is no god but Allah; Muhammad is his prophet.” Similar situations have been reported across the state, including multiple instances in the tri-cities area, the legislators said.
Under the newly filed House Bill 1905, any inclusion of religion in textbooks, instructional materials, curriculum, or academic standards can only be for educational purposes and are strictly prohibited from being used to promote or establish any religion or religious belief.
In addition, the legislation places into law several key measures that they said constituents have requested, including:
Requiring local school boards to adopt a policy regarding the appropriate inclusion of religion in local curriculum and instructional materials, with the opportunity for public comment before adoption;
Requiring local education agencies to make publicly available a syllabus for all grade 6-12 social studies, science, math, and English courses. The syllabus must include a course calendar detailing standards, objectives, and topics covered, major assignments required, and procedures for parents to have access to all instructional materials to be used;
Requiring the state board of education to initiate a revision process for the Tennessee social studies standards adopted in 2013 to ensure new standards do not promote religion and do not amount to indoctrination or proselytism in any way.
The war has been raging in the classrooms and in the media. Propaganda in it’s purest, most vile forms. It’s now spilling onto the streets of America. Eventually, as history has proven, we will have to fight back…or lose it all.
More than 170 posts on Tennessee in the our archives. Read’em and weep.In the hours following Haiti's devastating earthquake, CNN, the New York Times and other major news sources adopted a common interpretation for the severe destruction: the 7.0 earthquake was so devastating because it struck an urban area that was extremely over-populated and extremely poor. Houses "built on top of each other" and constructed by the poor people themselves made for a fragile city. And the country's many years of underdevelopment and political turmoil made the Haitian government ill-prepared to respond to such a disaster.
True enough. But that's not the whole story. What's missing is any explanation of why there are so many Haitians living in and around Port-au-Prince and why so many of them are forced to survive on so little. Indeed, even when an explanation is ventured, it is often outrageously false such as a former U.S. diplomat's testimony on CNN that Port-au-Prince's overpopulation was due to the fact that Haitians, like most Third World people, know nothing of birth control.
It may startle news-hungry Americans to learn that these conditions the American media correctly attributes to magnifying the impact of this tremendous disaster were largely the product of American policies and an American-led development model.
From 1957-1971 Haitians lived under the dark shadow of "Papa Doc" Duvalier, a brutal dictator who enjoyed U.S. backing because he was seen by Americans as a reliable anti-Communist. After his death, Duvalier's son, Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" became President-for-life at the age of 19 and he ruled Haiti until he was finally overthrown in 1986. It was in the 1970s and 1980s that Baby Doc and the United States government and business community worked together to put Haiti and Haiti's capitol city on track to become what it was on January 12, 2010.
After the coronation of Baby Doc, American planners inside and outside the U.S. government initiated their plan to transform Haiti into the "Taiwan of the Caribbean." This small, poor country situated conveniently close to the United States was instructed to abandon its agricultural past and develop a robust, export-oriented manufacturing sector. This, Duvalier and his allies were told, was the way toward modernization and economic development.
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From the standpoint of the World Bank and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Haiti was the perfect candidate for this neoliberal facelift. The entrenched poverty of the Haitian masses could be used to force them into low-paying jobs sewing baseballs and assembling other products.
But USAID had plans for the countryside too. Not only were Haiti's cities to become exporting bases but so was the countryside, with Haitian agriculture also reshaped along the lines of export-oriented, market-based production. To accomplish this USAID, along with urban industrialists and large landholders, worked to create agro-processing facilities, even while they increased their practice of dumping surplus agricultural products from the U.S. on the Haitian people.
This "aid" from the Americans, along with the structural changes in the countryside predictably forced Haitian peasants who could no longer survive to migrate to the cities, especially Port-au-Prince where the new manufacturing jobs were supposed to be. However, when they got there they found there weren't nearly enough manufacturing jobs go around. The city became more and more crowded. Slum areas expanded. And to meet the housing needs of the displaced peasants, quickly and cheaply constructed housing was put up, sometimes placing houses right "on top of each other."
Before too long, however, American planners and Haitian elites decided that perhaps their development model didn't work so well in Haiti and they abandoned it. The consequences of these American-led changes remain, however.
When on the afternoon and evening of January 12, 2010 Haiti experienced that horrible earthquake and round after round of aftershock the destruction was, no doubt, greatly worsened by the very real over-crowding and poverty of Port-au-Prince and the surrounding areas. But shocked Americans can do more than shake their heads and, with pity, make a donation. They can confront their own country's responsibility for the conditions in Port-au-Prince that magnified the earthquake's impact, and they can acknowledge America's role in keeping Haiti from achieving meaningful development. To accept the incomplete story of Haiti offered by CNN and the New York Times is to blame Haitians for being the victims of a scheme that was not of their own making. As John Milton wrote, "they who have put out the people's eyes, reproach them of their blindness."No community in Canada is growing faster than Milton. And there’s probably no place in the country where the stresses of daily life, for residents like Zeeshan Hamid, are so closely tied with the inevitable growth. Two of Hamid’s three children learn inside portables at their elementary school, which opened just four years ago. That’s not rare. Most schools in Milton are far beyond capacity. Hamid even feels lucky that his youngest actually gets to stay inside the building.
Milton's explosive growth, in keeping with the province's Places to Grow plan, has not been matched by provincial investment in infrastructure such as transit, say critics. ( ANDREW FRANCIS WALLACE / TORONTO STAR ) Milton Town Councillor Zeeshan Hamid poses outside the community's hospital, whose expansion is one of the bright spots in an otherwise inadequate response by the province to the rapid growth of the town's population. ( Andrew Francis Wallace / Toronto Star ) A sign advertises homes for sale in a corn field at the corner of James Snow Pkwy and Derry Rd. in Milton, where rapid population growth leaves many new residents desperate for better transit and other services that haven't kept up. ( Andrew Francis Wallace / Toronto Star )
Hours before his children leave for school, Hamid’s own workday commute begins with one purpose in mind: finding a parking spot at Milton’s only GO Train station. It was opened in 1981, after a decade of startling growth that saw the municipality’s population soar, from 7,018 residents in 1971 to 28,067 a decade later, a 300 per cent increase. Flash forward to today, and that figure is a mind-boggling 1,600 per cent, with Milton’s estimated population at the end of this year projected to be around 120,000. With the GTA’s population set to rise by almost 3 million people over the next 25 years, the vast majority in the 905 area code, the provincial agency responsible for implementing the growth strategy is facing sharp criticism about desperately needed infrastructure that’s nowhere in sight.
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“Our forecasts are suggesting that there’ll be approximately 13.5 million people in the Greater Golden Horseshoe by 2041,” says Larry Clay, assistant deputy minister of the Ontario Growth Secretariat, which operates under the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing. “The growth is coming, this is likely where it’s going to grow, and we need to plan better for it, going forward... it’s a very fast growing region.” On Dec. 7, his government released a report on its growth plan. It mentions the need for better co-ordination with the provincial 25-year master plan for regional transportation, the Big Move. But it doesn’t include detailed plans for improving the growing infrastructure gap, and doesn’t mention what to do about schools, hospitals and other specific pieces of key infrastructure needed in high-growth areas. Asked to respond to Milton residents frustrated by the lack of infrastructure co-ordination, Clay says, “In Milton and Halton Region and in areas across the GTA there are efforts to invest in infrastructure... a lot of that investment is starting to happen.” Not fast enough for Hamid. “If I don’t get to the (GO Train) parking lot before 7:30, forget it, I have to drive into work,” he says.
That means getting on to the backed-up Highway 401 for a trek to downtown Toronto, where he’s employed in the IT industry. Commiserating over their daily GO Train commute has become something of a social media obsession for Milton residents. Hamid represents many of them in another way, in his other job as a Town of Milton councillor.
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“It’s not just the GO Train parking and the lack of train service,” he says. “It’s having to go to Peel or Oakville for a hospital bed in the maternity ward when babies are delivered; kids in portables because schools are way over capacity right from the day they open; waiting for the university campus we’ve been trying to get for years; overburdened libraries, roads and highways that we’re waiting to get widened. I’m not sure if the province realizes the kind of growth Milton has seen, and will continue to see in the future.” Under the province’s Places To Grow Act, which came into effect about a decade ago, municipalities were required to plan future development according to population-density formulas designed to hinder sprawl. Since the 1970s, places like Mississauga, with 50- and 60-foot-wide lots for detached homes in vast subdivisions, had set a trend that was pushing the population ever outward. As commute times became the worst in North America, the region’s economy was losing billions of dollars annually in productivity, while municipalities struggled to build service infrastructure out to far-flung neighbourhoods. Milton was quick to comply with the province’s growth plan. It’s still waiting for its fair share in return. “Back in the daym there was not that much volume on the (GO) train,” says Giles vanderHolt, who has lived in Milton for 35 years. “But nowadays the parking over in the Milton parking lot is absolutely jam-packed. “There’s a huge need for more GO transit parking and better train service to Milton.” In communities such as Milton, the province’s growth plan has neglected to align population increases with transit and other infrastructure needs, critics say. Paul Smetanin, CEO of the Canadian Centre for Economic Analysis, says it appears that Places To Grow “is not capturing the implicit contract between the provincial government and municipalities.” “The implicit contract is that there is co-ordination — that the province will show up with the infrastructure that is part of their mandate and their domain, and will work hand in hand with the municipalities,” says Smetanin, whose organization just released a critique of the province’s growth plan. In exchange for accepting the growth densities mandated under the legislation, Smetanin says, the “municipalities say back to the province, ‘You put in the provincial infrastructure that is required.’” Currently Milton only has train service during the morning and afternoon rush, with no service in the middle of the day, after 7 p.m. or on the weekends (the station is open less than 15 hours a week, only in the morning Monday to Friday rush). The lack of service makes Milton residents, “dependent on the only service we have. A lot of people get stranded if they don’t make their train in or out,” vanderHolt says. A drive through the massive paved parking lot at 2 p.m. on a recent weekday afternoon offers a glimpse of what desperate commuters deal with every day. Not one spot is available. The tiny station is dwarfed by the sprawling expanse of its parking lot, with more than 1,000 spaces and many cars double-parked. Signs recently posted around the lot instructing commuters who can’t find parking to drive to the next station in Mississauga “are insulting,” says vanderHolt. He says that with Milton’s population projected to double again in less than 20 years, growth pressures will only put more stress on residents. Milton Councillor Colin Best and his colleagues on Halton Region council have for years considered abandoning the province’s mandated growth plan. “How are you supposed to plan long term when you don’t know what (infrastructure) you’re going to get next year? Basically, we have no provincial infrastructure being proposed for this area.” Best mentions Milton’s current hospital expansion as one bright spot, but he isn’t even convinced that will meet the growing demand in a town expected to double in less than 20 years. He says residents are already starting to leave Milton, as schools, the hospital, its two libraries, and lone GO Train station fail to keep up with the rapid growth. “We’ve grown so fast because people wanted to live here and because we’ve complied with the province’s strategy for much denser growth. The province is basically saying: ‘Do as I say, not as I do.’”The art world has always been a bastion of globalism, with artists constantly borrowing from one another to create new, previously inconceivable works. In our increasingly anti-globalist, anti-immigrant time, it is important to remember that many of the artistic works that we hold dear would not have been possible without centuries of cultural exchange.
Few people know about the art world’s multicultural debt more than Jessica Gould, the Artistic Director and Founder of Salon/Sanctuary Concerts. Salon/Sanctuary is a concert series that presents “early music in intimate venues which complement both the acoustic and the historical context of the repertoire” in order to “encourage understanding among people of different faiths.” I recently spoke with Ms. Gould over the phone about Salon/Sanctuary Concerts’ 2016-2017 season, “On the Margins,” which explores the musical and historical world of exile. Our discussion focused primarily on the next installment in the series, “Of Meistersingers and Mizmorim: The Wandering Troubador, The Origins of Klezmer, and the Medieval Roots of Wagnerian Fantasy.”
[This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity]
I’d like to find out more about the historical aspect of the concert. The connection between Wagner and Klezmer, I think, for most people, myself included, seems pretty strange – Wagner of course being a notorious anti-Semite.
It’s not a connection that most people would make, certainly, which is one of the reasons why I did this. Most of my motivation when programming is to draw attention to less explored avenues of music history — to use music as a window on history. This program doesn’t say that there is a parallel between Wagner and the origins of Klezmer (which are in the Middle Ages). Rather, it points out the flaw in the Wagnerian mythology, that there was somehow a racial purity in the Middle Ages — an idea cherished by the Nazi party in the 30s. In reality, it was anything but “pure.” It was a mishmash throughout Europe — there were wandering troubadours from France, Yiddish civilization was spread far and wide, Poland became a refuge for many victims of expulsions throughout Europe.
Poland has certainly changed quite a bit since then, especially in terms of their acceptance of refugees and their Jewish population.
The idea that we have of the horrible oppressed shtetl, from which everybody escaped and to which many American Jews trace their origins, is actually a reality of the last 300 years. Before that, the Jewish population was well taken care of in Poland and had a thriving culture that was widely disseminated throughout Europe. So, in major trading centers you had a number of troubadours and Jewish musicians. In their music, which was almost never written down, we’re able to recognize some traditional chants that have survived in certain folk traditions in various areas in Europe. So it was much more of a melting pot than the impression that the Wagnerian operas give to us. I found it fascinating that out of this source, this multi-faceted multi-religious reality, came two completely opposed cultural artifacts: Klezmer on the one hand, and an entire mythology dedicated to Teutonic racial purity on the other.
So you’re not trying to draw any musical equivalencies between Wagner and Klezmer.
No, not at all. I’m interested in the perspective one can have on the historical reality, not the (absent) similarities between the music. Wagner’s music is both a 19th century recreation of a fantasy world, and a rebellion against industrialization. There was Wagner, but there were also the Pre-Raphaelites in England, the neo-Gothic trend in architecture, all these forms of fabricated nostalgia for something that in almost every case had nothing to do with what was really going on.
I think it’s important in Wagner’s case that the vast majority of his operas take place in a totally mythological past, without any reference to a specific place or time.
Yes, Wagner’s operas, if you look at them in a meta-historical way, were tools of propaganda to reinforce nationalism. Propaganda, of course, relies on myth, and myths are by definition not true. Saying America is a white Christian country, that’s another myth. What I’m saying with this concert is that the historical past that the Wagnerian operas mythologized was pretty much the opposite of reality.
Your focus is on exile music from around the world. Have you identified any common threads between the different exile musics.
Common threads in terms of how exile is manifested in musical creation, and the compositions?
On the one hand yes, the compositions, on the other hand, how the music was received, how the musicians were received, and the commonalities in the hybridization of the host country’s music.
It’s an interesting question. No concert in the series explores this as much as “From Ghetto to Cappella” which will be performed in partnership with the La Serenissima Festival of Carnegie Hall in February. That concert focuses in on a
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at risk. You always believe that when they suffer from addiction they’re better off and safer in custody than on their own. We believed that. Until that happened.”
In response to the inquest, the jail implemented a new suicide screening procedure, a spokesman for Ontario Corrections Minister Marie-France Lalonde said.
Almost as many people died in Ontario jails in the first half of this year (13) as died in all of last year (14), provincial data shows. All but two were prisoners awaiting trial.
Ontario Attorney-General Yasir Naqvi told Reuters he wanted to end the “churn” of people cycling in and out of the penal system. “People, especially those who are low-risk and vulnerable, can be released under supervision as opposed to being remanded,” he said.
‘Causes Of Death’
Reuters traced the causes of death for 148 of the 174 cases through inquests, government data interviews and news reports. Of those:
–50 were suicides
–34 were by natural causes, which includes illnesses and health conditions
–Nine were drug- or alcohol-related
–Four were homicides
–Four were accidental
–One followed an altercation with prison officers
–46 were designated “undetermined” by provincial governments, which means an investigation is ongoing or an inquest is pending
Several factors have created the conditions for the high body count, lawyers, former inmates and former corrections officers say.
Newly arrived prisoners who are awaiting trial are more likely to have high amounts of drugs or alcohol in their systems and so are more at risk of overdosing or suffering potentially life-threatening withdrawal symptoms. Three former inmates told Reuters they have had prescription medication confiscated or have failed to get medical attention as they shuttle to and from court.
People with a history of self-harm may not be watched closely because their suicide risk is not communicated to jail staff who are already over-stretched in crowded facilities, lawyers and former corrections officers told Reuters. Suspects picked up on minor charges are also sometimes housed alongside those with a history of violence.
Canada‘s provincial jails often have little to no classification based on a person’s criminal history, risk level or medical needs, said Howard Sapers, Canada‘s former federal prisons watchdog who is now advising Ontario on its planned reform.
As a result, he said, otherwise manageable risks like illness or vulnerability to victimization can become fatal.
Erez Raz, a union official and former correctional officer in Alberta, said overcrowding and the “revolving door” of pre-trial detainees made it difficult for correctional officers to keep people safe and created a pressure cooker situation for inmates.
Elizabeth Cromwell alleges that strained environment contributed to her son’s death. Cromwell is suing the Nova Scotia government after her 23-year-old son died of a methadone overdose three years ago while awaiting trial for breaching court conditions on past drug charges.
It isn’t clear how he obtained the methadone, but Cromwell alleges in her lawsuit that the jail where her son died was “overcrowded, understaffed and unsafe.”
The provincial government has denied the allegation, saying the jail “met the standard of care and did not expose Clayton Cromwell to any unusual or actionable risks or dangers.”
ReutersVolkswagen has announced that an “extensive Golf update” will make its world premiere early next month.
Unfortunately, VW hasn’t yet shared any details about this “major update.” Fortunately, we’ve already seen camouflaged versions of the updated Golf R wagon testing on mountain roads and on track. That car has seen few changes to the overall shape, but the we haven’t yet seen the front and rear bumpers, so they’re expected to be new.
That updated Golf R Wagon was also spotted testing against a regular Golf R, which could indicate power and performance improvements for both the wagon and, hopefully, non-wagon Golfs.
Currently in its seventh generation, the Golf has been around for more than 40 years and in that time more than 32,500,000 of them have sold, making it the most successful European car ever.
The Golf is so popular that in Germany, Gen X (people born between the mid ‘60s and ‘80s) is known as Generation Golf.
The people’s car has truly been owned by everyone, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who owned a Mk2, and ex-pope Benedict XVI, who owned a Mk5. Incidentally, his Golf became the most expensive ever when it sold for nearly 189,000 Euros ($208,000) in 2005.
We’ll have more information on the updated Golf when it becomes available.Invisible Hits is a column in which Tyler Wilcox scours the internet for the best (and strangest) bootlegs, rarities, outtakes, and live clips.
In 1974, an unknown band named Television convinced CBGB owner Hilly Kristal to let them take over the club's typically dead Sunday night, unwittingly kicking off New York’s punk scene. Though Television could lay claim to getting there first, the band lagged behind its Bowery peers in actually releasing a full-length LP. Patti Smith's Horses hit stores in 1975, and the self-titled debuts of both Blondie and the Ramones soon followed in ’76. With a volatile lineup and a mercurial frontman in Tom Verlaine, a fan at the time might’ve wondered whether the band would ever get around to painting their masterpiece.
Finally, on February 8, 1977, Television released Marquee Moon—a debut well worth the wait. That month, the NME’s Nick Kent called the album “a 24-carat inspired work of pure genius, a record finely in tune and sublimely arranged with a whole new slant on dynamics.” Other records might wither in the face of such a rave. But 40 years later, Marquee Moon remains a singular achievement that transcends the “punk” label and still sounds fresh. It’s a classic from start to finish.
Looming at Marquee Moon's direct center is the album's title track. Clocking in at just under 10 minutes on the original vinyl release (reissues include the full 10:40 take) and featuring an exploratory Verlaine guitar solo, “Marquee Moon” is miles away from the Ramones’ minimalist rock antics or Blondie’s ironic pop moves. For precedents, we’d have to go back to the expansive West Coast psychedelia of the Paul Butterfield Band’s “East-West” or even the Grateful Dead’s twin epics “Dark Star” and “The Other One”—even if the mid-’70s crowd at CBGB would likely shudder at such comparisons. To celebrate 40 years of “Marquee Moon” and the album it defines, let’s trace the song’s history.
The Ork Loft Rehearsal
Apparently “Marquee Moon” was even less punky when Verlaine first imagined it. “‘Marquee Moon’ was written about three years ago and actually it had 20 verses to it,” he told Melody Maker’s Caroline Coon in 1977. “It’s a song I used to do on acoustic guitar.” But there’s no recorded evidence of this mellow embryonic version. The earliest “Marquee Moon” available to collectors comes from a lo-fi rehearsal tape recorded at Television patron/manager Terry Ork’s loft in early 1974. The interlocking puzzle pieces of the song are roughly in place already: the opening guitar’s unmistakable morse code stutter, a thudding bass pulse (played here by Richard Hell); and guitarist Richard Lloyd’s nagging riff (a subliminal nod to the horns on James Brown’s “I Feel Good”). As with most of the band’s Hell-era recordings (he left the group in early 1975), it’s a ramshackle thing, with helter-skelter rhythms and barely in-tune instruments. But the abbreviated end, with all involved racing towards the finish line behind Verlaine’s shivering solo, hints at the heights they’d reach in the coming years.
The Eno / Williams Demo
Later in 1974, riding a bit of underground hype on both sides of the Atlantic, Television recorded a demo with Brian Eno and Island Records A&R man Richard Williams. The demo didn’t result in a record deal, but it did leave us with an essential (and still officially unreleased) glimpse of what could have been. (For a more detailed dive into these tapes, check out this previous Invisible Hits column.) Ultimately, Verlaine and Lloyd weren’t fans of the overall sound Eno, Williams, and engineer John Fausty cooked up for them, but their “Marquee Moon” is a solid attempt, if not as magisterial as the song would become. The best part comes right after the ascending climax, as Verlaine’s cascading piano washes over the listener; it’s a moment that looks ahead to the more keyboard-heavy approach of Adventure, Television’s sophomore effort.
CBGB 1975-1976
Television earned a devoted audience during their time as regulars at CBGB. But the band wasn’t universally beloved by any means. “[T]hey reminded me so much of the Grateful Dead, just boring solos, y’know,” Lester Bangs complained in conversation reprinted in Richard Meltzer’s A Whore Like All The Rest. “Endless, laborious climbing up in the scales, then get to the top and there’d be a moment of silence and everybody in the crowd would go berserk applauding, ha!” Bangs was likely referring specifically to “Marquee Moon,” which became a fan favorite at CBs as Television began stretching the song well past the 10-minute mark. (It’s actually a bit surprising that the renowned critic didn’t find more to like; he and Verlaine shared a love of raw garage rock and challenging free jazz.) Thanks to crude audience tapes from 1975 and 1976, we can hear “Marquee Moon” come into its own onstage. To my ears, these performances are worthy of berserk applause, as Verlaine and Lloyd’s intertwining guitars shoot off considerable sparks while new bassist Fred Smith and drummer Billy Ficca find a transcendental rhythmic zone beneath them.
Portland 1978
“I make so many mistakes when I play—it’s just that people don’t pick up on them,” Verlaine told Rolling Stone in 1977. “There are any number of ways to get from one place to another on the neck of the guitar that I don’t know about.” Modesty notwithstanding, Verlaine’s six-string skills had deepened considerably by 1978, when Television played its final shows (before ’90s and ’00s reunions, of course). And there was no better showcase for those skills than the nightly ritual of “Marquee Moon,” which usually served as the band’s pre-encore closer. We’ve got a few officially released 1978 performances to choose from: one drawn from the ROIO cassette The Blow-Up, another from a San Francisco FM broadcast. Both are fantastic. But perhaps the finest “Marquee Moon” of all, taped a few days after the San Francisco show in Portland, Ore., remains officially unreleased. Here, the song balloons well past the 17-minute mark, but not a moment is wasted, as Verlaine’s quicksilver solo (with shades of Brit-folk guitar hero Richard Thompson) builds and builds over his cohorts’ fluid backing. If he’s making mistakes, you won’t pick up on them here. And if you listen closely, you might just hear the sound of lightning striking itself.55User Rating: 5 out of 5
Review title of I Am A Stud Pleasantly Surprised
This is a partial review from a few hours of playing since the deal expires soon. I havent played Forza since 2, I found it soulless and the races were too long by the end so I disregarded the series since. I was impressed by this game, the vehicle controls have a sense of fun. There is an easy to access difficulty selector before races that affects the cash you receive. I adjust it as needed to get consistently competitive races because getting the lead first lap and running away with it is no fun. What I liked the most was you can win multiple ways. Every driving game Ive played if your car is a little underpowered, youre done. This game has a great concept: YOU CAN WIN WITH HANDLING! It is so annoying on other games when your car is built for handling so you are a bit slow and the AI still somehow keeps a ridiculous speed through corners. Refreshing.US retailer GameSpot Corp has sold the San Francisco-based publisher and developer Kongregate Inc to the digital entertainment group MTG for $55 million.
Modern Times Group (MTG) has several media brands under their banner and recently acquired InnoGames. This new deal gives MTG a foothold in both the American and European gaming markets.
“This investment is in line with our strategy to invest in relevant, complementary and scalable digital content and communities," said MTG CEO and president, Jorgen Madsen Lindemann. "Online gaming is one of our three digital entertainment verticals, and we are establishing a presence in a gaming industry expected to be worth some USD 130 billion in 2020, of which mobile gaming is the fastest growing segment. We look forward to welcoming the high quality, hugely talented and well proven Kongregate team to MTG.”
"Our vision has always been to nurture the development of indie game developers and the consumer gaming community," said Kongregate co-founder and CEO, Emily Greer. "Our values are all about integrity, collaboration, and most of all, fun. MTG is not only a great partner as we continue to step up our expansion into new gaming platforms and channels, but the right partner because they share our values and commitment to empowering indie development teams to create unique and innovative gaming experiences for consumers across any and all game platforms.”
Kongregate started in 2006 as a browser-based gaming platform before publishing titles for Steam and mobile. The most recent success was AdVenture Capitalist, which has been installed by users over 20 million times since its 2015 release. The company also moved into development after acquiring San Diego studio Ultrabit, who recently made mobile game Office Space: Idle Profits, a tie-in to the cult movie Office Space. GameStop bought Kongregate in 2010 for an undisclosed sum.By: Joe Lami
SANTA CLARA, Calif.–The San Jose Earthquakes earned their second consecutive home win on Sunday Night with an impressive three goal win over the Houston Dynamo. The win for San Jose also marks the fifth straight time the home team takes away at least one point from Buck Shaw Stadium.
The Earthquakes were able to do it without star, Chris Wondolowski, who is on leave for the United States National Team, in which he was named to the World Cup team earlier this week. “The guys are trying to fill the void of not having Wondo, and it clearly worked tonight,” said Earthquakes Head Coach, Mark Watson.
Khari Stephenson lead the charge for the Quakes with two goals, his first two of the season. The first came in the 37th minute after a miscue from the Dynamo lead to an indirect kick for San Jose. After a tap of the ball from teammate, Shea Salinas, Stephenson drilled it into the bottom left corner of the net to take the 1-0 lead. It wouldn’t be until the Second Half until Stephenson scored his second goal. Steven Lenhart created the opportunity by being a pest in the 18-yard box and drawing a foul. Stephenson found the bottom left corner again on the penalty kick in the 58th minute.
Atiba Harris capped off the scoring with his first of the season that came off of a hustle play. On a bouning ball to Houston Goalkeeper Tally Hall, Harris steeped up and applied pressure, beating the keeper to the ball with his head. The ball took a home bounce of the post and found Harris for the tap in.
Houston forced Quakes Goalkeeper, Jon Busch, to come up huge to earn his clean sheet. The Dynamo outshoot the Quakes 13-12 and 6-4 with shots on target. Houston had their best chances come in the 30th and 33rd minutes, as Busch stopped three of the six on target in that span. In the 30th minute, Warren Creavalle headed a cross inside the six-yard box forcing Busch to make the diving save to his right. Only three minutes later, Houston found a header once again in the six-yard box off the head of Will Bruin. Busch made the initial save, but the rebound found the foot of Bruin, where Busch somehow found a way to get in front of that shot as well. “Those two stops kept us in the game,” added Watson. Busch earns his fourth clean sheet of the season in the win.
San Jose earns three points in the win, however remains in sixth place in the Western Conference, only trailing the Colorado Rapids by two points. The Quakes return to the pitch on Saturday, May 31 as they travel to take on FC Dallas.Queen Street Redevelopment Gets Ministers’ Go Ahead
The Transport and Works Scotland (TAWS) Order triggers the latest phase of this ambitious improvement programme which, on completion, will give one of Scotland’s key rail hubs a major facelift.
The main provisions of the Order enable Network Rail to undertake enhancements to accommodate longer trains and the future growth in passenger numbers. On completion the new station will deliver:
• a fully accessible, modern, transport facility;
• improved access to an expanded concourse;
• enhanced aesthetics and passenger facilities in the station;
• increased capacity, walking and circulation space and longer platforms; and
• a station that better serves the needs of passengers and the city.
Humza Yousaf, Minister for Transport and the Islands said:
“The Scottish Government is delivering the most ambitious programme of rail investment ever seen in Scotland, committing over £5 billion across the current funding period. Approval of this TAWS Order allows Network Rail to undertake significant enhancements to Glasgow Queen Street Station.
“This continued investment in our key rail hubs will not only accommodate longer trains and the future growth in passenger numbers, it will also improve the overall service experience. Coupled with new longer, faster, greener Class 385 trains coming later this year and a full fleet refurbishment, we are doing what we can now to deliver a Scottish rail industry for the future, one which encourages even more people opt to get out their cars and onto trains.”The has informed Congress that does not want heavy Indian influence in and will likely turn to China to offset New Delhi's sway in Kabul, the media reported on Monday.
During a recent hearing on at the Senate Armed Services Committee, US intelligence chiefs assessed the situation in the war-torn country, and discussed Pakistan's interests in Kabul, Dawn reported.
The Trump administration is finalising a new policy for and the ongoing consultations in the White House have generated much interest in the US media and think tanks.
Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger recently suggested resuming air strikes on terrorist targets in
Observers in Washington said the Trump administration might do so if terrorists targeted US military personnel and installations in Afghanistan.
" is concerned about international isolation and sees its position through the prism of India's rising status, including New Delhi's expanded foreign outreach and deepening ties to the US," said Intelligence Director Dan Coats, who leads a team of more than a dozen spy agencies, including the and FBI.
"Pakistan will likely turn to China to offset its isolation, empowering a relationship that will help Beijing to project influence in the Indian Ocean," the Dawn quoted Coats as saying.
Coats said Islamabad had failed to curb terrorists in Pakistan and because of this failure, "these groups will present a sustained threat to the US interests in the region and continue to plan and conduct attacks in India and Afghanistan".
"Pakistan desires for Afghanistan some of the same things we want: a safe, secure, stable Afghanistan. One addition -- there is no heavy Indian influence in Afghanistan," said Defence Intelligence Director Lt General Vincent Stewart.
"They view all of the challenges through the lens of an Indian threat to Pakistan. So they hold in reserve terrorist organisations... so that -- if Afghanistan leans towards India, they will no longer be supportive of an idea of a stable and secure Afghanistan that could undermine Pakistan's interests," the General said.
Coats told the Senate committee that despite increased military efforts, the Taliban continues to make gains in Afghanistan.
Senator Joni Kay Ernst, an Illinois Republican, asked the intelligence chiefs to spell out the measures that the US would like Afghanistan's neighbours to take to help stabilise the region.
"I think certainly an evaluation of how we work with Pakistan to address the situation of the harbouring of terrorist groups would be essential to a strategy that affects Afghanistan," Coats replied.
"Because that is potentially a very disrupting situation, putting our own troops at risk and undermining the strategy of dealing with the Taliban and local groups that are trying to undermine the (Afghan) government," Coats said.
"Besides more troops, do we need to implement a different strategy on the ground in Afghanistan?" Senator Ernst asked General Stewart.
"We've got to convince Pakistan if they're harbouring any of the Haqqani network members that it is not in their interest to continue to host Haqqani network," Stewart said.
The General urged the Trump administration to work with Afghanistan's neighbours to go after the 20 terrorist organisations that were still active in the region. "They undermine not just Afghanistan, not just Pakistan, but all of the region."
Stewart also suggested "pushing" Pakistan to do more against the Haqqani network and urged US policymakers to "separate the Taliban from the Pashtun", because Pakistan wanted a Pashtun-dominated Afghanistan.
"So we've got to get the conversation going again with Pakistan about their role in not harbouring any of these terrorists, helping to stabilise Afghanistan," he said.
Stewart said he believed Pakistan still had some influence in bringing Taliban to the table. "So we've got to get them to think about reconciliation, that the status quo is not in their best interest."A key finding in studies of the neurobiology of learning memory is that the amygdala is critically involved in Pavlovian fear conditioning. This is well established in delay-cued and contextual fear conditioning; however, surprisingly little is known of the role of the amygdala in trace conditioning. Trace fear conditioning, in which the CS and US are separated in time by a trace interval, requires the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex. It is possible that recruitment of cortical structures by trace conditioning alters the role of the amygdala compared to delay fear conditioning, where the CS and US overlap. To investigate this, we inactivated the amygdala of male C57BL/6 mice with GABA A agonist muscimol prior to 2-pairing trace or delay fear conditioning. Amygdala inactivation produced deficits in contextual and delay conditioning, but had no effect on trace conditioning. As controls, we demonstrate that dorsal hippocampal inactivation produced deficits in trace and contextual, but not delay fear conditioning. Further, pre- and post-training amygdala inactivation disrupted the contextual but the not cued component of trace conditioning, as did muscimol infusion prior to 1- or 4-pairing trace conditioning. These findings demonstrate that insertion of a temporal gap between the CS and US can generate amygdala-independent fear conditioning. We discuss the implications of this surprising finding for current models of the neural circuitry involved in fear conditioning.
Funding: The authors thank grant support from National Institutes of Health-NIMH/NIDA (RO1MH077111 & RO1DA025922, KML) and JD Raybuck was supported by (T32DA007262, KA Neve). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Public Domain declaration which stipulates that, once placed in the public domain, this work may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose.
To investigate the involvement of the dorsal hippocampus and amygdala in trace fear conditioning, we temporarily inactivated these regions via intra-cranial infusion of muscimol, a GABA A receptor agonist, prior to trace or delay fear conditioning. To further examine amygdala contributions to trace and contextual conditioning, muscimol was infused before or after conditioning and before different trace fear conditioning protocols.
When a CS is paired with a US, typically the US occurs coincident with or immediately after CS offset. This delay-cued fear conditioning results in a strong CS-US association that depends on plasticity largely thought to occur in the amygdala [2]. Insertion of an interval (the trace interval) between the CS and US recruits the dorsal hippocampus (DH), prelimbic cortex (PrL), anterior cingulate cortex, and entorhinal and perirhinal cortices to this trace-cued fear conditioning [7] – [12]. Surprisingly little is known about the contributions of the amygdala to trace fear conditioning [13]. Given the well-documented importance of the amygdala in fear learning, one should expect it to also be critical for trace fear conditioning [13]. However, because of the additional circuitry recruited by trace fear conditioning, it is possible that the amygdala is less critical for the acquisition or consolidation of the trace fear memory. Although the nature of the interaction between the hippocampus and amygdala in contextual fear conditioning is well studied, it is not yet understood how these regions interact to support trace conditioning. One possibility is that the hippocampus maintains a representation of the CS during the trace interval and interacts with cortical regions to assign salience and predictive value to that representation. However, it is not yet clear whether amygdala activity is a critical component of this task. It may be that unlike delay and contextual conditioning, activity in the hippocampus and cortex are sufficient to support acquisition of trace fear conditioning.
A key finding from studies of Pavlovian fear conditioning is that amygdala function is required to associate neutral conditioned stimuli (CSs) with aversive events (unconditioned stimuli; USs). This has been demonstrated in many fear conditioning situations where the neutral stimulus is a discrete stimulus or a physical context. Although there are different theories for the role of the amygdala in this conditioning process (e.g. [1] – [2] ), there is general agreement that the amygdala is involved in some aspect of fear learning. These models have revealed a great deal about the biochemical, genetic, and epigenetic mechanisms involved in the circuitry that underlies fear learning and memory (e.g. [3] – [6] ). However, within this circuitry, there are a number of caveats about the contribution of various structures to different components of this task.
All brains were post-fixed in 4% paraformaldehyde in PBS for at least 24 hours, sliced on a cryostat, mounted and nissl stained with cresyl-violet. Infusion sites were confirmed by observing gliosis along the infusion cannula tracts. All dorsal hippocampal infusions were within target regions and all but three amygdala infusions were within or adjacent to the amygdala, Figure 1. Missed placements were excluded from analysis.
To test for contextual learning, 24 hr following training, mice were placed in the training apparatus, the house light was activated and freezing was assessed for 5 min. To test for cued learning, 48 hr following training mice were placed in the cued-testing apparatus and assessed for generalized freezing for 3 min, followed by two 3 min-long CS presentations separated by a 3 min ITI, followed with a 3 min post-CS period. Freezing was assessed across the entire session, and for analysis the 3 minute, Pre-CS, ITI, and Post-CS periods were combined and reported as “Altered” and the 2 CS presentations were combined and reported as “CS”. Freezing was defined as the absence of all movement except respiration [18], assessed for one second at ten second intervals by an observer unaware of treatment assignments and reported as percent freezing [19].
Separate experiments examined the effects of 1, 2, or 4 trace conditioning trials. Each session began with activation of a house light, 2 minutes after which a 30 s CS was activated, followed 30 s later by a 2 s US presentation [17]. In the two- and four-trial experiments, each CS-US presentation was separated by a variable 90 s inter-trial interval (ITI). After the final trial, mice remained in the chambers for an additional 30 s, after which the houselight was inactivated and mice were returned to their home cages. The session lengths were 3.5, 6.5, and 11.5 min for the one-, two-, and four-trial experiments, respectively.
Mice were anesthetized with isoflurane (2%–5%), mounted in a stereotaxic apparatus (David Kopf Instruments, Tujunga, CA), and the scalp was scrubbed and excised to expose the skull. Holes were drilled for anterior and lateral coordinates; guide cannulae were lowered into place with the stereotaxic, to match D/V coordinates; and permanently secured with dental cement [15]. DH coordinates were A/P -1.7, M/L 1.5, D/V -2.3 mm and amygdala coordinates were A/P -1.46, M/L 3.1, D/V -4.8 mm from bregma [16]. Stainless steel stylets were inserted into the cannulae to maintain patency during the 5 day post-surgical recovery period.
Training and testing for contextual conditioning was conducted in 21.5 cm circular plexiglas chambers described in [14]. An 85 dB CS was administered through a sound generator (Coulbourn Instruments, Whitehall, PA), and a 0.35 mA footshock US was administered through the rod floor with a shock scrambler/generator (Coulbourn). To provide a distinct olfactory cue the apparatus was wiped down with 0.1% acetic acid prior to conditioning or testing sessions. Training and context testing sessions were controlled by an IBM-PC running Graphic State software (Coulbourn). Testing for cued conditioning was conducted in rectangular conditioning chambers (Med-Associates, St. Albans, VT) with white Plexiglas floors, situated in sound attenuating cubicles. These chambers were located in a room different from the conditioning room. CS was generated with ANL-926 (Med) and administered through speakers mounted on the left wall of the chambers, controlled by an IBM-PC running MED-PC 4 (Med). The altered context was cleaned with 70% ethanol. In both contexts ventilation fans provided 65dB background noise.
Muscimol (Sigma-Aldrich, St. Louis, MO) in 0.25 ul PBS, was infused at 0, 0.25, or 0.5 ug/side at a rate of 0.25 µl/min through stainless steel cannulae into the DH (26 g) or amygdala (33 g). The infusion cannulae were attached with PE50 to Hamilton syringes (Hamilton, Reno, NV) controlled by a microinfusion pump. Injection cannulae were left in place for 30 s after infusion.
These studies used 159, 8–12 week old, male C57Bl6/J mice, individually housed in standard colony cages, maintained on a 12/12 hour light/dark cycle. All animals received ad lib food and water, and all studies were authorized by the Oregon Health & Science University Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (Protocol ID B11039) and conducted in accordance with the ethical guidelines of the Society for Neuroscience and the National Institutes of Health.
To determine if the effects of muscimol infusion into the amygdala on contextual learning were due to interference with processes related to acquisition, such as locomotor activity during training, muscimol or vehicle was infused into the amygdala 20 min pre- or immediately post-training ( Figure 3C ). In this study, all groups received muscimol or vehicle infusion both pre- and post-training, to equate handling conditioning between groups [21]. Thus the “vehicle” group received two vehicle infusions, the “pre-training” group received muscimol pre- and vehicle post-training, and the “post-training” group received vehicle pre- and muscimol post-training. Muscimol infusion pre- or post-training produced deficits in contextual learning [F(2,16) = 15.9, p<0.005], but had no effect on CS or Altered freezing. Post-hoc tests showed that mice receiving pre- or post-training muscimol froze significantly less to the context than vehicle controls.
( A ) Inactivation of the amygdala prior to 1-pairing or ( B ) 4-pairing trace fear conditioning produces deficits in the contextual component but does not affect the cued component or freezing to an altered context. Additionally, comparison of sham and vehicle groups demonstrates that infusion of vehicle into the amygdala produces deficits in contextual but not trace conditioning and does not affect freezing to an altered context. ( C ) Inactivation of the amygdala 20-minutes pre-training or immediately post-training produced deficits in the contextual but not the cued component of 2-pairing trace fear conditioning, and did not affect freezing to an altered context. Subjects per group from top to bottom by panel, were: A 4, 6, 6; B 4, 4, 5; C 4, 6, 6. Data represented as Mean ± SEM, * denotes significant difference from vehicle control group.
To determine if the lack of effect of amygdala inactivation on trace fear conditioning was particular to a 2-pairing trace fear conditioning protocol, mice received 1-pairing ( Figure 3A ) or 4-pairing ( Figure 3B ) trace fear conditioning. There were significant effects of infusion on contextual conditioning in both 1-pairing [F(2,13) = 23.4, p<0.005] and 4-pairing [F(2,10) = 90.4, p<0.005] but no effects on CS or Altered freezing in either task. Post-hoc analysis showed that in both 1-pairing and 4-pairing experiments muscimol infusion prior to training produced deficits in contextual freezing compared to vehicle or sham treated groups, and that vehicle infusion produced deficits compared to sham controls. These results suggest that the effects of amygdala inactivation on fear conditioning generalize across multiple protocols.
Infusion into the amygdala prior to delay fear conditioning affected contextual [F(2,13) = 56.1, p<0.005] and CS [F(2,13) = 148.6, p<0.005], but not Altered freezing ( Figure 2C ). Post-hoc analysis showed that inactivation of the amygdala produced deficits in contextual and CS freezing compared to vehicle or sham controls, and that vehicle infusion produced deficits in CS freezing compared to sham controls, confirming that the amygdala is critically involved in acquisition of contextual and delay fear learning.
Infusion into the DH prior to 2-pairing trace conditioning affected contextual [F(2,21) = 52.0, p<0.005] and CS [F(2,21) = 41.7, p<0.005], but not Altered freezing ( Figure 2B ). Post-hoc analysis revealed that in both contextual and CS freezing muscimol infused mice froze significantly less than vehicle controls, and that vehicle infusion significantly impaired contextual learning compared to sham controls, while a trend toward a deficit was observed in CS freezing. These results demonstrate that vehicle infusion into the DH disrupts contextual learning, and that inactivation of the DH with muscimol disrupts both contextual and trace-cued fear learning compared to vehicle controls.
Infusion of muscimol into the DH disrupts acquisition/consolidation of trace ( B ) and contextual ( A & B ) but not delay conditioning ( B ), while muscimol infusion into the amygdala disrupts delay ( C ) and contextual ( C & D ), but not trace conditioning ( D ). These results suggest that the amygdala may be differently involved in trace conditioning than in contextual and delay conditioning. Additionally, deficits in vehicle compared to sham in contextual ( A, B, C & D ) and CS freezing ( B & C ) show that disruption of DH or amygdala can interfere with conditioning. Subjects per group from top to bottom by panel, were: ( A ) 4, 6, 6; ( B ) 4, 6, 6; ( C ) 8, 8, 8; ( D ) 7, 14, 6, 12. Data represented as Mean ± SEM, * denotes significant difference from vehicle control group.
Infusion into the DH prior to 2-pairing delay conditioning disrupted contextual fear conditioning [F(2,13) = 19.1, p<0.005] but not Altered or CS freezing. Post-hoc analysis of contextual freezing demonstrated that vehicle-treated mice froze significantly less than sham-treated controls, and muscimol-treated mice froze less to context exposure than vehicle-treated mice or sham controls ( Figure 2A ). These results demonstrate that perturbation of the DH by vehicle infusion produces small deficits in contextual learning during delay fear conditioning, and that inactivation of this brain region with muscimol produces large deficits in contextual learning, confirming that the DH is critical to contextual but not delay fear conditioning.
Discussion
The key finding from our results is that inactivation of the amygdala did not affect acquisition or consolidation of trace fear conditioning, even though delay and contextual fear conditioning were impaired. Further, inactivation of the DH impaired trace and contextual conditioning, but did not affect delay conditioning. Together, these findings suggest that insertion a temporal gap between the CS and the US allows amygdala-independent fear conditioning to occur. The dissociation between hippocampal and amygdala involvement in trace and delay fear conditioning in our experiments is evident in Figure 4, which summarizes these key findings.
PPT PowerPoint slide
PowerPoint slide PNG larger image
larger image TIFF original image Download: Figure 4. Double dissociation of effects of muscimol infusion on 2-pairing trace and delay cued freezing. Inactivation of the DH with muscimol produces deficits in trace but not delay conditioned CS freezing, while inactivation of the amygdala produces deficits in delay but not trace conditioned CS freezing. These findings suggest that amygdala independent circuitry can support trace fear conditioning.
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[Pauses]Rich people are great survivors and, by nature, they fall into two categories--those who have inherited and those who've made it. Those who have inherited and chosen not to do anything are generally very timid, afraid of losing what they've got, and who can blame them? Others are great risk takers and produce a hell of a lot more or go bust.Merv is a good guy who I have really just gotten to know; we were both judges on the Miss America Pageant after our deal. I don't want to bug him, but prior to buying Resorts, he was telling everybody what a great deal he made and, by inference, what a bad deal Trump made.Well, let's just say he didn't out-Trump Trump. He has a huge amount of debt. But he is very efficient and has very good PR people. Business Week wrote a story titled How Donald Taught Merv the Art of the Deal. I was angry. And equally angry when People and Time magazines, with no goddamned research and no knowledge, incompetently reported that Merv had bested Donald. Can you imagine? They didn't do any research. They just listened to PR people. Well, now they know the truth and have asked about following up or correcting stories. I said, "Forget it--it doesn't matter."I love the creative process. I do what I do out of pure enjoyment. Hopefully, nobody does it better. There's a beauty to making a great deal. It's my canvas. And I like painting it.
I like the challenge and tell the story of the coal miner's son. The coal miner gets black-lung disease, his son gets it, then his son. If I had been the son of a coal miner, I would have left the damn mines. But most people don't have the imagination--or whatever--to leave their mine. They don't have "it."
Which is?
"It" is an ability to become an entrepreneur, a great athlete, a great writer. You're either born with it or you're not. Ability can be honed, perfected or neglected. The day Jack Nicklaus came into this world, he had more innate ability to play golf than anybody else.
You obviously have a lot of self-confidence. How do you use that in a business deal?
I believe in positive thinking, but I also believe in the power of negative thinking. You should prepare for the worst. If I'm doing a deal, I want to know how bad it's going to be if everything doesn't work rather than how good it's going to be. I have a positive outlook, but I'm unfortunately also quite cynical. So if all the negatives happened, what would my strategy be? Would I want to be in that position? If I don't, I don't do the deal. My attitude is to focus on the down side because the up side will always take care of itself. If a deal is going to be great, it's just a question of, How much am I going to make?
How far are you willing to push adversaries? I will demand anything I can get. When you're doing business, you take people to the brink of breaking them without having them break, to the maximum point their heads can handle--without breaking them. That's the sign of a good businessman: Somebody else would take them fifteen steps beyond their breaking point.
What if your pushing results in losing the deal?
Then I pushed him too far. I would have made a mistake. But I don't. I push to the maximum of what he can stand and I get a better deal than he gets.
Another aspect of your deal making is how you handle the media. You managed to suppress an unflattering TV documentary about you funded by your archnemesis, [New York businessman and publisher] Leonard Stern. Do you also claim victory over him?
Total victory, yes. But I don't want to dwell on triumph or defeat.
That may sound magnanimous, but, in fact, you're known to exact revenge on people you think have tried to pull something on you.
I think I'm fair, not tough, in business. But if somebody is trying to do an injustice to me, I fight back harder than anybody I know. When somebody tries to harm you or your family, you have an absolute right to fight back.
Do you hate Stern?
No. Stern is a nonentity to me. He obviously dislikes me enough to spend close to a million dollars trying to make a negative documentary
You have a lot of enemies in New York City, among them a group that opposes your building a huge Trump City on the Hudson that will include the world's tallest building--on the theory that it will ruin the West Side and cause unbearable congestion. What do you say to them?
Point one: There were more people living on the West Side of New York in the Forties than there are today. Very few people understand that. Point two: Trump City is going to be an architectural masterpiece. Point three: The city desperately needs the taxes, the housing and the shopping that will produce billions of dollars in revenue. Yet that community group [West Pride] fights every job.
Those people fight for the sake of fighting. I honestly believe that if I proposed an eighty-acre park, they would come out and fight me. Selfishly, they like what they have and don't want to give it to anybody else. We need another Rockefeller Center--especially now that Mitsubishi has bought most of the one we had.
Among other things, West Pride claims the largest building in the world would cast a mammoth shadow across the West Side, blocking out light and wrecking the ambience of the neighborhood.
[Angrily] Every building casts a shadow, for God's sake! I want this job to be dramatic. I strive for that. I don't want it to be contextual, blending into everything else. It shouldn't be like getting a haircut and telling the barber I don't want anyone to know I've gotten one. I am competing here with the state of New Jersey, which is sucking the life-blood out of New York City. They're beating us up. Trump City would take the play away from the development of the New Jersey waterfront. There will be nothing in New York to compete with Trump City!
So you're going to build it, come what may?
I'll build it, though it may not be now. I'll wait until things get bad in the city, because every city in every nation has its ups and downs. If I had tried to get the zoning for Trump City in 1975, I would have gotten everything I wanted, because the city was absolutely at a low point. I may now wait for construction to stop, for interest rates to go up--then the city will desperately need Trump City.
You often say that the key to your success is being a good deal maker and a good manager. Why?
I've seen great deal makers go down the tubes because they haven't known how to manage what they've had. Take [Saudi financier indicted for a felony] Adnan Khashoggi: He was a great deal maker but a bad businessman. Time will tell if Merv is a good manager. He is going to have to be.
When you were growing up in Queens, your father was supposedly a harsh taskmaster. It has been theorized that your father instilled in you a great sense of inadequacy. True?
That's one hundred percent wrong. I was always very much accepted by my father. He adored Donald Trump and I've always known that. But I did want to prove to my father and other people that I had the ability to be successful on my own.
You've often said that your father made you work as a teenager and taught you the value of the buck.
My father never made me work. I liked to work during summers. I don't understand these teenagers who sit home watching television all day. Where's their appetite for competition? Working was in my genes.
Still, your father was one tough son of a bitch, wasn't he?
He was a strong, strict father, a no-nonsense kind of guy, but he didn't hit me. It wasn't what he'd ever say to us, either. He ruled by demeanor, not the sword. And he never scared or intimidated me.
Your older brother, Fred, who died from heart failure brought on by acute alcoholism, had a more difficult time with him, didn't he?
Take one environment and it will work completely differently on different children. Our family environment, the competitiveness, was a negative for Fred. It wasn't easy for him being cast in a very tough environment, and I think it played havoc on him.
I was very close to him and it was very sad when he died... toughest situation I've had....
What did you learn from his experience?
[Pauses] Nobody has ever asked me that. But his death affected everything that has come after it.... I think constantly that I never really gave him thanks for it. He was the first Trump boy out there, and I subconsciously watched his moves.
And the lesson?
I saw people really taking advantage of Fred and the lesson I learned was always to keep up my guard one hundred percent, whereas he didn't. He didn't feel that there was really reason for that, which is a fatal mistake in life. People are too trusting. I'm a very untrusting guy. I study people all the time, automatically; it's my way of life, for better or worse.
Why?
I am very skeptical about people; that's self-preservation at work. I believe that, unfortunately, people are out for themselves. At this point, it's to many people's advantage to like me. Would the phone stop ringing, would these people kissing ass disappear if things were not going well?
I enjoy testing friendship.... Everything in life to me is a psychological game, a series of challenges you either meet or don't. I am always testing people who work for me.
How?
I will send people around to my buyers to test their honesty by offering them trips and other things. I've been surprised that some people least likely to accept a trip from a contractor did and some of the most likely did not. You can never tell until you test; the human species is interesting in that way. So to me, friendship can be really tested only in bad times.
I instinctively mistrust many people. It is not a negative in my life but a positive. Playboy wouldn't be talking to me today if I weren't a cynic. So I learned that from Fred, and I owe him a lot.... He could have ultimately been a happy guy, but things just went the unhappy way.
How large a role does pure ego play in your deal making and enjoyment of publicity?
Every successful person has a very large ego.
Every successful person? Mother Teresa? Jesus Christ?
Far greater egos than you will ever understand.
And the Pope?
Absolutely. Nothing wrong with ego. People need ego, whole nations need ego. I think our country needs more ego, because it is being ripped off so badly by our so-called allies; i.e., Japan, West Germany, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, etc. They have literally outegotized this country, because they rule the greatest money machine ever assembled and it's sitting on our backs. Their products are better because they have so much subsidy.
We Americans are laughed at around the world for losing a hundred and fifty billion dollars year after year, for defending wealthy nations for nothing, nations that would be wiped off the face of the earth in about fifteen minutes if it weren't for us. Our "allies" are making billions screwing us.
How do you feel about Japan's economic pre-eminence?
Japan gets almost seventy percent of its oil from the Persian Gulf, relies on ships led back home by our destroyers, battleships, helicopters, frog men. Then the Japanese sail home, where they give the oil to fuel their factories so that they can knock the hell out of General Motors, Chrysler and Ford. Their openly screwing us is a disgrace. Why aren't they paying us? The Japanese cajole us, they bow to us, they tell us how great we are and then they pick our pockets. We're losing hundreds of billions of dollars a year while they laugh at our stupidity.
The Japanese have their great scientists making cars and VCRs and we have our great scientists making missiles so we can defend Japan. Why aren't we being reimbursed for our costs? The Japanese double-screw the U.S., a real trick: First they take all our money with their consumer goods, then they put it back in buying all of Manhattan. So either way, we lose.
You're opposed to Japanese buying real estate in the U.S.?
I have great respect for the Japanese people and list many of them as great friends. But, hey, if you want to open up a business in Japan, good luck. It's virtually impossible. But the Japanese can buy our buildings, our Wall Street firms, and there's virtually nothing to stop them. In fact, bidding on a building in New York is an act of futility, because the Japanese will pay more than it's worth just to screw us. They want to own Manhattan.
Of course, I shouldn't even be complaining about it, because I'm one of the big beneficiaries of it. If I ever wanted to sell any of my properties, I'd have a field day. But it's an embarrassment, I give great credit to the Japanese and their leaders, because they have made our leaders look totally second rate.
A group of Japanese visitors to New York was recently asked if there were anything in the U.S. they would like to buy. The answer: towels.
That's fair trade: They'll take the towels and we'll buy their cars. It doesn't sound like a good deal to me. They have totally outsmarted the American politician; they have no respect for us, because they're getting a free ride. Of course, it's not just the Japanese or the Europeans--the Saudis, the Kuwaitis walk all over us.
The Arabs also spend plenty of money in your casinos, don't they?
They lose a million, two million at the tables and they're so happy because they had such a great weekend. If you lost a million dollars, you'd be sick for the rest of your life, maybe. They write me letters telling me what a wonderful time they had.
You have taken out full-page ads in several major newspapers that not only concern U.S. foreign trade but call for the death penalty, too. Why?
Because I hate seeing this country go to hell. We're laughed at by the rest of the world. In order to bring law and order back into our cities, we need the death penalty and authority given back to the police. I got fifteen thousand positive letters on the death-penalty ad. I got ten negative or slightly negative ones.
You believe in an eye for an eye?
When a man or woman cold-bloodedly murders, he or she should pay. It sets an example. Nobody can make the argument that the death penalty isn't a deterrent. Either it will be brought back swiftly or our society will rot away. It is rotting away.
For a man so concerned about our crumbling cities, some would say you've done little for crumbling Atlantic City besides pull fifty million dollars a week out of tourists' pockets.
Elected officials have that responsibility. I would hate to think that people blame me for the problems of the world. Yet people come to me and say, "Why do you allow homelessness in the cities?" as if I control the situation. I am not somebody seeking office.
What about using your influence in Atlantic City to help the disadvantaged?
Everybody has influence, but it is a Governmental problem. I take out those ads to wake up the Government about how Japan and others are ripping our country apart—
Wait. Doesn't it seem that with all your influence in Atlantic City you could do more to combat crime and corruption and put something back into the community?
Well, crime and prostitution go up, and Atlantic City administrations are into very deep trouble with the law, and there are lots of problems there, no question about it. But there is a tremendous amount of money going to housing from the profits of the casinos.
As somebody who runs hotels, all I can do, when you get right down to it, is run the best places, bring in as much money as possible, which in turn goes out for taxes. I contribute millions a year to various charities. Finally, by law, I'm not allowed to have Governmental influence; but if they passed legislation that allowed me to get more involved, I'd be very happy to do it. In the meantime, I have the most incredible hotels in the world in Atlantic City. The Taj Mahal will be beyond belief. And if I can awaken the government of Atlantic City, I have performed a great service.
We've talked about building low-income housing; what have you done about that in other locations?
I did that during the years I worked with my father; I did build both low-income housing and housing for the elderly. And now I'm going to be building more of it. The problem is, that stuff never gets written about.
On the other hand, you were invited to consider building a luxury hotel in Moscow a few years ago. What was your trip to Moscow like?
It was not long after the Korean plane was shot down over Russia. There I am up in my plane when my pilot announces, "We are now flying over the Soviet Union," and I'm thinking to myself, What the hell am I doing here?
Then I look out the window and see two Russian fighter planes... I later found out, guiding us in. I had insisted on having two Russian colonels flying with me--I felt safer, and my pilot doesn't speak great Russian, which is putting it mildly, and I didn't want problems in radio communications.
Once you got to Moscow, how did the negotiations go?
I told them, "Guys, you have a basic problem. Far as real estate is concerned, it's impossible to get title to Russian land, since the government owns it all. What kind of financing are you gonna get on a building where the land is owned by the goddamned motherland?"
They said, "No problem, Mr. Trump. We will work out lease arrangements."
I said, "I want ownership, not leases."
They came up with a solution: "Mr. Trump, we form a committee with ten people, of which seven are Russian and three are your representatives, and all disputes will be resolved in this manner."
I thought to myself, Shit, seven to three--are we dealing in the world of the make-believe here or what?Meet (10199) Chariklo. It's an asteroid-like object that's a little more than 90 miles in diameter. It orbits the sun between Jupiter and Neptune. And like its giant gas neighbors, it has rings. Asteroids have rings, too! (Go and brush your shoulders off.)
This is the first time any object besides a Solar System gas giant—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune—has been found to have rings. Chariklo is technically a centaur, one of many centaurs that orbit between Jupiter and Neptune and have both asteroid-like and comet-like properties, which makes them a bit of a mystery. Asteroids and comets are distinguished by where they were formed and what they are made of; Chariklo, the largest of the centaurs, happens to be is more asteroid-like.
Astronomers now think Chariklo has two flat, dense, thin rings, about 4.3 miles (7 kilometers) and 2 miles in width, with a 5.5-mile gap between them. The rings likely have ice in them.
An international team of astronomers determined that Chariklo has rings after observing it cross in front of a star on June 3, 2013. Such events, called occultations, are good opportunities for astronomers to learn about celestial bodies because they can see how the object they're studying blocks light from the star behind it.
On June 3, the Chariklo-observing team gathered data from telescopes in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Chile. The astronomers were seeking to determine Chariklo's shape and to measure its size more exactly. They ended up learning much more.Putting pressure on an already lousy job market, the mass layoff is making a comeback. In the past week, Cisco, Lockheed Martin and Borders announced a combined 23,000 in job cuts. (See: Another Retailer Bites the Dust: Borders Doomed by Amazon Deal, Davidowitz Says)
Those announcements follow 41,432 in planned cuts in June, up 11.6% from May and 5.3% vs. a year earlier, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
Meanwhile, state and local governments have cut 142,000 jobs this year, The WSJ reports, and Wall Street is braced for another round of cutbacks. This week, Goldman Sachs announced plans to let go 1000 fixed-income traders.
If these trends continue, we may soon be talking about losses in the monthly employment data -- not just disappointing growth, says Howard Davidowitz, CEO of Davidowitz & Associates
"Everything in business is confidence," Davidowitz says. "You lose confidence and businesses can't deal with that [and] who could have confidence with what's going on in Washington?"
Davidowitz is bipartisan in his criticism, calling the U.S. political system "dysfunctional and deranged." (See: "A Bunch of Morons in Washington": Howard Davidowitz Handicaps the Debt Ceiling Debate)
Still, the restructuring expert is a longtime and vocal critic of President Obama: "There has never been in a situation in my lifetime where a guy increases the debt by 40%, GDP growth is on the way down, Food Stamps are up, millions more are unemployed -- and to accomplish this we spent $4 trillion."
But it's an open question whether any president or policy mix could do much to revive the economy after the bursting of the credit bubble.
In This Time is Different, co-authors Ken Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart demonstrate that financial crises are typically followed by severe recessions, slow recoveries, subpar growth and greater frequency of recessions in the decade following the crisis. (See: Bernanke In Denial About Economy's Fate, Vincent Reinhart Says)
"No one believes the economy, Obama or not, is going to improve," my Breakout colleague Jeff Macke says in the accompanying clip. "Time [is] the only thing that heals."
What do you think?
Aaron Task is the host of The Daily Ticker. You can follow him on Twitter at @atask or email him at [email protected] who have been holding off on purchasing a PlayStation 3 console while they wait for bundle deals are in for a pleasant surprise next week. Sony Computer Entertainment Australia today announced that from October 23 onwards all customers who buy a PS3 will receive a copy of Little Big Planet at no cost. The promotion start date also coincides with the game's Australian retail release.
The announcement was made today during a Sony media event, and though no firm ending date has been confirmed by the company, it's expected to last well into the Christmas period. A Sony spokesperson told GameSpot AU that gamers will receive their copy of LBP in-store at the same time as they receive their console.
The PS3 isn't the only console to receive a Christmas bonus with the upcoming PSP-3000 handheld coming bundled with a copy of Lego Batman for A$339.95 ($325.25). The PSP-3000 hardware will also be available on its own for A$319.95 ($221.45).
Official console sales figures from data trackers GfK Australia are few and far between, but Sony used today's event to announce its latest hardware install base figures for the Aussie market. Sony claims that there are currently 385,000 PlayStation 3 consoles in Australian homes--75,000 of which were given away during recent Bravia television promotions and are not included in industry sales figures. Sony Computer Entertainment Australia managing director Michael Ephraim also predicted that by January 2009, the PlayStation 3's s total install base would exceed 500,000 units in Australia.On Saturday, the Houthi forces – backed by the Yemeni Army’s 33rd and 48th brigades of the Republican Guard – liberated a large chunk of territory between the cities of Taiz and Dhubab after launching a counter-attack against the Saudi-led Coalition.
According to the Yemeni news site “Al-Jabhat“, over 80 enemy combatants were killed during the Houthi/Republican Guard counter-assault on Saturday, marking another stunning defeat for the Saudi-Coalition in Taiz.
Among the dead fighters from the Saudi-led Coalition and National Army (Hadi loyalists) was Brigade General Mohammad ‘Abdullah Al-‘Aouni of the 35th Brigade.
Prior to the counter-assault by the Houthis and Yemeni Army, the Saudi Coalition and Al-Qaeda were on the offensive in Taiz; however, they were only able to make minimal gains, despite conducting several attacks inside the provincial capital.
Advertisementsthesocialjusticedragons:
unicornlordart:
bikiniarmorbattledamage: Have we mentioned that we’re really enjoying this trend of swapping out models to highlight disparity in gender representation? Because we are! We’d also like to thank @doctorsanity for sharing this wonderfully empowering gif with us after brave souls went to combat creator decisions censorship and discovered the games’ true potential! Now that’s empowerment! - wincenworks >tries to show gender disparity.
>shows the moves are exactly same as guys, the only difference is laura’s a bit flirty.
welp. I mean, if anything, it proves R. Mika’s ass was censor solely because she’s a woman. Ryu would’ve just been called a jokey character.
So, remind me again, isn’t this the same fighting franchise with just about as many idealized men fighting in revealing clothing as the female characters, one literally in a speedo and another with the same wrestling shtick as Mika but with more exposure, and one man in particular attacks by oiling himself up and using the lubrication to squeeze-slide opponents into walls?
Also,isn’t like the one purely fat person (a guy) in this franchise one of the joke characters? I wonder why we don’t hear much about his jiggling being the point of comedy.
… Oh wait, nevermind, I know why.
–Mod GriauleA week of significant hearings in the Aurora theater shooting case begins behind closed doors Monday, as prosecutors and defense attorneys argue over issues of mental health and the death penalty.
The purpose of the first four days of hearings is to determine whether James Holmes will be told to undergo another court-ordered psychiatric evaluation. Prosecutors are challenging the first evaluation by alleging that the doctor who performed it was biased.
They want Arapahoe County District Court Judge Carlos Samour to order Holmes to undergo an evaluation by two prosecution experts, which defense attorneys argue would violate constitutional protections against self-incrimination.
The evaluations are critical because Holmes has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. Juries often agree with the findings of the court-ordered evaluation when deciding a verdict.
“The information that will be discussed at the hearing goes to the heart of the case,” Samour wrote in an earlier order about this week’s hearings.
The results of the first evaluation have not been revealed, and to keep them secret until trial, Samour closed the hearings on the evaluation to the public and to victims of the theater attack. Defense attorneys have previously filed a motion claiming the evaluation shows Holmes is too mentally ill to be sentenced to death.
A hearing on Friday, though, will be open to the public. Then, defense attorneys are expected to argue that information gleaned from complex crime-scene reconstruction techniques should not be admitted at trial. In a motion, the defense argued that opinions derived from blood-spatter evidence, bullet-trajectory calculations and 3-D imaging are unreliable.
Most of the prosecution’s motion response has been sealed.
Holmes could face the death penalty if convicted of murder in the shooting deaths of 12 people at the Century Aurora 16 theater.The Japanese learning industry has, for all intents and purposes, failed you. It's not your fault that learning kanji is like hitting your face on a curb, it's the industry as a whole. Sure, there are pockets here and there that are pretty smart about it, but they tend to be small and nobody really knows about them. Most likely, you know what your teachers says about kanji, or what Rosetta Stone Japanese (doesn't) say about kanji, or what your textbook throws at you… But, here's the problem, though: You're learning kanji from native Japanese speakers, and they have no idea what it's like to learn kanji anymore (and even if they do, they just emulate the way Japanese school children learn kanji), which really just doesn't work.
The Japanese learning industry, on a whole, has failed us when it comes to kanji learning. But, you can learn from their mistakes, and in doing so, learn how to fix the way you learn kanji.
FAILURE #1: You Learn Kanji Stroke By Stroke By Stroke…
Sure, there's something to be said about learning correct stroke order. I'm all for that, but the problem is that it ends up putting emphasis on learning kanji stroke by stroke by stroke. When kanji is simple, it's easy to learn this way. Three strokes? Only three things to learn. Huzzah! But, when you start out learning kanji like this (i.e. when you think of kanji as a bunch of separate strokes), you keep learning kanji like this. That's why in most Japanese classes, when the kanji homework goes out, people automatically see how many strokes a kanji has. "I know a 20-stroke kanji, I'm impressive!" people think. No. You're not. Thinking this way is unimpressive. Thinking of kanji as a bunch of strokes is inefficient. A 20-stroke kanji = 20+ different things you have to remember. If you think of a kanji as individual strokes making up the whole, then you've already failed. So how should you think of kanji, then?
FAILURE #2: You Don't Learn Your Kanji Radicals
Oh sure, you might learn a few radicals here and there, like the water radical (just a few little strokes next to a kanji). "If you see this," the kanji resource says, "you'll know that this kanji probably has something to do with water." For the most part, though, radicals are a distant afterthought in the kanji-learning world, and this is a huge mistake. Most people teach radicals (if they teach them at all) as a method for looking up kanji in a paper dictionary. When's the last time you used one of those? It's probably been a while. Thank you smartphones.
Instead, learning radicals should be treated like building blocks. Remember how I said kanji should not be learned stroke-by-stroke? More complicated kanji should be put together radical-by-radical. If you take the time to learn the 200-250 kanji radicals (it may seem like a lot, but it's really a pretty quick process), you can put a fairly complicated kanji together in 3, maybe 4 steps. Think of radicals like the ABCs of English. You can't put together the English word FAILURE if you don't know the letters F-A-I-L-U-R-E, right? If you didn't know those letters, and just wrote the words FAILURE by trying to mimic those weird letter shapes — and did that 2000 times — you would be in trouble. Learning radicals is like learning the letters of the alphabet (admittedly at a much bigger scale). Still, you cut down on the memorization required for every single kanji by 300-800%. Here's an example:
Now, this kanji isn't particularly difficult, but you get the drift. Learning this kanji stroke-by-stroke would set you back eight steps (because there are eight strokes). Instead, let's take a look at the radicals that make this kanji up. If you learn all the kanji radicals (or, at least the ones I recommend), putting this particular kanji together can be done in a mere 3 steps, depending on which radicals you use. That's a 260% less to learn which means you're saving valuable time and brain-space.
As you can see, these three "radicals" can be put together (like letters in a word) to create the kanji above. The first one (止) makes up the top portion, the second one (小) takes up the bottom, and the third (ノ) rounds it out. The best part is that you associate these radicals with names and concepts, which means you can come up with some kind of mnemonic story to help you remember what goes where (more on mnemonics below).
In summary, everyone should learn their radicals before even thinking about learning kanji. If you don't, it's like building a highrise with no foundation, or like learning to read English without memorizing the ABCs.
Failure #3: You Memorize Instead of Acquire
Good things can be said about repetition and "memorization." I think they're a necessary part of kanji learning, but everything has it's limits (and you can use all the help you can get when it comes to kanji). One of the problems I have with the "normal" way people have you learn kanji is that they give you 10-20 kanji, sit you down with a kanji worksheet, and have you write the kanji over and over again (and of course, the focus is on the number of strokes, right?).
The problem, though, is with our brains. First of all, there's only so much information (or so many steps) we can fit in our short term memory. That means as soon as you move on to the next kanji, there's a good chance you're already forgetting the one before it. Another problem is that with too much repetition, our brains switch to autopilot. At that point you aren't learning any more, you're just going through the motions. To solve this, there are a couple of solutions.
SOLUTION A) First of all, don't think of the kanji as strokes, think of them as particles. This will help you learn more effectively (and get the information in your long term memory more quickly). When you're practicing, think of the individual radicals that you're writing, and how they go together to form the whole kanji. The more you do this, the faster you'll be able to learn kanji.
SOLUTION B) Don't write a single kanji more than three times in a row. If you have multiple kanji to practice, switch back and forth and go back to previous ones. Come up with some kind of pattern. I would recommend something like this. Each letter represents a kanji, and each time it shows up it should be written for practice: A, A, A, B, B, B, A, B, C, C, C, A, B, C, D, D, D, A, B, C, D, E, E, E… etc. When you run out of space for "A" kanji, you would just start at "B" the next time around. This way you are forcing your brain to actually think and process the information, instead of hitting autopilot the moment you've written a kanji for the 4th or 5th time.
SOLUTION C) Apply some kind of mnemonic strategy to your kanji. Mnemonics help you to remember things. They basically leave hints in your brain that when seen trigger another memory, which really helps you to remember kanji more effectively. One way to do this is to come up with "stories" for your kanji. If you've learned the kanji radicals, it is pretty easy to do. If you take the example above (ho 歩 （ ほ ） ), we can use the three radicals to come up with a story to help us remember whatever it is we want to remember. The radical examples below are ones I've given meaning to. You can come up with your own meanings if you want to, or use a set that someone else has developed.
止 is a radical that means STOP 小 is a radical that means SMALL ノ is a radical that means SLIDE So, we can use these three concepts / words and put them together in a way that helps us remember that the kanji 歩 means "walk." Here's one: "Stop! It's a small slide. We will walk from here" (you know, because zombies hang around slides). As long as you know the radicals already, the hints to trigger this little "story" will be right in the kanji, every time you see it.
Of course, we could get even more in depth with it and start associating emotion as well as our senses. This gets into the concept of creating "flashbulb memories" for yourself (these are memories your brain produces during traumatic or incredible events, that's why you remember where you were, say, when you learned about 9/11). By imagining the emotion you felt when you saw the small slide, or the smell of the aluminum, or perhaps even the shock you felt when you saw how small it was, you can make this memory a lot stronger by tricking your brain into thinking it was really important. The more senses or emotions you associate with it (you really have to imagine they're happening, though!), the more likely you are to remember. This may seem like a lot of work at first, but it actually gets quite quick and easy as you practice.
You can even take this a step further and learn the pronunciation of the kanji like this as well. Once you know the meaning of the kanji, you can learn the pronunciation using a similar strategy. For the kanji 歩 （ ）, the most common on-yomi for this kanji is ほ (ho). When you know this, you can come up with another story that uses "ho" in it. Maybe something like: "When you walk around, be careful about stepping on a hoe (ほ). Since we know the meaning of the kanji from the previous story, we can use that as our hint to figure out what the pronunciation of it is as well. Beyond that, though, I'd recommend also learning the common words that use that kanji, since there are often plenty of different ways to pronounce the same kanji, and learning through example is the best way, I think.
FAILURE #4: You Learn Kanji Like Japanese School Children (i.e. In The Wrong Order)
When Japanese school children learn kanji, they go from simpler kanji meanings to more complicated kanji meanings. Sometimes, a simple kanji will have a simple meaning, but sometimes it won't. Take a look at these kanji, for example. These are learned in secondary school (i.e. they are "higher
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device empty its cartridge into a host's bloodstream would cause "deep trouble".
In similar work Prof Kevin Fu, a computer scientist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has found that is possible to capture a signal that controls the working of a heart defibrillator.
During his research Prof Fu discovered that implanted defibrillators are tested using a specific radio signal when first placed inside a patient. The signal turns the device on and off.
Lab work revealed that it was possible to capture this signal as it was broadcast. Re-broadcasting it turned off a device close by.
Prof Fu said the limited battery life of medical devices meant they could not use any authentication or encryption to protect signals passing to and from the device - leaving them open to attack in the future.
Image caption Many hearts are kept beating thanks to a medical implant
"Patients are much better off with these devices than without," said Prof Fu, but added that the work he and others were doing was signalling forthcoming problems that needed to be addressed now.
"Future devices will be much more connected, much more connected to the internet and will have much more use of wireless technology," he said.
Manufacturers needed to think about security as they designed products and harden them against future problems, he said.
"There is no silver bullet, it's not that these problems are easy to address," he said. "But there is technology available to reduce these risks significantly."
The UK's Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency said it had never received any reports of medical implants being hacked.
"We closely monitor the safety and performance of all medical devices and take action to ensure the safety of patients," said an MHRA spokesman.Turkey on Wednesday said it was holding talks with Israel over a deal to reconcile the two former allies following a deadly Israeli commando raid on a Turkish aid vessel bound for Gaza in May 2010.
“It’s quite normal for the two countries to talk for the normalization of the ties. How can reconciliation be achieved without holding any meetings?” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters in Ankara.
Cavusoglu’s comments came a day after Israel’s Haaretz daily reported that Israeli and Turkish officials had held secret talks in Rome on Monday in a bid to restore relations between the two countries.
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Cavusoglu confirmed such a contact had been made and said, “These meetings are not new. Expert-level talks have been held between the two countries for a while.”
In 2010, Israeli commandos boarded the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara, the largest ship in an aid flotilla bound for the Gaza Strip. The boarding took place in international waters after the Israeli navy asked the ships to sail to the Ashdod port, where their cargo would be unloaded and transferred to Gaza by land after undergoing a security inspection.
The activists on board replied to the navy’s warning with threats and curses, including “Shut up. Go back to Auschwitz” and “We’re helping Arabs go against the US. Don’t forget 9/11.”
When Israeli troops boarded the vessel, a melee ensued, in which nine activists were killed and seven Israeli soldiers were wounded. A tenth activist died of his wounds in 2014 after having been hospitalized for four years in a coma.
The incident sparked widespread condemnation and provoked a major diplomatic crisis between the two countries.
Ankara expelled the Israeli ambassador, demanded a formal apology and compensation and an end to the naval blockade on the Gaza Strip, which is ruled by the Palestinian group Hamas.
Talks on compensation began in 2013 after Israel extended a formal apology to Turkey in a breakthrough brokered by US President Barack Obama.
The Israeli government reportedly presented a deal to pay compensation to the families of the victims, but an agreement has not yet been forthcoming.
“The ball is in the court of the other side on our two demands [the lifting of the blockade on Gaza and the payment of compensation to the families],” Cavusoglu said.
“We are waiting for an answer from them. An agreement could perhaps have been reached much earlier but the process has been delayed because of the domestic balances of Israel,” he said.
The talks come two weeks after the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), co-founded by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who is known for his angry outbursts at the Jewish state, lost its majority in parliament.2nd Century Mummy Masks, Pushkin Museum. Andy Freeberg.
When most people go to museums, they visit to take in the art—not the people who are guarding it. But photographer Andy Freeberg became fascinated not with what the museums in Russia display, but who was displayed along with it. In his “Guardians” series, he captures the unexpected world of female Russian museum guards. Unlike their American counterparts, the Russian guards are not uniformed, they are seated, and almost all are older women. They in effect become part of the scenery itself.
Freeberg, whose series is currently on view at Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, with another show opening Jan. 24, 2013 at Andrea Meislin Gallery in New York City, uses the museum guards as equals with the art they guard. The women’s positioning, their clothing, the angles of their faces—all seem almost set-up in the images.
Repin’s Portrait of Baroness von Hildenbandt, and Altman’s Portrait of I.P. Degas, both at the State Tretyakov Gallery. Andy Freeberg.
Michelangelo’s Moses and the Dying Slave, Pushkin Museum. Andy Freeberg.
Over a one-year period from 2008 to 2009, Freeberg took three trips to work on this project after first noticing the guards at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. He learned it is a tradition for museum guards to be older women, many of whom are retired professionals. Freeberg interviewed some of the guards (with the help of a translator), including a former dentist, an economist, and an archivist. He found that they take pride in their work and the art they guard.
Stroganov Palace, Russian State Museum. Andy Freeberg.
Kugach’s Before the Dance, State Tretyakov Gallery. Andy Freeberg.
In his project statement he says, “A woman in Moscow’s State Tretyakov Gallery said she often returns there on her day off to sit in front of a painting that reminds her of her childhood home. Another guard travels three hours each day to work, since at home she would just sit on her porch and complain about her illnesses, ‘as old women do.’ She would rather be at the museum enjoying the people watching, surrounded by the history of her country.”
About his projects in general which focus on the art world and the people in it, Freeberg said:
“I was fascinated by how these women made the museum experience richer and more interesting. You can make up stories about their connection to the art they were sitting by. That is also what continues to hold my interest in the gallery world—how people interact and choose the art that surrounds them. It seems to be a universal human trait.”
Matisse Still Life, Hermitage Museum. Andy Freeberg.
Petrov-Vodkin’s Bathing of a Red Horse, State Tretyakov Gallery. Andy Freeberg.
Malevich’s Self Portrait, Russian State Museum. Andy Freeberg.New Faculty Publication by Alexander Dawson
The hallucinogenic and medicinal effects of peyote have a storied history that begins well before Europeans arrived in the Americas. While some have attempted to explain the cultural and religious significance of this cactus and drug, Alexander S. Dawson offers a completely new way of understanding the place of peyote in history. In this provocative new book, Dawson argues that peyote has marked the boundary between the Indian and the West since the Spanish Inquisition outlawed it in 1620. For nearly four centuries ecclesiastical, legal, scientific, and scholarly authorities have tried (unsuccessfully) to police that boundary to ensure that, while indigenous subjects might consume peyote, others could not. Moving back and forth across the U.S.-Mexico border, The Peyote Effect explores how battles over who might enjoy a right to consume peyote have unfolded in both countries, and how these conflicts have produced the racially exclusionary systems that characterizes modern drug regimes. Through this approach we see a surprising history of the racial thinking that binds these two countries more closely than we might otherwise imagine.Planned hit or preventative move?
It’s still not clear whether the Israeli airstrike on the town of Mazraat Amal near Quneitra Sunday was a planned assassination or a hastily thrown-together operation.
On February 16, 1992, an Israeli Apache helicopter tracked the car of Hezbollah leader Abbas Moussawi and released a missile, killing him, his wife, his son, and four other people. It was Israel’s first assassination by helicopter.
The operation was not fully planned. It had begun as intelligence work and had morphed, hastily, into a targeted killing.
Something similar may have happened today.
“I don’t think this was a targeted killing,” says Professor Shlomo Shpiro, the head of the political studies department at Bar-Ilan University and a senior researcher at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.
Instead, he says, it appears to be a preventative move, meant to thwart a developing attack. “The Golan Heights is flammable enough without this sort of thing,” he said.
He suggested that the senior Hezbollah commanders may have been on an officer’s patrol, a pre-operation reconnaissance, and said the situation was akin to the Syrian fighter jet that crossed into Israeli air space — a threat too near and too grave to ignore.
— Mitch GinsburgThe Nintendo Switch’s hardware specifications arched some eyebrows when it was revealed that, once again, Nintendo was launching a console with a shrimpy 32 GB of flash memory on board. Now we know what it really means to a user. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild requires 13.4 GB of storage space if it is downloaded to the Nintendo Switch. That is a little under half of the internal capacity of Nintendo’s new console.
That's if the user is opting for the digital version of the game, of course. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild will be available on a game card, too. And the Switch's storage is expandable by microSDHC and microSDXC cards, which are sold in volumes up to 512 GB. But it's unclear if the Switch dock's USB port can be used to attach an external hard drive for storage.
Realize also that the Switch’s OS and other code will take up some space on the internal storage, but how much isn't known.
Again, with a capacity much smaller than the PlayStation 4 or Xbox One, the Switch faces its users with the decision to uninstall and reinstall large digital titles they own, or buy physical media editions of large games and save whatever is onboard for smaller downloadable games, title updates and the like. It also means a hidden cost in the form of a SD card unless the user tightly manages the storage.
The Wii U launched in 2012 with configurations carrying 8 GB and 32 GB of internal storage, posing some of the same challenges as the Switch. The Wii U's capacity is expandable by SD cards and it supports external hard drives of up to 2 TB.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild needs 13 GB of space on the Wii U.
Update: A Nintendo representative told Game Informer that the system can support microSDXC cards up to 2 TB in capacity, except they don’t exist yet. 1 TB cards also aren’t yet on the market; the largest microSD cards available offer 256 GB of storage, but they cost upward of $135.The consensus of political commentators is clear: Hillary Clinton won the first Democratic debate. Her polished performance utterly outclassed her rivals, including Bernie Sanders, and reaffirmed her status as the obvious nominee.
Yet focus groups, search data, and social media information all tell a different story — one in which many viewers loved what Bernie Sanders had to say, or were, at the very least, quite interested in him.
I agree that Clinton turned in a strong performance. And that matters, as it could help her win back the confidence of party insiders worried about her recently declining numbers, and help deter Vice President Biden from entering the race.
But the debate wasn't just about party insiders or the views of pundits. And there are reasons to believe actual voters watching might come to very different conclusions than the professionals did. Consider the following.
1) After the first Republican debate in August, Marco Rubio was generally acclaimed as the winner. Practically no one in the media thought Ben Carson had won, because his performance seemed so stylistically unimpressive. Yet it was Carson who suddenly surged in the polls, up to second place, where he currently remains. DC insiders totally missed it.
2) Big majorities of post-debate focus groups conducted by CNN, Fox News, and Fusion all judged Bernie Sanders to be the winner. Now, focus groups are hardly scientific — the Fox News one after the first GOP debate thought Donald Trump had collapsed, yet he actually went up in the polls afterward. Still, it's interesting that all three came to the same conclusion.
3) Sanders has risen to second place in primary polls by repeating a few basic themes: He wants to challenge the power of the wealthy, to take on Wall Street and corporations, and to make America more like the social democratic Nordic countries. He hit those themes hard, and clearly, throughout the debate — in political parlance, he was "on message."
4) Political commentators like me have been covering Sanders for months, and his message is old hat to us at this point. So we give him no credit for repeating those basic themes that have made him so popular on the left, and focus instead on moments where something "new" happens, like his awkward handling of the gun issue.
5) But many voters haven't been following the race so closely. Beforehand, a third of Democrats said they didn't yet know enough about Sanders to have an opinion on him. Even many of those who did know about him likely hadn't been exposed to him all that much. So when Sanders makes the case at length for why he's a democratic socialist, many of these voters might not have heard that before — and might like it.
6) One of Sanders's most important moments in the debate — his defense of Clinton and criticism of the media over the email issue — was generally scored by pundits as a victory for Clinton. My colleague Ezra Klein, for instance, suggested it showed Sanders didn't have the instinct for the jugular that will be necessary to take down the frontrunner.
7) But to Democratic voters, it could also speak to Sanders's character, and mark him as a different kind of politician, who's not interested in negative campaigning. Indeed, Fox News's focus group wildly praised Sanders for this — it was their favorite moment in the entire debate.
8) Sanders won the most new Facebook followers, according to data from Crowdtangle. He added more than 35,000, increasing his following by 2 percent, to 1.69 million. Clinton added about 18,000, increasing her following by 1 percent, to 1.54 million.
9) Sanders also dominated in Google search traffic of the candidates who were onstage. Political scientist John Sides wisely cautions that we have no idea why people were searching for Sanders, and what they might have thought of the results. Still, one of the biggest challenges for a non-frontrunner is to capture the interest of the public — and Sanders clearly did that.
10) Overall, we won't know how or whether the debate moved the polls for some time. But over fifteen million people watched it — enough to make it easily the most-watched Democratic debate in history. And it's worth remembering that those millions of people might be impressed by very different things than DC insiders.UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Congolese rebel group M23 appears to be regrouping just two months after the Tutsi-led insurgency was defeated by Congolese troops and U.N. peacekeepers, the top U.N. official in the Democratic Republic of Congo said on Monday.
Congolese soldiers from the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (FARDC) stand next to their burning vehicle after an ambush near the village of Mavivi in North Kivu province January 2, 2014. REUTERS/Kenny Katombe
Martin Kobler told the U.N. Security Council there were “credible reports of emerging M23 activities in Ituri in northeastern Congo” and called on the Congolese government to speed up the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of ex-M23 fighters, who ended their 20-month revolt in November.
“At the same time, I call upon the governments of Uganda and Rwanda to do everything possible to prevent M23 elements from sheltering or training troops on their territory. We should tolerate no military re-emergence of the M23,” he said.
Kobler told reporters after briefing the council that “there might be a danger of renewed military infiltration of the country” by M23.
U.N. experts - who monitor violations of U.N. sanctions on Congo - have long accused neighboring Rwanda and Uganda of backing M23, claims that both governments have rejected.
In a report to the Security Council’s Congo sanctions committee in December, the experts said they had credible information that blacklisted M23 leaders were moving freely in Uganda and the group was still recruiting fighters in Rwanda.
M23 is one of dozens of rebel groups in eastern Congo. Millions of people have died from violence, disease and hunger since the 1990s as armed groups fought for control of the area’s deposits of gold, diamonds, copper, cobalt and uranium.
Mary Robinson, the U.N. special envoy to the Great Lakes who is charged with implementing a regional peace deal, told the 15-member Security Council that Congo and neighboring countries needed to take some confidence-building steps.
These steps included showing “none is harboring individuals responsible for grave human rights violations, none is giving any kind of support or assistance to armed groups, none is interfering in the affairs of a neighboring country.”
“There is worrying evidence that these commitments are not yet being fully implemented by Rwanda and Uganda,” she said.
Rwanda’s deputy U.N. ambassador, Olivier Nduhungirehe, said there was no evidence that Rwanda supported M23. He said that Rwanda had interned more than 600 M23 fighters who had fled across its border in March last year and that Kigali had repeatedly asked the United Nations to take charge of them.
Uganda’s U.N. mission in New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
BABIES KILLED, CHILDREN RAPED
Rwanda has repeatedly intervened in Congo, saying it had to hunt down the Hutu militia who fled after the Rwandan genocide. Rwanda and Congo have fought two wars in the past two decades in eastern Congo.
Rwanda has accused Congolese troops of collaborating with the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), which includes Hutus who fled Rwanda after the 1994 genocide of 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutus. Kinshasa denies the claim.
Kobler told the Security Council that since the defeat of M23, Congolese troops and U.N. peacekeepers had turned their attention to tackling the FDLR. He said first operations against the group had cleared some positions.
“Operations can only be successful if done jointly with the Congolese Army. I do encourage the Congolese Forces to do more and to intensify the joint planning and execution of operations against the FDLR,” Kobler said.
He also said military action could be expected soon against the Islamist Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a group that “continues to spread terror and horror” in the Ituri region of Congo’s northeastern Orientale province.
Kobler cited to the Security Council an example of the ADF’s brutality toward civilians.
“On 13 December, in an ADF-controlled area, 21 bodies, including the bodies of eight babies, very young children and pregnant women, were found dead, mutilated and some beheaded,” he said. “Three of the children were reportedly raped before being murdered.”
Kobler said that in 2013, 151 children were killed or maimed, including babies caught in cross-fire and primary school students who were summarily executed. The U.N. mission found that 260 underaged girls were raped by rebels and government troops.
The 20,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping force in Congo received a boost last year with the unprecedented deployments of unarmed surveillance drones and an Intervention Brigade of 3,000 troops to help Congolese forces hunt down rebel groups.
“The presence of armed groups is still strong, too strong. We need to keep the momentum,” Kobler said. “With the Force Intervention Brigade and our Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, all armed groups are aware now that we have the will and the means to take robust action at any time.”Image copyright AP Image caption Khalid Sheikh Mohammed after his arrest in 2003
The alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, reportedly asked his CIA captors if he could design a vacuum cleaner.
The Pakistan-born mechanical engineering graduate made the request during a period of detention in Romania in 2003, the Associated Press reports.
A former CIA official told the news agency that he used online guides to re-design the household appliance.
The CIA wanted to make sure its prisoners stayed sane, AP reported.
"We didn't want them to go nuts,'' the former senior CIA official told the news agency.
It sounds ridiculous Jason Wright, Military lawyer
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was arrested in 2003 and underwent harsh interrogations in Poland. He was forced to go without sleep, and underwent waterboarding, or simulated drowning.
The CIA prison in Poland was closed in September 2003, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was transferred to a prison in the Romanian capital, Bucharest.
This detention centre reportedly provided books for prisoners to read. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is said to have enjoyed the Harry Potter series of books.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed holds a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from North Carolina A&T State University.
His military lawyer at Guantanamo Bay, Jason Wright, told the Associated Press he was forbidden to discuss whether the vacuum cleaner designs existed.
"It sounds ridiculous," he said. "But answering this question, or confirming or denying the very existence of a vacuum cleaner design... would apparently expose the US government and its citizens to exceptionally grave danger."More than 100,000 demonstrators took to the streets in 20 cities across Germany on Saturday to call for a rapid end to nuclear power, even as a government-sponsored national commission is expected to recommend that Berlin abolish nuclear energy within a decade.
The Ethics Commission is set to announce the results of its final report on Germany's energy future, calling for nuclear power to be phased out by 2021.
Chancellor Angela Merkel had tasked the commission with forging a national consensus on how to replace nuclear power with renewable energy in the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe in Japan last March.
The political opposition praised the commission's recommendation while expressing doubt about how Chancellor Merkel's center-right coalition would receive the report.
"I have doubts whether Merkel can successfully implement this position within her coalition," said Thomas Oppermann of the center-left Social Democrats' parliamentary group.
Nationwide protests
In Berlin, at least 20,000 protesters marched from city hall to the headquarters of Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats, where they called for an immediate end to nuclear power.
Merkel may have trouble getting her coalition partners to accept the timetable
Demonstration organizer Uwe Hiksch said an exit from nuclear power within a decade was not acceptable. The environmental organization Friends of the Earth Germany (BUND) also called for a quicker shutdown of the country's nuclear plants.
More than 10,000 protesters took to the streets in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany's most populous state.
"This is our signal to Chancellor Merkel that the energy turnaround finally has to come," said Tim Petzoldt of the Initiative Anti-Atom Bonn.
Calls for caution
Meanwhile, Economic Minister and Vice Chancellor Philipp Rösler expressed concern that completely abolishing nuclear energy too quickly could lead to electricity blackouts across Germany.
As a precautionary measure, Rösler - member of the liberal Free Democrats - called for some nuclear plants to be left functional as a "cold reserve" in the event Germany needs more energy.
"That would mean that one or two nuclear plants would be left in a cold stand-by mode for a certain period of time and would not be immediately dismantled," he said.
Rainer Brüderle, head of the Free Democrats parliamentary group, called for certain conditions to be met before nuclear energy was phased out. Brüderle said the power grid for renewable energy needed to be expanded.
"If we don't accelerate the expansion of the grid for renewable energy, then we will ultimately fail in the end," he said.
Currently, only four of Germany's 17 nuclear power plants are operational. Chancellor Merkel ordered eight to be shutdown pending review while five more were shutdown for routine maintenance.
On Sunday, Merkel's coalition government will meet to agree on a timetable for the shutdown of Germany's nuclear plants.
Author: Spencer Kimball (Reuters, epd, dapd, KNA, dpa)
Editor: Andreas IllmerWASHINGTON (Reuters) - The FBI broke the law by improperly obtaining thousands of telephone records in terrorism investigations from 2003 to 2006, the U.S. Justice Department’s inspector general said on Wednesday.
“This report examines in detail the flawed practices that the FBI used to obtain thousands of telephone records, and the accountability of FBI employees for these troubling practices,” Inspector General Glenn Fine said.
“The FBI has been granted expanded authority to obtain telephone records when handling its critical responsibilities. At the same time, the FBI must use this authority in accord with the law and department policies,” he said.
The report could add to criticism of the FBI, which already faces questions in Congress about whether it did enough to prevent a shooting rampage at a U.S. Army base in November and how it handled an investigation into an attempt to blow up an airplane as it approached Detroit on Christmas Day.
Senator Patrick Leahy, the Judiciary Committee chairman, said: “When Americans break the law, there are consequences. No one in the FBI should be above the law.”
The 289-page report said the FBI issued more than 700 letters citing “exigent circumstances” in seeking records on more than 2,000 different telephone numbers from 2003 to 2006.
Many of the investigations did not involve emergency or life-threatening circumstances, the report said, and the FBI inaccurately said grand jury subpoenas had been sought for the records.
An earlier report in 2007 found the FBI abused its power by illegally or improperly obtaining telephone, financial and other secret records in investigations of terrorism or espionage suspects.
The inspector general’s previous reports concluded the FBI’s use of the so-called exigent letters circumvented the requirements of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and violated the attorney general’s guidelines and FBI policy.
INFORMAL REQUESTS FOR PHONE RECORDS
The new report also found widespread use of even more informal requests for telephone records, instead of following the appropriate legal process.
It said the FBI requested records by email, in face-to-face and telephone conversations, or even in some cases by writing them on post-it notes. It also obtained records using a practice referred to by the FBI and telephone companies as “sneak peeks.”
The report said an FBI unit made informal requests for records associated with at least 3,500 telephone numbers.
At times, telephone company employees simply invited FBI personnel to view the records on their computer screens.
One senior FBI counterterrorism official described the casual requests for telephone records by saying, “It like having the ATM in your living room,” according to the report.
Fine urged the FBI and the Justice Department to take additional steps to make sure the bureau obtains such records in accord with the law and with Justice Department policies and to make sure past abuses do no recur.
He recommended that the FBI review the conduct of the individuals involved and determine whether discipline or other action would be appropriate.
The FBI said in a statement that it never obtained the content of any telephone conversations, only the telephone toll billing records.
“The... report finds no intentional attempts to obtain records that counterterrorism personnel knew they were not legally entitled to obtain,” FBI spokesman Mike Kortan said.TEHRAN — As a college student studying mechanics, Hamidreza Faraji had expected after graduation to land a steady job with a fixed salary, a pension plan and the occasional bonus. He envisioned coming home at 6 p.m. to his family and vacationing at a resort on the Caspian Sea.
But Mr. Faraji, 34, has long since given up on all that. These days, he said, the only people who lead such predictable lives are government employees. Their jobs are well paid and offer security, but are hard to get in part because older employees stay on well past retirement age, limiting opportunities for the next generation.
So millions of Iranians, particularly younger ones, find themselves caught like Mr. Faraji in a vicious cycle of hidden poverty, an exhausting hustle to stay afloat, working multiple jobs and running moneymaking schemes just to keep up. The youth unemployment rate is 30 percent.
“Seeking opportunities, and trying to make the best of them,” Mr. Faraji said when asked about how he supported himself and his wife. A baby is on the way — “that just happened” — but they have no idea how they are going to pay for the additional costs with the money he makes as a small-time trader.Note to would-be burglars: Attempting to rob a shop that makes its business selling surveillance cameras may not be the smartest move.
That's precisely what happened in South Florida early Wednesday morning, when a man attempted to break into a spy shop in Deerfield Beach.
The would-be robber tried to break into Spy Spot Investigations by smashing its door with a rock, but he failed.
Not surprisingly, his failed attempt was caught on several cameras.
"This is probably the last place you would want to try to burglarize," store manager Evan Tannenbaum told WSVN in Miami. "We got a whole bunch of surveillance cameras. We've got hidden cameras, we also do GPS tracking devices, audio recording devices."
Tannenbaum said the store's cameras captured the aspiring thief approaching the store and picking up a rock. "And then all he did was he went over to the door, he threw it right against it," Tannenbaum said.
And it even appears that the would-be thief was aware of the surveillance cameras. Tannenbaum said there are signs alerting that cameras are rolling.
"And at one point, it looks like he can tell he’s on camera, but he doesn't stop," he said. "Then he comes back, basically kicks the door again, tries to push it with his hands and then walks away."
A stunned Tannenbaum reiterated, "I don’t know why you would try to rob a spy store. The guy's probably not the smartest criminal."
Police are circulating images of the man that the store's cameras captured.The success of people who aren’t classic Vegas sharps didn’t surprise Jay Kornegay. Sports betting has changed greatly from when people like Vegas Runner were starting out. Much of the carefully acquired intelligence of betting syndicates — last-minute weather forecasts, player-injury reports — is now available to anyone with Internet access. The statistical parsing performed by analysts working in the unmarked offices of the Animals is now a mainstay of sports-talk radio and ESPN. And seemingly every gambler with any bona fides works as a tout, selling picks to squares. The true sharps and syndicates still have an edge over everyone else, but it isn’t as large as it once was. “Casual bettors are more sophisticated than ever before,” Kornegay said. “And they’re getting better each and every year.”
Some 1,500 miles from the Las Vegas Hotel, David Frohardt-Lane was attending his brother-in-law’s wedding in Chicago and couldn’t watch the final games. As the ceremony and reception progressed, he repeatedly checked his cellphone for score updates. His contest standing was precarious. The previous week, the third-place competitor, listed as Ebn Ozn, pulled off a perfect 5-0 and muscled into first place, a half-point ahead of Frohardt-Lane.
Once the wedding wound down, Frohardt-Lane and a large group of friends and relatives rushed to the nearest bar. It had a couple of small televisions showing the hometown Bears game. When that ended, the network cut to the San Francisco 49ers-Arizona Cardinals matchup. Frohardt-Lane had picked the 49ers; Ebn Ozn had the Cardinals at +1. Whoever was right would win the entire SuperContest. The game was tied 20-20, and there were only 29 seconds left to play.
The Cardinals kicked off. LaMichael James fielded the ball for the 49ers and ran it back 41 yards — then appeared to fumble when he was tackled. “I had this feeling in the pit of my stomach that this game could be lost in the next minute,” Frohardt-Lane said. When the officials ruled that James was down before the ball came loose, Frohardt-Lane’s emotions swung again. “Instead of being an unexpected opportunity to lose, it was an unexpected opportunity to win,” he said.
The 49ers quarterback, Colin Kaepernick, then completed two long passes, bringing the ball to the Cardinals’ 22-yard line. With two seconds left on the clock, Phil Dawson lined up to kick a 40-yard field goal, which was in “extremely makable range,” Frohardt-Lane said. But it wasn’t a lock. As Frohardt-Lane knew, Dawson had missed 26 percent of his field goals in the 40-to-49-yard range in his career. Frohardt-Lane felt calm nonetheless. He sensed what was going to happen before Dawson’s foot even struck the ball. “He drilled it,” Frohardt-Lane said. “It was never in doubt. It was about the greatest thing I’ve ever seen.” The 49ers prevailed 23-20, and Frohardt-Lane won $557,850.
When I spoke with him by phone several days later, Frohardt-Lane ducked every opportunity to brag. To win the SuperContest, you needed to be more lucky than good, he kept saying. He reckoned that his computer-aided system would never be more than about 53 percent to 55 percent accurate over the long term, so he had been extremely fortunate to nail 68 percent of his selections during the contest. He planned to give half of his prize money to charity. I asked him if anything in his life had changed since winning. He told me that within minutes of the 49ers’ victory, his phone overflowed with text messages. Football bettors all over the country wanted to be his best friend. By the end of the day, he had hundreds of new Twitter followers. Several hundred more piled on in the next few weeks, and Frohardt-Lane fielded emails and phone calls from journalists and advice-seeking gamblers. The N.F.L. postseason was underway, and the members of his burgeoning flock wanted to know which teams they should pick.
The Super Bowl was a tough call, he told me. “This is the best matchup we have had in a long time,” he said. “Denver has by far the highest-scoring offense, and Seattle has the best defense in terms of points allowed per game.” His computer model calculated Denver as a very slight favorite at -1, but that was before Frohardt-Lane made his fine-tuned adjustments. Denver had lost several defensive starters to injuries. The game would most likely take place in cold weather, which tended to be harder on a pass-heavy team like the Broncos. And while Denver had a league-leading throwing game, Seattle’s defense was better suited than any other in the league to keep it in check, Frohardt-Lane said. After the adjustments, he believed that Seattle should be the true favorite at -1.5. “If the Vegas line is Denver -2, I think that Seattle is the smartest side to bet on.”
That was what Frohardt-Lane’s head told him, at any rate. But as a football fan, one who had always rooted for Peyton Manning, his heart was with the Broncos. He planned to make only a few Super Bowl wagers with friends and thought he could excuse himself for ignoring his contest-winning analytics just this once. “After the season that I’ve had,” he said, “I have earned the right to just pick the team that I like.”CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt’s prime minister said on Monday that an agreement brokered by Cairo to stop the fighting between Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza could be close.
Smoke rises after an Israeli air strike in Gaza City November 19, 2012. Israel bombed dozens of suspected guerrilla sites in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Monday and Palestinian rocket fire from the enclave dropped off as international efforts to broker a truce intensified. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem
“Negotiations are going on as we speak and I hope we will reach something soon that will stop this violence and counter violence,” Prime Minister Hisham Kandil said in an interview in Cairo for the Reuters Middle East Investment Summit.
Israel launched an air campaign on Wednesday with the declared goal of deterring Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that runs the Gaza Strip, from launching rockets at its southern communities.
Egypt is seeking to reinstate a ceasefire after an informal one it brokered in October collapsed.
“I think we are close, but the nature of this kind of negotiation (means) it is very difficult to predict,” he said.
Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi had said on Saturday that there were “some indications” a ceasefire could be reached soon but said there were no firm guarantees.
“President Mursi is determined to play his role as a key player in the region and help mediate this,” said Kandil, who visited Gaza on Friday to show Egypt’s solidarity with the Palestinians.
Israel bombed dozens of suspected guerrilla sites in Gaza, ruled by the Islamist Hamas movement, on Monday and Palestinian rocket fire from the enclave eased off.
The prime minister said Egypt was in contact with both Israeli and Palestinian officials, and with other regional and international players, including Turkey and Qatar, as well as the United States, Britain and Germany.
“There are exchanges of visits and talks with both sides and there is also communications with various leaders from the region,” he said.
Separately on Monday, another Egyptian official, who declined to be identified, said that Egypt was receiving “encouraging signals” about a ceasefire and said both Israel and Hamas were seeking guarantees.
“What we are trying to agree on is to achieve a ceasefire and achieve some possible guarantees, and then later discuss more guarantees,” the official told Reuters.
Izzat Risheq, aide to Hamas politburo chief Khaled Meshaal, wrote on
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Brawl in Washington
JUST WATCHED Erdogan watches brawl outside Turkish embassy Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Erdogan watches brawl outside Turkish embassy 00:55
The bloody brawl occurred shortly after the first official meeting between Erdogan and President Trump at the White House.
Nine people ended up in hospital when Turkish security officials -- including members of Erdogan's personal security detail -- clashed with demonstrators on May 16 outside the Turkish ambassador's residence in Washington.
Video showed Erdogan looking on as Turkish guards beat up protesters, before heading into the ambassador's home.
A senior State Department official told CNN at the time that the Turkish officials involved in the fight appeared to be a mix of Turkish embassy staff and Erdogan's personal guards. The official also confirmed that two members of Erdogan's detail "were briefly detained during the altercations and subsequently released" and returned to Turkey with Erdogan.
The Turkish embassy rejected the US' version of events, however, claiming that the protesters outside the residence were "affiliated with the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party)" -- a banned separatist group in Turkey -- and had assembled without permission.
Police in Washington issued warrants for 12 of Erdogan's security officers in mid-June. Erdogan denied his security detail had done anything wrong and questioned the legality of the warrant.
"They didn't do anything (to the protesters). In addition to that, yesterday, they detained two of our brothers who intervened... they issued arrest warrants for 12 of my security officials. What kind of law is this? What kind of legal system is this?" Erdogan said.
A statement issued by the Turkish Foreign Ministry said the decision to issue warrants was "wrong, biased and lacks legal basis." It said the brawl was "caused by the failure of local security authorities to take necessary measures," and that "Turkish citizens cannot be held responsible."
Huge protests expected in Germany
Germany's warning to Turkey comes amid significant security concerns around the G20 summit next week.
Security measures will be extremely rigorous, even by G20 standards, a police spokesperson in Hamburg told CNN.
Fifteen thousand police officers from across the country -- supported by police from Austria, Denmark and the Netherlands -- will be deployed, including snipers, special forces, counterterrorism police and canine units.
Drones used in war zones will circle the skies and tanks will be deployed on the streets, the spokesperson said.
Police are expecting between 50,000 and 100,000 protesters during the summit. Eight thousand left-wing extremists are expected to be among them.
Countless left-wing groups are organizing protests against Erdogan, Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin -- all of whom are expected to attend the summit -- as well as anti-capitalism and climate change demonstrations.
And Turkey may be a particular source of tension. Members of the Kurdistan Workers Party are expected to attend, and police are preparing themselves for potential clashes between Kurdish activists and Turkish nationals.In 1980, five-year-old Leanne Hennigar was enrolled in Jericho Hill School, a boarding school for blind and deaf students in Vancouver. She was just seven years old when she was assaulted for the first time, sexually abused by a fellow student who had himself been abused by a teacher. At the time, she thought what was happening to her was normal, not only because she was too young to know better but also because sexual abuse was rampant at the school. It had been for decades — a fact confirmed in a formal investigation.
Hennigar, who is deaf, was sent to Jericho Hill for a specialized education. Starting in the 1830s, scores of Canadian children have lived at similar institutions across the country, run by provinces or, in Quebec, churches. Attendance is voluntary, but many parents have felt they had no other choice if their children were to receive an education that meets their specific needs.
In an interview, Hennigar says the abuse continued into her teenage years. “I was brainwashed.... I blame the school administration for what happened and the staff for the secrecy,” she says. Along with fellow student John Pratt, she brought a class-action lawsuit against the Province of British Columbia in 1998. In 2004, Hennigar (then Rumley) and Pratt won a $12.5-million settlement. By then, the suit had mushroomed to include 350 former Jericho Hill students. Hennigar’s groundbreaking lawsuit set a legal precedent for the Indigenous residential school abuse trials that would follow. It also laid the groundwork for a series of class-action suits against provinces and Quebec churches running residential schools for children with disabilities.
The stories sound familiar. They have the same horrific ring of the testimonies contained in the Truth and Reconciliation report: physical and psychological abuse; displacement from family systems; institutionalization; the goal of assimilation into the dominant culture.
“A lot of people don’t know what it was like for us disabled folks. There’s so much press about the Indigenous schools but nothing about the blind and deaf schools,” says Bruce Atchison as he reflects on why he decided to self-publish his memoir, Deliverance from Jericho: Six Years in a Blind School. Atchison, who now lives in Radway, Alta., went to Jericho Hill from 1964 to 1970.
After his first day of class in September, Atchison waited outside his dorm expecting to be taken home. “I asked one of the kids, ‘When do we go home?’ He said, ‘Christmas.’ I couldn’t believe it. I thought he was joking.” That’s how Atchison learned he had been sent to residential school.
Life as Atchison knew it — his family, food, clothes, bedroom, even playtime — evaporated. He fell into a state of depression. “Despair,” more like. “A jail,” he calls it. There were five beds to a room, and Atchison was relegated to sleeping beside the school bully. At home, he’d had the freedom to play on his own; now, he was forced to walk in rows, holding hands with other boys while supervisors hovered over every outing. He was scolded for referring to “Mom” and “Dad” — “Mother” and “Father” were more proper.
Atchison told his parents how he felt. “They said that I shouldn’t be complaining, that these people give me three meals a day and a place to sleep and access to education. Of course, that didn’t help at all.” Family bonds weakened as he grew up separated from his parents and sisters. Forty-seven years later, Jericho Hill still haunts Atchison’s dreams.
Leanne Hennigar says she was “brainwashed” into secrecy about her sexual abuse as a student at Jericho Hill residential school in the 1980s. Photo by Derek Ford
Four provinces away, at roughly the same time, Tom Dekker attended W. Ross Macdonald School for the Blind in Brantford, Ont. He describes the corporal punishment he endured at the school between 1958 and 1970. “I got kicked in the behind so hard one day I went flying up the stairs.... I got whacked in the head so hard that my ears rang for hours afterward.” Dekker, who had compromised retinas, speculates that the physical violence cost him even more sight. The verbal abuse was as bad as the physical. They told him things like, “You are really useless” and “You’ll never make it in the sighted world.”
Why didn’t he tell?
Some students in Grade 7 had a protest about something they didn’t like at the school. “All of a sudden, they were gone,” says Dekker. “Expelled just like that. There was just a culture of ‘keep quiet’ because you didn’t know what would happen if you said anything.”
Now, people are talking. Coast to coast, lawsuits are either pending or have been settled in at least five provinces pertaining to nine schools offering residential programs for the deaf, blind and deaf-blind. The scope of the emerging suits is astonishing. In February 2016, a $30-million settlement was awarded to those abused by the Clercs de Saint-Viateur at the Montreal Institute for the Deaf — the largest settlement for sexual assault in Quebec history. In April, an $8-million settlement was reached with the Province of Ontario for abuses at W. Ross Macdonald.
In a report published in 2000, the Law Commission of Canada answers the sorry question that surfaces in the face of Canada’s stunning history of institutionalized child abuse: how could this happen? Take children who are already marginalized, it says, and put them in a situation where there is little outside monitoring. Hand the people who have power over them the clout of the government or the moral authority of the church. Douse it all in institutional life.
“While we encouraged most children in the eighties and the nineties to ‘go tell,’ we were not prepared to listen to what children who were deaf had to say,” wrote then-B.C. Ombudsman Dulcie McCallum in a 1993 report about Jericho Hill sent to the minister of education. “The systems upon which we rely were never designed to meet the needs of children who are deaf or children who are disabled. Most of the administrators and caregivers at the school were not proficient in American Sign Language. Few, if any, police or Crown Counsel could communicate with the abuse victims claiming abuse. Most of the parents of the resident children had never been given the opportunity to learn sign language and to communicate effectively with their children. These children had few people, except each other, to go tell.”
Before Hennigar and Pratt’s successful suit against Jericho Hill, 10 other students disclosed abuse in 1982. The whistleblowers paid a steep price when their concerns weren’t taken seriously enough. One was later convicted of manslaughter, and another was suspended for inappropriate sexual behaviour. Two of them attempted suicide; only one succeeded. Another one struggled with severe depression.
Leanne Hennigar’s mother, Sharon Rumley, was convinced that Jericho Hill was the best school for her daughter. It was known for its quality education and widely regarded as safe and caring. At the time, Rumley was desperate to have her daughter educated. Parting with Leanne was numbing, but she told herself that she was doing what she had to for her daughter.
Looking back, Rumley recalls that Leanne was always coming down with something. A cold. Bronchitis. There were a few bruises. Nothing that added up to much, though. Later, Leanne grew rebellious — a typical teenager, Rumley thought. One day, Leanne told her that there was bad stuff going on and invited her to go to the school and see for herself.
When Rumley heard about a school concert that parents were allowed to sleep in the dormitories to attend, she seized the opportunity to investigate. “That’s when I started looking at things,” says Rumley. “You could sense something was off. There was a kind of hiding.”
The disturbing truth seeped out as Leanne started giving her more details. “We were appalled. We had to get her out of there,” she says. They transferred Leanne to a school in Washington, D.C.
Betty Nobel (right) reads in braille to her granddaughter Macynna. Nobel attended Jericho Hill residential school in the 1950s and ’60s and had a good experience there. Photo by Jennifer Gauthier
But away from the abuse, Leanne’s memories started coming back, the torment driving her to become suicidal. “All I could think about was, ‘I have to get her home. I have to get her into counselling,’” says Rumley. “We got her away from the school [Jericho Hill], and we thought everything was going to be okay, but of course, abuse follows you.” Rumley arranged for Leanne to see a counsellor, started a support group for former students and, later, hired a lawyer.
Not every tough beginning at residential school met a tragic end. When Linda Nickerson was 12, her family doctor told her father that if he didn’t send her away, she would never be educated. “I was the baby and the apple of his eye,” she says, her voice breaking. Nickerson, now living in Saint John, N.B., attended the Halifax School for the Blind in the late 1950s and early ’60s.
While parting from her family was difficult, Nickerson says she was excited to move from an isolated rural community to a place brimming with kids like her. “Residential school was really great because you were equal.... I had a really good experience. We were given opportunities that I would never have had at school. Like, some went on to be concert pianists. I wasn’t one of them,” she says with a laugh.
Though many see residential schools as isolating, several deaf advocacy groups claim that they afforded a precious sense of belonging by providing the initial exposure to deaf identity and deaf culture. When ASL (American Sign Language) was permitted, they argue, the schools were the cultural nest in which kids learned their first language.
Phil Wilson considers ASL his mother tongue. The student supply minister at the United Church’s Adolphustown-Conway pastoral charge on the outskirts of Napanee, Ont., can hear, but both of his parents are deaf. He remembers the day his father divulged the abuse he experienced at residential school. “He cried when he told me he was thrown into a blackboard,” says Wilson, his voice softening. Not only was Wilson’s dad physically assaulted, but he was also prohibited from using sign language.
That’s because in Milan, Italy, in 1880, 49 years after the first residential school for the deaf opened in Canada, 164 members from eight countries gathered to make the landmark education decision that would ban sign language from classrooms around the world. The Second International Congress on the Education of the Deaf decided that oral (lip-reading) education was better than manual (sign) education. Only one person in the room was actually deaf. The ban was in effect when Wilson’s dad attended residential school, and remained so until 1980 when the congress declared that all deaf children have the right to flexible communication.
“Whenever you deprive a community of its language, you automatically deprive it of its culture,” says Wilson, who considers himself bicultural and spells “Deaf” with a capital D, a convention used by those who identify themselves as culturally deaf or who have a strong deaf identity.
Betty Nobel was a young girl catching chickens when she learned she was different. Her friends told Nobel, now a member of Wilson Heights United in Vancouver, that she couldn’t see. It was a revelation. She ran to her mother, crying. “My mother said, ‘Just go back out there and tell them that you see with your fingers.’ So that’s what I did.”
Nobel attended Jericho Hill for 10 years in the 1950s and ’60s, though only two in residence, and had a good experience there. She holds a master’s degree in education and currently teaches blind students.
Nobel says that in her experience as an educator, integration can be positive, but students can also feel isolated even when they are included in regular classrooms. “They are different, so they feel that they stick out and sometimes find it challenging socially,” she says. “They may be integrated into the regular system, but they aren’t really because they don’t have the same kind of social contact and peer interactions that some of the other kids do.”
Every province in Canada has a policy on inclusive education. But according to Helena Sonea, a disability expert who authored a resource guide on inclusive education published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, how inclusivity is defined, how it’s funded and what it looks like on the ground varies from one jurisdiction to another. “There is no one solution,” she says over the phone about Canada’s fragmented approach to special education, inclusion and mainstreaming. “People can’t just lump every person with a disability into the same category. Everyone’s lived experience of disability is very different.”
While deaf and blind students sometimes attended the same residential schools, their experiences differ not only because of individual circumstances — such as proximity to family — but also in terms of the nature and degree of the disability itself. In some circles, the terms “disability” and “impairment” are dirty words; they smack of ableism, discrimination in favour of able-bodied people. Some prefer to speak of difference. Others, especially members of the deaf community, cultural pride.
It’s complicated. But what’s clear is that for some, the immersive experience of residential school is indispensable. The concept of residential school isn’t the issue; the abuse is. In April 2016, when Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne announced she couldn’t guarantee that the handful of remaining residential schools for deaf, blind and special needs children would remain open, hundreds of parents and students rallied outside the legislature. The concern is warranted. Already, Canadians with visual challenges and hearing conditions end their schooling earlier than the general population: 20 percent of people with disabilities don’t have a high school diploma, compared to 11 percent of people without disabilities. Without access to a strong education at the beginning of their lives, this gap could grow even wider.
Tom Dekker describes a recent visit to W. Ross Macdonald, the school where he was repeatedly assaulted as a boy. “The place is totally different from what it was.” He sounds philosophical: “Bringing to light what has happened in the past — that’s why the place has moved forward, and that’s why it has changed. People have come to the realization it’s time to do something completely different, so it ends up being positive in its own way.”
Old videotapes and interviews from her daughter’s court proceedings are stored in boxes in Sharon Rumley’s home. She has a hard time looking at them. “It just upsets me,” she says. She can’t ever forget what her daughter experienced. “I think about it all the time. But you have to move on with your life. It won’t get better or heal. You manage it. It never goes away.”
Leanne Hennigar says she was sad and angry for two years after winning her landmark case. Some people who were unhappy with the amount they received in the settlement process turned their anger on her. Counselling helped Hennigar overcome the fatigue of the emotional court battle and the pain of the abuse. “I’ve finally got peace of mind,” she says. “Life goes on. I got married and have my sons who keep me busy. I’m tough. I wouldn’t give up. I’m proud of what I’ve done. It was the right thing to do. Now I want to tell the world my story.”
Rev. Trisha Elliott is a minister at Southminster United in Ottawa.Police in Tampa, Florida on the hunt for marijuana are facing criticism after officers reportedly raided a parked truck while the owner was not present – a search that damaged the vehicle and revealed no drugs.
Local businessman Matthew Heller was enjoying a concert in the Ybor neighborhood when the incident took place. By the time he returned to his car – which is also used to advertise his business – Heller found it broken into, with electronics ripped out and other parts damaged.
Asked how he felt when he saw his truck, Heller didn’t mince words with local NBC affiliate WFLA, saying he was “disgusted.”
“I’ve got my whole life savings in this truck,” he added. “It’s like a marketing tool for my business to promote the air horns and everything. The horns weren’t working, all the electronics were ripped out.”
Police had no search warrant when they searched the vehicle. In fact, the only reason Heller knew it was police who raided his car, and not a burglar, was that the officers involved left a note behind on a 2x3 piece of paper.
“Sir, your car was checked by TPD K-9,” the note read. “The vehicle was searched for marijuana due to a strong odor coming from the passenger side of the vehicle. Any questions call Cpl Fanning.”
The search left Heller with stumped, as he wondered how police pinpointed his vehicle when various smells were coming from numerous places. Heller is now seeking reimbursement from police for the damages caused to his truck.
According to WFLA, police did not find any marijuana in their search, nor did they arrest Heller or question him. The Tampa Police Department defended the search as legal, but added such behavior is “not typical” and that it is “reviewing the specifics of this investigation."
Attorney Bryant Camareno, however, did not agree.
“It’s an illegal search,” Camareno told WFLA. “Usually if it’s some kind of unoccupied vehicle there has to be some level of exigent circumstance to justify searching a vehicle without a search warrant. Exigent could mean if there is a dead body inside, if there is a screaming child locked in the car, a dog but if the car is unoccupied there is no exigency to justify the search.”Ha Van Tham, center, former chairman of the Ocean Bank is being led to the court in Hanoi, Vietnam, Friday, Sept. 29, 2017. Tham was sentenced to life imprisonment for embezzlement and abuse of power to appropriate property at the end of one-month trial Friday. He was among 51 defendants involved in the case in which his former general director and former head of state-owned oil and gas firm, PetroVietnam, Nguyen Xuan Son was sentenced to death for embezzlement. (Doan Tan/Vietnam News Agency via AP)
HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — The former head of state-owned PetroVietnam was sentenced to death Friday for embezzlement and abuse of power committed in his former job leading a bank partly owned by Vietnam’s oil-and-gas giant. A judge in the graft case involving dozens of defendants warned that corruption by Communist Party members and civil servants threatened the regime’s survival.
Nguyen Xuan Son was convicted by the Hanoi People’s Court of embezzling $2.15 million and abusing his power to appropriate another $8.7 million from Ocean Bank, a joint stock bank in which PetroVietnam had owned 20 percent of shares.
Ocean Bank chairman Ha Van Tham was given a term of life imprisonment for convictions on the same charges at the end of the monthlong trial involving 51 defendants, most of them Ocean Bank executives.
“The acts of Nguyen Xuan Son and Ha Van Tham are particularly serious, infringing on the rights of property of the state and organization causing anger and dissonant among the people that needs to be handled seriously... in the fight against crimes in general and corruption in particular in the current time,” said Truong Viet Toan, one of the two judges in announcing the verdict that lasted nearly three hours.
Toan said corruption degraded a number of Communist Party members and civil servants who stole the people’s trust in the ruling Communist Party and state and threatened to survival of the regime.
Twelve defendants received sentences of up to 30 years. Thirty-two received suspended sentences of up to 3 years while the remaining five were sentenced to undergo 2 years of re-education.
Ocean Bank was taken over by the State Bank in 2015 at no cost after reported accumulated losses of $445 million. PetroVietnam lost all its investment after the takeover.
Son was the bank’s general director before being promoted to become chairman of the board of PetroVietnam in 2014.
Son and Tham were accused of initiating a policy of giving interests exceeding the rate set by the central bank to more than 50,000 individuals and nearly 400 companies and institutions that resulted in the losses of $69 million to the bank.
Ocean Bank executives told the court they had to offer customers higher interest rates to attract savings and that the bank would have collapsed if they had not done so.
Presiding Judge Tran Nam Ha said in announcing the verdict and sentencing that the defendants’ acts of offering interests higher than officially set rates were especially serious violations of state rules and that “created unhealthy competition and chaos in financial markets and increased risks of high inflation.”
Over the past month, police in widening their investigation into the case have arrested or put under house four other former or current senior executives of PetroVietnam and a former deputy State Bank governor who oversaw bad debts at credit institutions.
Three PetroVietnam subsidiaries were also being investigated for alleged abuse of power in appropriating $5.3 million, police said earlier this month.
The police statement said $3.4 million of the excessive interest was given to PetroVietnam Exploration and Production Corp., $852,000 was given to Binh Son Oil Refinery Co. and $1 million was given to VietsovPetro, a joint venture between PetroVietnam and Russia.
Vietnam ranks 113 out of 176 countries in Transparency International’s 2016 corruption index.
The Communist Party and government have stepped up their anti-corruption drive in recent years with courts sentencing several senior executives to death.LEESBURG, Fla. – A Florida woman died last week after she was attacked by her own dog inside her home.
Leesburg police said Sonda Tyson, 66, was found dead on her back porch after her family called paramedics.
When paramedics arrived, they found a large-breed dog covered in blood, barking and blocking them from entering the house.
Paramedics called police and an officer shot and killed the dog.
Preliminary results from the medical examiner indicate Tyson died of injuries suffered in a dog attack, police said.
According to WESH, a family member found Tyson’s body.
“She’s bleeding everywhere. She has a bigger dog, so I don’t know if, like, her dog bit her, or I, I don’t know,” a caller told an emergency dispatcher.
This is not the first time the dog has attacked someone, WESH reports. There are at least two other incidents in which the dog reportedly attacked neighbors.
Animal services will examine the dog’s body.The democratisation of data visualisation tools brought us two major advancements: we can make great analytical products, faster. We can deceive easier, too.
Previously a domain ruled by statisticians and IT departments, analytics have now opened up to anyone with a laptop. For marketers and managers alone, BI apps such as Tableau, QlikView, or MS Excel have become a commodity. Tools have matured too: programming fluency was overruled by drag-and-drop interfaces. A visually stunning chart is literally a click away. The software intelligently picks the graph type and the colour scheme for us. For the more ambitious users the adjustment options are plenty, although within the range of pre-programmed configurations. While some of these visual endeavours lead to great analytical products, some result in colourful nonsense.
Colourful nonsense can refer to covering up inaccuracies in data with design, or to design choices that render the data unusable. The former use is a give-away for crooks; the latter for data amateurs. Unless the motive is known, these two groups can be difficult to distinguish. A misleading graph can be created to conceal an uneasy fact, but it can also be a product of good intentions. This is not exactly news: deception, be it a product of deliberate planning or oblivion, is an inherent attribute of humanity.
What’s different today is that new analytical tools, especially ad hoc visualisation software, have elevated the colourful nonsense to look legit. The unprecedented analytical agility has given way to more data illiteracy than ever before: the most data-ignorant brute can pass for a data wizard. Instantly available visualisations shortened the time we would normally spend planning out the information design. Today, these decisions are made by vendor-brew machine-learning algorithms that produce dashboards looking too professional to question their accuracy. Just as with infographics ten years ago, we fell in love in the visualisation part of data visualisation, leaving out the most important: the value and the legibility of data.
For the technological progress to bring value, we need to make an educated use of it. As every-day consumers of data, we are responsible for our interpretation of it. Analytical mindset isn’t born, but intentionally learnt. Through questioning the data we use, the products we build, and the analysis we see, we change the conversation from passive to engaging. I’ve written about data-driven decision making in the past, and that’s just another facet of it: data on its own is no game changer, until we understand it.
As a practical test, I suggest reviewing the graph below in terms of its legibility. Hint: it’s colourful nonsense of type 2: unintentionally bad. Stacked bar chart is the most emblematic example of poor data visualisation. It’s a chart that looks cool at the first sight and wants to say a lot, but fails at achieving either. Scarily, it comes as a default choice of visual representation by many top data-viz players in the market. Here is an example created by Gartner to illustrate the Worldwide IT Spending Forecast:
Besides the general trend, what else have we learnt about the spending for IT? Are we able to tell by how much “Devices” are supposed to grow in 2018? Will there be any growth at all or is the spending heading downwards? Better yet, what is the current spending for this category? Is it ca. $1,100 or $600? Do the categories sum up or do they overlap each other? What are their actual values, expressed in US dollars?
These sort of questions are very hard to answer even if you’ve got statistical background. Stacked bar chart is rarely a good choice: it sort-of works when the trend is the sole indicator we’re interested in, and when the categories (of which there are max. 2) are clearly distinguishable; ideally the numerical values are plotted too, so there is no confusion. Basically, these few cases when The Economist managed to pull it off. The above example clearly is not one of them. Neither is it an exception: just as Gartner, many otherwise excellent companies are guilty of deception: IDC and NPR to name a few that came up in my Google search. An honest mistake will often go unnoticed, but every now and again it will lead to dramatic repercussions. In the past, I’ve written about cases where a poorly designed visualisation made the media panic.
If there was one take away of this article, it’d be that: don’t let sleek visualisations fool you. Instead, make sure you understand the data behind it. When in doubt, question whoever is using it. There is a chance they don’t get it either.
Eve the Analyst
Follow @EveTheAnalystMedia playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Car body specialist Tom Maunder and his mother Thea describe the move to self-employment
When car body repairer Tom Maunder was made redundant for the third time, he'd had enough. So he bought the business.
While most people receive Christmas cards, the only cards Tom ever seemed to get each December were those telling him he was out of work. After a three-year apprenticeship with BMW, he was told there was no permanent job; he then joined another accident repair shop for 18 months before being let go.
Then it was third time unlucky at a body shop in Llansamlet in Swansea, as winter bit hard.
"Expenditure was sky high, also our income was not the best," said Tom, aged 24. "Although we had plenty of work coming through, when Christmas time came along it went so quiet, they weren't able to stay afloat and went into administration."
His parents had also had enough by now and so the family stepped in and decided to buy the operation and Scuffed Up was born earlier this year.
His mother Thea, who was semi-retired, had her own experience of redundancy from a tourism management job with a national park.
"We weren't prepared to see him fail again," she said. "It's purely for Tom. He's very skilled at what he does and we thought we'd give it a go, the business was up for sale and it was a viable option," she said.
Image caption Tom Maunder at work in the body shop
Tom added: "It was really frustrating. I have a lot of pride and passion in my work. There's no cutting corners. To be made redundant every year, especially around Christmas, was heartbreaking to a degree. To now actually have the opportunity to make this business my own is a dream come true and I'll work as hard as I can."
It is mostly a family affair, with Tom's father Alun - a retired lecturer - on reception and his elder brother and sister part of the team too. A worker from the old business has been taken on too and the family are looking at trainees.
"Everybody here is on minimum wage," said Thea. "We just need to take small steps at a time, grow the business and hope everyone stays with us.
"Everybody who's invested is a director and have very clear roles and it's worked really well. We still feel a little insecure because the commitment is all ours. I've enjoyed employment so to be purely responsible for our own destiny is quite scary - we enjoy the control but it's a huge commitment, financially and emotionally, only time will tell."
The Maunders have joined the ranks of the self-employed in Wales, which involves one-in-five of new jobs created since 2010.
However it appears that it is still less prominent in Wales compared to the rest of the UK, where self-employment accounts for 32% of new jobs.
At the end of 2016 there were 176,000 self-employed people in Wales - a rise since 2010.
That proportion varies depending on where you live in Wales and is at its lowest in areas historically dominated by heavy industry, while highest in Powys where farming accounts for about one in three of businesses.
Not only are farmers usually self-employed but they are dependent on a string of other self-employed trades like farm contractors, blacksmiths and sheep shearers.
In addition, rural communities in Wales have a high proportion of cafes, hotels and restaurants, where self-employment and insecure housing are prevalent.
Image copyright Stray Pixel Image caption Victoria Cao has gone freelance in graphic design
As well as the traditional self-employed, there is also the so-called "gig economy" - people on short-term contracts or freelancing.
Victoria Cao, 27, a freelance graphic designer working in Cardiff decided the time was right to try going it alone after five years working for companies in design and digital marketing.
She has taken part-time work to bridge the gap to pay the mortgage between the end of a guaranteed regular income and establishing her own business Stray Pixel.
"It can be quite scary and it's hard work, but don't let the fear stop you," said Ms Cao.
"It's exciting when the email comes in to say you've got work - it's not the same as when you're in full-time employment with someone else.
"I'm going to give it a year but in my heart I know I'm going to make it and it's been three months and it's going much better than I expected and I'm really enjoying it," she said.
But for Richard Mayled, 47, from Merthyr, his experience of working as a delivery driver for a large company in the Gwent valleys was "an absolute nightmare".
He had worked in IT for 25 years but wanted to try something different.
Mr Mayled would only find out the night before whether he was working or not and then out of his £120-a-day pay he had to pay £28 each day to hire a van from a specified firm.
He still paid the van hire fee even for the days when he wasn't working - and for the period after Christmas he was working as little as two days a week. His diesel allowance was also only 12 pence per mile.
"When I was working it could be 12 or 14 hours - you could get a call after 6pm telling you there were another 30 parcels which needed delivering," he said.
Mr Mayled was told he was no longer required in January and then it took him until April to be paid what he was owed.
His advice to anyone considering gig working is to "read every single detail of what you sign up to."
He has now got a full-time job back in IT.
Dr Lucy Minford, economics lecturer at Swansea University, said: "Gig workers are weighing up the pros and the cons. There is that lack of job security and workplace pension, but the majority have weighed up and value the variety that it offers, the autonomy, the control over when you work and who you work for and what projects you take on."
She says that "gig workers" also have a role to play, especially with smaller companies.
"When we talk about entrepreneurs, we're talking about small firms, they're agile, dynamic, responsive to new opportunities and able to change direction quickly. It's an engine of growth. We should be careful about trying to remove that flexible workforce."
Between October and December 2016 there were 37,000 people in Wales working on so-called zero hours contracts, 11,000 fewer than the year before.
Around 20% of these wanted to work more hours but far more of those indicated they were happy with the arrangement.
Overall there are more people working in Wales than ever before. The Conservatives and Welsh Labour both claim credit for that.
Unemployment has recently risen a little to 4.8% but for most of the 12 months it has been lower - and below the UK average.
What is also below UK levels are our wages. Last year, middle income workers in Wales were paid £492 a week - £47 a week less than the UK average.
That is a reflection of the fact that a high proportion of jobs in Wales are relatively low skilled. In contrast Wales on the whole has a lower proportion of high level managerial and professional roles. That in turn impacts on the economy as there is less being spent in shops and on services.
Across the UK, growth in the economy is largely as a result of consumer spending. So if on average people in Wales have less disposable income, that partly explains why the Welsh economy lags behind other parts of the UK in several indicators.
The latest inflation figures will be dismal reading for those on low pay.
Average wages have not been keeping up with the cost of living anyway but with the latest inflation rate rising from 2.3% to 2.7% in one month many households will find it harder to pay for the basics of food, clothing and energy - the elements of inflation that are rising most steeply.
Back in the late 1980s and early 90s, as Wales' traditional industries contracted many thousands of people found themselves out of work and understandably attracting new jobs was a priority for all political parties.
But we are in very different times now and the political debate is the quality and security of those jobs and about what is the best route to help lift people's standards of living.Story highlights 13 inmates escape from the same facility where 32 escaped Sept. 1
Most have been recaptured and returned to Woodland Hills Youth Development Center
Two juveniles overpowered a guard and took his keys
Guards say they have few methods to control the youth
That's an average of more than 1½ escapes per day.
By Saturday morning
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a hidden cause that correlates with both your measurements. It is easy to think up confounders in this case. A person who has had a heart attack may have an unhealthy life-style and smoke, drink or have a bad diet. Such a lifestyle could also lead to cancer. The more ill a person, the more likely they are to receive more X-ray examinations and also the more likely they are to get a cancer. X-rays may have little or nothing to do with it.
But WDDTY warns us,
Of these patients, 12,020—nearly 15 per cent of the total—went on to develop cancer, with two-thirds of these being cancers around the abdomen and chest areas where they had been screened.
This statement makes it look like there were thousands of induced cancers as a result of the X-rays. But we should remember that this was not a controlled study – many thousands of these people will get cancer anyway. What is being looked for is a slight excess that correlates with dose. The observed extra risk was small. There are many problems with interpreting these results. For one, it is not clear how a dose from a heart imaging X-ray could induce cancer in organs not exposed.
WDTTY make no attempt to explain the figures and put them in a context that would help people understand the risks from X-rays. The authors of the paper do a much better job when they say,
The potential increase in cancer-related death associated with exposure to radiation from cardiac imaging and therapeutic procedures has to be weighed against the potential risk of death from cardiovascular diseases for which these procedures are indicated and the resulting decrease in mortality expected with their use.
That is, if there is an extra risk, then this risk may be acceptable given that the information from the X-ray could help save your life from a heart attack. Yes, there are important things that come out of such studies such as the need to ensure we are not using X-rays when they are not medically required. The authors note that the study was done in Canada. In the USA, diagnostic imaging may be much more prevalent for reasons associated with their health care culture and not medical need.
In short, we have an article that does nothing to inform readers, is likely to mislead, and avoids important aspects of how a patient might understand the risks and benefits of diagnostic imaging.
Next, the editor of WDDTY, Lynne McTaggart, tell us that “Neutral Switzerland is partial to homeopathy”.
Taken directly from the HuffPo Dana Ullman book of idiocy, Lynne tells us that,
While the British government has been busily attempting to curtail the use of homeopathy (to date unsuccessfully), the most comprehensive assessment ever conducted by any governmental body into homeopathy has concluded that not only does it work, but it’s also far more cost-effective than conventional medicine. In fact, it works so well that patients should be reimbursed for it on the Swiss National Health.
Everything in that statement is wrong.
The UK government had stated they are neutral about homeopathy and are letting NHS commissioners decide whether it should be paid for. As a result, the number of homeopathy prescriptions made on the NHS has collapsed. In contrast, the Swiss government has not remained neutral on the issue, as we shall see.
The report was not the most comprehensive study of homeopathy conducted by any government body. Firstly, the Swiss government did not write the report. A group of Anthroposophists wrote it. They work at the University of Witten/Herdecke in Germany, a private university set up to promote the occult medical teachings of Rudolf Steiner. They train homeopathic doctors and so would benefit immensely from German speaking public support of homeopathy. They submitted the report in the hope that it would influence policy. One researcher has published a review that calls this report “a case study of research misconduct“.
The Swiss government was not accepting of the findings of the report.
The positive interpretation of the current evidence seems understandable, as long as one does not require especially high evidence standards, given the low plausibility of homeopathy in the light of established scientific knowledge. Very skeptical people will regard the reviewed evidence as not very convincing.
Specifically on cost-effectiveness the reviewing panel said,
Due to insufficient data, no reliable statements on the cost-effectiveness of the 5 complementary therapies are possible based on the HTAs.
The Swiss government, after reviewing these reports and taking into account a referendum agreed to continue funding homeopathy only until 2017 with the expectation that these therapies will comply with demands for evidence of efficacy, appropriateness and cost-effectiveness by end of 2015.
What Doctors Don’t Tell You don’t tell you this.
Finally, lets look at an advert.
I would love to examine the full page advert of Glastonbury quantum flapdoodle company Harmony United that asks, “What has Santa got for you in his Quantum Sack?” The answer, it would appear, is a quantum pendant that can cure of all known illneses, treat your pets and your car.
The Realm of unlimited Possibilities obviously includes being able to sell worthless tat at inflated prices in a magazine that claims to be a health champion.
But instead, let’s look at how Stetzer is going to save you from the menace of dirty electricity.
This company claim to provide you with mains filters at £55 (minimum three per order) that will rid you of something called ‘Dirty Electricity’. It can treat ADHD, diabetes, fibromyalgia, ME, MS and tinnitus.
Those are some claims.
It also claims to save 30% on your electricity bills.
Their web site goes on.
Obviously their pack of 3 filters at £165 is a minimum required if you want to have any hope of sleeping well. “During the development of the filters and the following medical research it was shown that having too few filters is a false economy.” They advertise a ten pack so you can better live a life free from the menace of dirty electricity. They recommend up to 15 for most households.
They tell people with diabetes that
Research has shown that diabetics can need lower doses of insulin when electropollution is reduced, so be prepared to monitor glucose levels especially carefully.
So, after misrepresenting life-saving diagnostic techniques, misleading about the Swiss government’s views on homeopathy, WDDTY are now prepared to take advertising revenue from someone selling cheap mains filters at vastly overinflated prices to protect against a problem that does not exist whilst giving dangerous advice to people with life-threatening illnesses.
Very good work.
I understand the Advertising Standards Authority are in receipt of a challenge to the advert and its ability to comply with advertising codes of substantiation, responsibility and truthfulness.
In the meantime, here is Chris Morris and his hard hidden news item on the danger of the related problem, Heavy Electricity.The United States spends more on healthcare than other wealthy nations, yet ranks dead last on equity, access, efficiency, care delivery and healthcare costs.
Despite progress made in providing coverage to previously uninsured Americans via the Affordable Care Act, the latest report from The Commonwealth Fund finds that the United States offers its citizens the least financial protection among the 11 high-income countries surveyed. It is also the only one without universal health insurance coverage.
RELATED: Special Report—8 ways to fix the Affordable Care Act
Indeed, the U.S. has the highest costs and lowest overall performance compared to Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. The U.S. spent $9,364 per person on healthcare in 2016, compared to $4,094 in the U.K., which ranked first on performance overall.
New 11-country study finds the US health care system has widest gap between people with higher and lower incomes https://t.co/aqHhnficMl pic.twitter.com/GIfzbSgXFf — Commonwealth Fund (@commonwealthfnd) July 14, 2017
Forty-four percent of lower income Americans and 26% of higher income U.S. citizens reported financial barriers to care. Remarkably, the report noted, someone with a high income in the U.S. was more likely to report financial barriers to healthcare than a low-income person in the U.K.
“What this report tells us is that despite the substantial gains in coverage and access to care due to the Affordable Care Act, our healthcare system is still not working as well as it could for Americans, and it works especially poorly for those with middle or lower incomes,” Commonwealth Fund President David Blumenthal, M.D., said in an announcement. “The healthcare policies currently being contemplated in Congress would certainly exacerbate these challenges as millions would lose access to health insurance and affordable healthcare.”
This isn’t the first time the U.S. has fared poorly compared to other nations. Since 2004, it has ranked last in every one of six similar reports. This year the Commonwealth Fund added new measures and refined the scoring to give each country an overall score, as well as a score on five specific areas of performance. The new approach ranked the U.K. Australia and the Netherlands as top performers. New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, Sweden and Germany were in the middle of the pack. Canada and France were near the bottom but performed better than the U.S.
Another recent global report found massive inequity within the United States in terms of access to care and the quality of care provided.
But it’s not impossible for the U.S. to move from last place to first among wealthy countries if it heeds the lessons offered from top performing countries, notes Eric Schneider, M.D., the lead author of the study and senior vice president for policy and research at the Commonwealth Fund, and David Squires, former senior researcher to the president at the Commonwealth Fund, in a piece for The New England Journal of Medicine.
This would mean the U.S. must expand health insurance coverage, such as universal coverage that provides citizens with healthcare they need at little or no cost; invest more in primary care so that it is accessible on nights and weekends; cut down on the administrative paperwork that physicians must complete so they can spend time on providing care; and invest more in social services to reduce healthcare disparities.
“If we are going to be the best, we have to do better for patients,” Schneider said in the announcement. "We are not the U.K., Australia or the Netherlands, and we don’t have to be. Each of those countries follows a different path to top performance. A country that spends as much as we do could be the best in the world. We can adapt what works in other countries and build on our own strengths to achieve a healthcare system that provides affordable, high-quality healthcare for everyone.”A Donald Trump-Ted Cruz unity ticket seems less likely now that Cruz told the Good Morning America audience on Monday that he has “zero interest, whatsoever” in being Trump’s pick for vice-president.
Bonnie Pointer, who was described as an undecided voter from Vacaville, California, asked Cruz via video, “Would you accept being Donald Trump’s Vice President?”
Cruz thanked Bonnie for her question saying, “Let me just answer very simply, I have zero interest, whatsoever, in doing it.”
He went to explain his reasoning:
And there are a lot of reasons, but perhaps the simplest is, if Donald is the nominee, Hillary wins, Hillary wins by double digits and I don’t think there’s anything we can do to change that. And the stakes are too high. That’s why nationwide 65 to 70 percent of Republicans recognize Donald Trump loses to Hillary. It’s why we’re seeing Republicans uniting behind our campaign. It’s why out of the 17 Republican candidates who started this race, five of them are supporting our campaign. We’ve been supported now by [former Texas Gov.] Rick Perry, by [Sen.] Lindsey Graham, by [former Florida Gov.] Jeb Bush, by [Wisconsin Gov.] Scott Walker, by Carly Fiorina. Now all of us started out as opponents, we’ve come together and united because we’ve gotta win, and if Donald’s the nominee he loses. If I’m the nominee I beat Hillary Clinton. We’re beating her in key swing states, we’re beating her with independents, we’re beating her with young people and we’ve got to win. We can’t do with another four or eight more years on the road we’re on right now.
A Fox News poll released last week showed Trump losing to Clinton by seven percent in a hypothetical one-on-one race. In that poll 20 percent of Republicans would hypothetically support Clinton. However, that is before a Republican nominee has been chosen and while Trump was shown to be widening his lead over Cruz and Kasich among Republican voters. Cruz fairs better in the potential matchup, coming in tied with Clinton. Ohio Gov. John Kasich polls nine points ahead of Clinton in the head-to-head scenario.
An IBD/TIPP poll released in early April showed a hypothetical Trump-Clinton race favors Clinton by 12 points. A Cruz-Clinton matchup also favored Clinton, but by five percent.
A January Reuters poll showed Trump running neck-and-neck with Clinton. That same poll showed Trump crushing Clinton among white working class voters.
Follow Michelle Moons on Twitter @MichelleDianaPoliticians are now beginning to look to touch the third rail of Indian politics—taxing agriculture.
Two members of Parliament—Bhartruhari Mahtab of the Biju Janata Dal and Saugata Roy of the All India India Trinamool Congress—made a case for, at the very least, taxing companies which claim exemption on agricultural income despite earning crores in profits in the finance bill discussion on Wednesday. Mahtab went a step further and sought a tax on rich farmers who own more than 50 acres of land and whose agricultural income exceeds ₹ 1 crore.
India has not taxed agriculture since the country got independence from British rule in 1947, and taxing farmers heavily was always seen as the trademark of colonial oppression. At that time, Indian politicians, all of whom were associated with the freedom struggle, made a conscious decision not to tax agricultural income.
However, after almost 70 years of independence, the Indian political class and the government are signalling a rethink as this provision is being used by even big farmers and companies whose income is in crores of rupees.
The Economic Survey, the government’s annual publication preceding the budget, also made a case for taxing agricultural income of the well-off.
Speaking in the debate on the finance bill, Mahtab said, “It is reasonably well known that income from agriculture attracts no taxes in our country. It is a legacy that we have inherited because most of our freedom fighters were fighting for the farmers against the harsher taxes that were imposed on the farmers during that time. Invariably after 1947, most of the governments said, ‘no tax on agriculture’."
“What is quite known is that there are more than 4 lakh taxpayers claiming exemption from agriculture income in the assessment year 2014-15. The biggest were seed giants like Kaveri Seeds - which claimed ₹ 186.63 crore exemption and made a profit of ₹ 215 crore before tax—and multinational Monsanto India, which claimed ₹ 94 crore as exemption from agriculture income and earned ₹ 138 crore profit before tax," he said.
“Not taxing the agriculture produce of the farmers is one thing but not taxing the companies who are earning thousands of crores of rupees? Individual farmers or companies farming more than 50 acres, they are given agriculture income exemption. It makes no sense," he added.
“Monsanto India Limited (MIL) is a law-abiding entity. Its claim for exemption is in accordance with the law and is supported by judicial precedence," a spokesperson of the company said in an email response.
An email sent to Kaveri Seeds remained unanswered.
Later, speaking to Mint, Mahtab questioned the logic of giving a tax exemption to a farmer who earns more than ₹ 1 crore or owns more than 50 acres.
He pointed out that there are around eight companies who claim tax exemption and still earn profits in crores.
“The central government needs to reach out to the state governments since agriculture is a state subject and see how they can be brought under the tax ambit," he said adding that some states like Kerala and Assam tax plantations.
Roy of Trinamool Congress also urged the government to tax companies earning agricultural income, pointing out that increasing the direct tax base is necessary and urged it to not increase indirect taxes given their regressive nature.
‘Who are getting the benefits of your tax exemption to agriculture? The biggest seed giant is known as Kaveri Seeds. They have claimed ₹ 186.63 crore exemption; next is Monsanto India, an Indian subsidiary of a multinational company, have claimed ₹ 94.404 crore exemption. We have not been able to enlarge our tax base and hence, we have not been able to improve the tax-GDP ratio sufficiently," he said.Welcome to Episode 127 of Speculate! The Podcast for Writers, Readers and Fans. In this episode, we talk fantasy, military, and writing business with authors (and former Speculate guests) Brian McClellan and Myke Cole as we look at writing trilogies, what a civilian author does or doesn’t “owe” to a military person when writing fantasy with a military slant, and what engages and excites Brian and Myke (and what doesn’t) about the business–and why they’re so excited about their new books, The Autumn Republic and Gemini Cell, respectively. If you like what you hear, don’t forget to check out our next episode, when we’ll take a look at speculative fiction poetry–and of course there are plenty of other shows to come. As a reminder, our Good, Bad and Ugly segments (including the one from Brian and Myke here!) are only available to our Patreon supporters, so please head over there to hear more about our guests and their work. Thanks to everyone who’s helped out so far, and thanks as always for listening to and spreading the word about the show!
Additional Note: Nominations for the 2015 Hugo Awards are now open (for one final day!), and Speculate is eligible to be nominated in the Best Fancast category. If you’re a voting member of either last year’s, this year’s or next year’s Worldcon, you’re eligible to make Hugo nominations, and we’d be honored (and grateful) if you would nominate us for Best Fancast. Please go here for more details, spread the word, and thanks so much as always for your support!
Like this: Like Loading...Rather than conducting weekly Power Rankings, I will be doing a statistical analysis of the LCS teams. This week’s article will take a look at the stats from Week 3 and will be used to forecast the following week’s outcomes.
I’ll start by providing the graphic with the statistics and follow it with an explanation and a breakdown.
The Stats
The far left column is the total score of each team which is the sum of the score from each individual role.The far right column will represent the statistical ranking of teams.
Individual Scores
Individual scores are calculated by comparing the players stats in four different categories to the average of all players in that role. If a player is average in all categories, they should have a score of 1. If they’re above average they will have a score in a category greater than one and if they’re lower than average they will have a score less than one.
Using the Individual scores, we will take a look at a few teams and try to understand why their performing at their levels.
Immortals
Each player on the Immortals are producing stats far above the average. This is mostly likely due to their current 6-0 performance. With such low deaths and explosive games, their stats will remain inflated until they are challenged or even defeated. Still, we can see that Reignover is performing quite well. While he has yet to have a weak performance, Pobelter’s stats would imply that he might be the soft target of the seemingly untouchable Immortals.
For teams approaching the Immortals, high awareness of Reignover’s presence and increased pressure on Pobelter might be the way to expose some vulnerabilities.
Team Liquid
Their 3-3 record might not show it but TL has some of the statistically strongest performers between both regions. Lourlo and Matt have been very aggressive players in their most recent games cause a small fall in their stats but their sacrifices have allowed their carries to truly flourish. If TL’s macro play comes together and their players can continue to build their cohesion then TL should find many wins coming their way.
Origen
We have all seen Origen perform at their peak during last year’s Worlds. Since then, they have not lived up to their audience’s standards. A 3-3 record after 3 weeks is questionable for a Worlds semifinalist team and many attribute this to the xPeke and PowerOfEvil transaction. PowerOfEvil’s score is sitting at an impressive 4.2 while Soaz and Amazing both are producing below average stats. Perhaps the previous top, mid and jungle trio had better synergy with xPeke but to blame PowerOfEvil entirely would be a mistake Origen cannot afford to make.
Team Impulse
TIP was predicted to be at the bottom of the tier but has proven many teams wrong in a very impressive way. TIP’s three-game substitute, Seraph, has been creating havoc for their opponents on the Rift. It will be curious to see how the team continues to perform without their all-star substitute carrying the team to victory. Without Seraph’s massive rating contribution, TIP would be a bottom tier team falling somewhere just below Team Dignitas.
Cloud9
Sneaky is under performing?! Any C9 fan would tell me this is absolute blasphemy and wouldn’t let me hear the end of it. Sneaky’s stats are far below average but looking into why tells a different story. Rush, Jensen and Balls are all above average in their roles in gold earned per minute while Sneaky is below average by a considerable amount. A quick explanation could be that C9 is not giving Sneaky the resources needed to farm and carry the game. The addition of Jensen and Rush might have changed the team’s priorities just enough to set off their winning formula.
ROCCAT
ROC has had shining moments and some rough moments. Their team is suffering from issues across the entire board but most noticeable is the performance of their bot lane. Their bot lane has the lowest combined score of any other bot lane. ROC is not blind to this trend and have already taken action to bring up their numbers by replacing Safir with Tabzz. With games against FNC and UOL lined up for Week 4, winning won’t be impossible but it also will not come easy.
Week 4 Predictions
Using each team’s score, I have created a simple chart using ratios to show each team’s statistical chances of beating one another in their upcoming matches. While a.48/.52 ratio might not be that big of a difference in the case of TIP vs. CLG, it might be just enough to predict the outcomes.
Closing
This concludes this week’s statistical analysis. Comments, feedback, questions can be sent to [email protected]
If you would like a certain team or player to be analyzed in the upcoming weeks, feel free to send your requests as well.Faced with skyrocketing costs and ballooning demand, the federal government is dramatically cutting back the amount of medical marijuana it will cover for veterans.
Veterans Affairs Minister Kent Hehr plans to scale back the limit for reimbursement from 10 grams of medical marijuana per day to three. He made the announcement at the Canadian Military and Veteran Health Research Forum in Vancouver.
"I was shocked to learn that the former government began reimbursing veterans for cannabis with no policy in place," Hehr said. "Now is the time to change that."
Last March, Hehr told CBC News he was launching an internal policy review, after data showed the number of medical marijuana prescriptions had shot up.
"Since the first veteran was reimbursed on compassionate grounds in 2007, the department has been reimbursing veterans for cannabis in increasing numbers and at an increasing cost," Hehr said.
"We went from one veteran to over 3,000 in eight years, many of whom are accessing up to 10 grams per day."
Veterans will be allowed to continue charging for their current amount until May 21, 2017. There will also be an exception for veterans in "exceptional circumstances." A psychiatrist, pain specialist, oncologist or other health specialist would have to submit an application explaining the rationale for a larger quantity.
Hehr said the changes were just the "starting point" and that it was his intention to revisit the changes in the policy to ensure the policy reflects the best research, practice and experience.
Veterans Affairs Minister Kent Hehr announces new rules for the prescription of medical marijuana to Veterans 4:11
In another cost-control measure, the department will set a dollar limit of $8.50 per gram that licensed producers can charge, based on what it sees as "fair market value," a measure welcomed by some advocates.
Jonathan Ziad, founder and executive director of Canadians for Fair Access to Medical Marijuana, said there have been instances of vendors increasing the price of medical pot for veterans whose prescriptions are covered by the government, and he hopes this measure ends the exploitative practice.
Ziad also said the reduction to three grams from 10 is probably in the right ballpark because it reflects the latest research, yet he still has reservations.
"I think that it remains to be seen how the exception process will work," Ziad said. "Veterans still have the opportunity, with the support of a physician, to get coverage past three grams a day — that's the really important thing."
The new policy includes allowing veterans to claim cannabis oil and fresh marijuana, as well as the dried product. That change comes into effect immediately.
Program under scrutiny
There's been plenty of criticism of the existing program. In his spring 2016 report, the auditor general said he couldn't figure out what evidence the department used to set a limit of 10 grams of marijuana per veteran per day. He noted that Health Canada had warned more than five grams per day led to increased health risks. including to the heart and lungs, as well as increased risk of dependence.
The report also noted that just one doctor wrote 29 per cent of the medical marijuana prescriptions in the 2014-15 fiscal year.
Even a spokesperson for one group that advocates for veterans using medical cannabis suggested 10 grams per day was "an incredible amount" to be prescribing.
The cost of the program went from five veterans claiming a combined $19,088 in 2008-09 to 3,071 veterans claiming $31 million in medical pot from April to September this year alone. According to department officials, that amount was set to rise to $75 million by the end of this year.
"I wouldn't say things got out of control, I would say that as we saw those numbers rising, it caused us to go back and do consultation," said Bernard Butler, assistant deputy minister of strategic policy and commemoration at Veterans Affairs Canada.
Former NDP MP Peter Stoffer has raised questions about the amount of medical cannabis prescribed by some doctors. He has taken on a role as public affairs advocate for Trauma Healing Centres, a company that advocates veterans using medical cannabis to deal with chronic pain as well as trauma including PTSD.
The move was not welcomed by retired colonel Pat Stogran, the former veterans ombudsman, who said the federal government should be more worried about opioid misuse and other drug abuse than medical marijuana.
"The efficacy of cannabis is indisputable, and I don't know how Canadians can accept government's interfering directly on issues that are between patients and medical practitioners," Stogran told CBC News.
"If the government has a problem with the conduct of doctors, then they should take it up with the appropriate college of physicians and surgeons."
The department's change in policy comes after consulting with veterans, licensed marijuana producers and medical experts.
Veterans Affairs said the physicians it consulted recommended one or two grams a day was a reasonable amount in the vast majority of cases. It says Health Canada's data shows the average Canadian is authorized 2.6 grams per day.Although many on the left support free speech for those they agree with, they seem to abhor letting those they disagree with exercise the same right. As a result, they actively try to have them silenced. Some of their most popular tactics for doing so include blocking entrances, disrupting events, using violence and intimidation, and destroying property.
To stop this from happening, some state lawmakers have tried to pass legislation obligating colleges and universities to crack down on this type of censorship. Sadly, one of the most recent attempts to do so wasn’t very successful.
Earlier this week, a bill protecting free speech on college campuses was struck down in Louisiana. To justify vetoing the bill, the Governor argued that speech was already protected on college campuses and claimed the legislation “overly burdensome.”
According to reports, John Bel Edwards (D), the Governor of Louisiana, recently vetoed HB 269 despite the fact that it received a massive amount of support from state lawmakers. Specifically, the bill, which was modeled after a law in Arizona, passed the State Senate 30-2 and the State House 95-0. If signed, it would’ve required state colleges and universities to revise their policies and regulations to better protect free speech, highlight the importance of free speech during freshman orientation, and create a panel on the board of regents to review any free speech complaints.
Unfortunately, Gov. Edwards thinks that establishing such policies are “unnecessary and overly burdensome” to colleges and universities. “The freedoms this bill attempts to protect are already well-established by the bedrock principles declared in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution,” he explained upon striking down the legislation.
“The protection of speech has survived and flourished in the 226 years since the adoption of the First Amendment, and it will continue to do so without [Harris’ bill] becoming the law of Louisiana,” added Edwards. “[it’s] a solution in search of a problem that creates a long, detailed structure for the evaluation of the freedom of expression on college campuses,” he continued.
However, Edward’s comments could not be further from the truth. After a careful review of colleges in Louisiana, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which scores the constitutionality of university policies using red, yellow, and green “lights,” failed to find any “green light” schools. What they found instead were six “red light” schools and three “yellow light” schools, meaning “tens of thousands of college students in Louisiana attend institutions that maintain unconstitutional policies.”
For example, McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana, has an anti-bullying policy that ignores intent. As a consequence, school administrators could potentially punish someone even if they never actually meant to be mean, which could have a “chilling effect” on speech. This means that some may be too afraid to speak freely since doing so could be interpreted as “unintentional bullying.”
Lance Harris (R-Alexandria), the House Republican Caucus Chairman, is the main sponsor of the failed legislation. He proposed the bill in response to the University of Berkeley’s decision to essentially cancel Ann Coulter’s speaking event earlier this year due to what they called “safety concerns” because far-left extremists threatened to engage in violence if she was allowed to speak. If signed, schools would be obligated to hold those using violence and intimidation to silence others accountable for their actions.
Following Governor Edward’s decision, Harris plans on meeting with him, figuring out what went wrong, and trying again. “I’m going to be looking at different versions. I hope I can visit with the governor and see what he didn’t like about this one,” he told reporters shortly after the bill was vetoed. “Freedom of speech is under siege on college campuses around the country,” he continued, adding, “I think it’s critically important that Louisiana be proactive on this issue.”
The authoritarian left must not be allowed to use violence and intimidation to silence others. Bills like HB 269 help make sure that this doesn’t happen by making it clear that colleges and universities have an obligation to protect the free speech of their students. Gov. Edwards and anyone else opposed to the legislation need to be voted out of office and replaced by people willing to do more to protect speech.On Saturday, Jared Goff's finest outing under center with the Rams was anchored by better mechanics, smarter decisions and the presence of a valuable new asset on offense: Cooper Kupp.
The third-round wideout from Eastern Washington shredded the Raiders with a six-catch, 70-yard outing highlighted by a pretty 23-yard touchdown strike from Goff.
Kupp became an instant talking point for his handiwork against Oakland, but at least one teammate has been singing his praises all along.
"I told him a week ago: Rookie of the Year. That should be his goal in my mind," Rams cornerback Trumaine Johnson said Monday, per the team's official website. "He's from the Big Sky [Conference], I'm from the Big Sky. I knew coming in he had great route running -- he could come in right now and compete, and start."
Kupp's on-field play has looked more like the product of a comfortable veteran, with the rookie finding holes in coverage and often operating as Goff's first look, even with Sammy Watkins on the field.
"Smart route running," Johnson said. "He can go in there and compete right now -- that's what I love about him. He's real coachable, too."
The presence of Kupp and Watkins completely alters the script for Goff, who spent last season with his head spinning inside a talent-bereft attack that imploded on a weekly basis.
The Rams still have a ways to go under creative new coach Sean McVay, but this offense is light years ahead of where it was one August ago. It's a start.A big surprise in the Kotlin land was the technology preview of Kotlin/Native that can compile your Kotlin program into native executable, thereby completely eliminating the need for Java Virtual Machine.
As a relatively young language, Kotlin gained some popularity in the last few years. Kotlin presents a syntax relatively familiar to Java programmers. Since it came from JetBrains (the maker of IntelliJ, WebStorm, Android Studio, etc), the tooling support is excellent. Interoperability with Java is top notch, not merely an afterthought. And of course, Kotlin is a viable alternative for developing Android applications.
Running Kotlin programs requires a virtual machine (Java or JavaScript). This is however changing. Just yesterday, JetBrains announced the availability of the technical preview of Kotlin/Native. By leveraging LLVM, Kotlin/Native compiles a Kotlin program into a self-contained executable for iOS, macOS, and Linux (Windows support will be coming later).
To try Kotlin/Native, simply download it (illustrated here for Linux):
$ curl -OL http://download.jetbrains.com/kotlin/native/kotlin-native-linux-0.1.tar.gz $ tar xf kotlin-native-linux-0.1.tar.gz $ cd kotlin-native-linux-0.1
Also, make sure you have Java 8 installed on the system. Often, it is as easy as installing OpenJDK 8, either via the package manager or a third-party distribution such as Zulu from Azul Systems.
Let us try it with a simple program:
$ cat << EOF > hola.kt > fun main(args : Array<String>) { > println("Hello from Kotlin!") > } > EOF $ bin/kotlinc hola.kt -o hola
If the Kotlin compiler, kotlinc, is invoked for the first time, it needs to grab some additional LLVM-related packages (which may take a while), giving the prompt such as:
Downloading native dependencies (LLVM, sysroot etc). This is a one-time action performed only on the first run of the compiler....
Once the compilation is completed, the executable is ready:
>./hola Hello from Kotlin
To my excitement, the size of the executable (after running strip ) is rather small, around 163 KB. This is quite good for such an initial tech preview. As expected, the resulting executable does not have a lot of dependencies:
$ ldd./hola linux-vdso.so.1 (0x00007ffc419e3000) libdl.so.2 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdl.so.2 (0x00007f4362b4c000) libm.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libm.so.6 (0x00007f436284b000) libpthread.so.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpthread.so.0 (0x00007f436262e000) libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00007f4362418000) libc.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0x00007f436206d000) /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007f4362d50000)
It is also fascinating that this tech preview already has the support for interfacing with C functions (often known as FFI, foreign function interface). The Kotlin/Native git repository at github.com/JetBrains/kotlin-native contains a few sample applications which demonstrate it, including an OpenGL teapot demo (via GLUT):
Do you think 2017 will be an exciting year for Kotlin? I believe so!We recently learned that adidas has overtaken Jordan as the second-most popular sports footwear brand in the United States.
According to a report from Versus Reviews, Jordan has also fallen in another key measure of understanding shoe popularity. Their research indicates more NBA players are wearing Kobe Bryant sneakers than Michael Jordan.
In fact, 58 players in the league are wearing Kobe’s while 50 rock shoes from Jordan. This is a major change of pace for the industry.
One loyal supporter is 22-year-old Giannis Antetokounmpo (via ESPN):
“He has exclusively worn the Kobe X Low model for the past two seasons, constantly declining to switch into Nike’s latest and greatest. The brand made him a custom pair of the new Kobe A.D. for the 2017 All-Star Game, yet he still opted to switch back into his beloved Kobe X just before tipoff. At one point, the brand even wanted him to debut the new React Hyperdunk 2017 during this year’s playoffs — but he stuck with the Kobes.”
Another NBA star who often sports Kobe shoes is California native DeMar DeRozan, who had player editions for sale of the Nike Kobe 11’s. Ten NBA players wore those shoes last season.
Nike Kobe AD’s are the most popular choice for players, with 33 individuals wearing them. Only one shoe from the Jordan brand (Air Jordan XXI) finished in the top 10, as 13 players chose to wear those shoes.
Players entering the league each season are becoming further removed from Jordan’s era of dominance, with many growing up watching Bryant in his prime.
Related 10 things you may not know about Kobe BryantWhen the Boise City Council studied a graph charting web traffic, the contrast among the city's many departmental websites was startling.
As expected, Parks and Recreation peaked higher than most, particularly in the summer. The Boise Public Library remained
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potential disasters associated with the 2012. For example it’s been a while since some geologists claimed that the next eruption of Yellowstone supervolcano is overdue. Considering that much of North America would be devastated and there would be catastrophic consequences on a global level it’s strange that it’s not considered one of the possible causes of the end of the world.
Finally, for all we know Betelgeuse could have become a supernova a few centuries ago but the electromagnetic radiations it emitted haven’t reached the Earth yet. In any case we’ll wait for this supernova and in the meantime let’s try to enjoy 2012, 2013 and all following years. 😉When you’re a Database or System Administrator, you don’t always have time to go through the setup wizards when deploying a new piece of software. Probably because you are managing massive amounts of systems in a large organization.
So what are you going to do when it comes to your distributed database cluster?
Couchbase Server comes with a RESTful API that is perfect for provisioning instances, whether that be creating new clusters or joining to existing clusters. We’re going to see how to use some of those API endpoints.
Installing Couchbase Server for Mac, Linux, or Windows
Regardless if you wish to configure Couchbase Server over HTTP or not, you’re still going to need to install the software first. There is a binary available for Mac, Linux, and Windows, all found in the download section of the Couchbase website.
If you’d prefer, you can also find various cloud images available for services like Amazon, Azure, and Docker.
Creating a New Cluster with the Command Line
Once Couchbase Server is installed and running, we can take advantage of the RESTful API endpoints to complete the configuration of the instance.
The first thing we want to do is define how much memory to allocate to our instance:
curl -v -X POST http://localhost:8091/pools/default -d memoryQuota=512 -d indexMemoryQuota=512 1 2 3 curl - v - X POST http : //localhost:8091/pools/default - d memoryQuota = 512 - d indexMemoryQuota = 512
The above command will allocate the instance with 512MB of memory and 512MB of index memory. Of course both should be adjusted based on your needs.
We also need to define which services will be available on our instance:
curl -v http://localhost:8091/node/controller/setupServices -d services=kv%2cn1ql%2Cindex 1 2 curl - v http : //localhost:8091/node/controller/setupServices - d services = kv % 2cn1ql % 2Cindex
In the above we have a comma delimited list of services where the comma is URL-encoded to be %2C. The services in this example will be the key-value service (KV), the N1QL service, and the index service. Depending on your needs you may or may not want to enable all these services.
The Couchbase instance is very open and insecure as of right now because there is no administrative account created yet. It is a good idea to create that administrative account now:
curl -v http://localhost:8091/settings/web -d port=8091 -d username=Administrator -d password=password 1 2 3 4 curl - v http : //localhost:8091/settings/web - d port = 8091 - d username = Administrator - d password = password
In the above example we are defining the administrative username to be Administrator and the password to be password. Probably not a good choice in a production environment.
Out of the box we have no buckets in our Couchbase instance, so we should probably go ahead and create one. From the command line, execute:
curl -v -u Administrator:password -X POST http://localhost:8091/pools/default/buckets -d name=example -d bucketType=couchbase -d ramQuotaMB=256 -d authType=sasl 1 2 3 4 5 6 curl - v - u Administrator : password - X POST http : //localhost:8091/pools/default/buckets - d name = example - d bucketType = couchbase - d ramQuotaMB = 256 - d authType = sasl
The above bucket creation command is doing quite a bit. We’re providing the administrative information to the instance in our request. The bucket we’re creating will be named example and it will be a couchbase bucket type. There are a few bucket types you can choose from, so don’t think we only have one option. The memory allocation of this bucket will be 256MB of the 512MB that we gave to this server.
Finally, since we are using N1QL, it might make sense to create a primary index on the bucket. Go ahead and execute the following:
curl -v http://localhost:8093/query/service -d'statement=create primary index on example' 1 2 curl - v http : //localhost:8093/query/service - d'statement=create primary index on example'
At this point, the new instance should be fully functional. You should note that the RESTful API offers so much more in terms of configuration than what we explored and it is a good idea to check out what it has to offer.
Joining a Cluster with the Command Line
So what if we are spinning up nodes to be added to an already existing cluster? We can use the RESTful API to help us out.
From the command line, execute the following:
curl -u Administrator:password -d clusterMemberHostIp=10.0.1.99 -d clusterMemberPort=8091 -d user=Administrator -d password=password -d services=kv%2cn1ql%2cindex http://localhost:8091/node/controller/doJoinCluster 1 2 3 4 5 curl - u Administrator : password - d clusterMemberHostIp = 10.0.1.99 - d clusterMemberPort = 8091 - d user = Administrator - d password = password - d services = kv % 2cn1ql % 2cindex http : //localhost:8091/node/controller/doJoinCluster
The above command will take our node on localhost, or wherever our new node is located and join it to a cluster based on the clusterMemberHostIp. This new node will have all the same services, even though it is not a requirement that all nodes match.
Any time you add or remove nodes from a cluster, you’re going to want to rebalance that cluster. This can be accomplished with the following:
curl -v -X POST -u [admin]:[password] http://localhost:8091/controller/rebalance 1 2 3 curl - v - X POST - u [ admin ] : [ password ] http : //localhost:8091/controller/rebalance
The rebalance process can take time depending on how much data you have.
Conclusion
You just saw how to configure a Couchbase Server cluster with the command line and the RESTful API endpoints. This is useful if you manage many servers and want to accomplish all this via a script. There are plenty of other scenarios where this would be useful as well. Maybe you have created a continuous deployment pipeline and need the database to be included in it.
There are many more API endpoints available and I strongly encourage you to check out the documentation regarding them.From RationalWiki
The lead-crime hypothesis proposes that the United States crime rates have dropped, in part, because of lower levels of lead exposure in the environment. No, it's not fewer pencil munchers (pencils don't use lead paint any more and the part that people call the "pencil lead" has never contained lead). No, it's not necessarily less lead paint eating. The main driver of the lower lead levels is elimination of leaded gasoline.[1]
This hypothesis stands as an alternative or supplement to other explanations including gun proliferation, the United States war on drugs, the legalization and subsequent increase in the number of abortions, or increasing rates of imprisonment and capital punishment.[2][3] Demographic change – specifically, a reduction in crime-prone young males – was once proposed as a cause of the drop and forecast to cause increased crime in 2010, but it did not.[4]
The lead-crime hypothesis offers a possible explanation for both the increase in crime rates that began in the 1960s, as well as for the drop that began in the mid-1990s and continues to the present.
Background [ edit ]
Lead, a poisonous heavy metal, has been used in many everyday products including paint, radiation protection, makeup, bullets, and plumbing, but most significantly in gasoline. Leaded gasoline was banned in the US for road vehicle use in 1995, although it remains in use for piston-engined aircraft and, until 2008, in NASCAR. In many parts of the world, lead pipes are no longer allowed. Lead paint was banned in the United States in 1978 although older buildings still have it. Although illegal in the US, kohl, a lead-based makeup, remains popular in South Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa.
Biology [ edit ]
Lead in the human body has different effects at different developmental stages. Unlike many chemicals, research shows no threshold of exposure above which symptoms emerge.[5][6] Every bit of lead has an effect. In children and adults, the effects tend to be more neurologically focused. For children, though, some effects last beyond the lead exposure. At even low exposure levels, children experience increased ADHD, hearing impairment, and decreased IQ.[6] Many of these impacts persist. Searle et al conclude that many of the persistent effects of childhood lead exposure seem more prominent in those with lower socioeconomic status.[5] Regardless of exposure, many childhood effects, most commonly ADHD, persist into adulthood.[6] Adults with low- to moderate-lead exposure as adults experience symptoms including depression, nervousness, irritability, and reduced IQ.[6] Regardless of the effect, adults require greater exposure to induce symptoms than do children.[6] Childhood exposure is key.
Crime [ edit ]
US Crime rates, expressed as crimes per 100,000 people, have dropped since the 1990s:
Violent crime dropped from 758.2 in 1991 to 386.7 in 2012.
Murder and non-negligent manslaughter, 1-2% of violent crimes, follows a slightly different pattern with relatively little change.
Aggravated assault dropped from 441.9 in 1992 to 242.3 in 2012.
Property crimes have shown a longer decline, peaking at 5,264 in 1979 to 2,859.2 in 2012.
Although other developed nations have different patterns of crime, usually less murder and violent crime, their crime rates have shown a similar pattern, albeit with slight differences in peaks and rates of decline.[2]
Evidence [ edit ]
Blood lead levels [ edit ]
The introduction of unleaded fuels reduced airborne lead pollution, reducing, in turn, human blood lead levels. In a Swiss study, average blood lead levels dropped almost in half over the ten years after the switch from leaded to unleaded fuels.[7] In the United States, blood lead levels in children dropped by 79% between 1976 and 1991, the period over which leaded fuel was phased out. The same data showed that blood lead levels, although lower, remained higher among minorities and those with lower socioeconomic status.[8]
International and local time lags [ edit ]
If the lead-crime hypothesis is true then one of the results would be that nations should not only have blood-lead level and violent crime curves of similar slopes and maxima but that the time gap between the phaseout of lead and the reduction in crime levels should be the same. What's more, since nations introduced and phased-out leaded gasoline at different periods we should expect that the width of the crime curves vary only by these factors.
This would be particularly strong evidence for the lead-crime hypothesis because different nations have different social policy. OECD nations had different rates of abortion and abortion access, gun proliferation, racism, income inequality, incarceration, and drug proliferation during their crime waves, yet the curves remain inviolate. Moreover, Nevin claims that no nation as of yet breaks the international trend.[9]
The lead-crime hypothesis also stands up to scrutiny within nations. For example, São Paulo, as the site of ethanol refineries, weaned itself from leaded gasoline years ahead of the rest of Brazil, and homicide rates have plummeted in São Paulo since 2000, despite holding steady in the rest of the country.[10]
Socioeconomic [ edit ]
Considering nothing but airborne lead levels and violent crime rates, one study found that nearly a third of the variation in crime rates originated from concurrently measured lead levels.[11] That correlation alone is compelling but hardly proves causation. Including a variety of socioeconomic factors halved the lead-crime association down to a still-notable level. Sure, social disruption and crime are associated, as is social disruption and poverty which, in turn, is associated with crime, but areas with higher airborne lead levels had higher violent crime rates than would be expected solely from socioeconomic factors. Property crime rates showed a similar pattern, but with less of a drop after incorporating socioeconomic factors.
Instead of measuring actual airborne lead exposure, research that estimates the nationwide lead exposure from gasoline and lead paint, showed that lead exposure from 23 years prior substantially predicted violent crime and, along with teen unemployment, accounted for 90% of the variation in historical violent crime rates.[12][note 1] Using better estimates of preschool lead exposure, similar methodology replicated internationally showed the same trend across eight other developed nations in Europe, North American and Oceania.[13] Not surprisingly, the critical time for lead exposure is in childhood. Early exposure predicts subsequent crime rates.
Evidence against [ edit ]
Long history of exposure [ edit ]
American blood lead levels are not as clearly established prior to the 1970s; however, they were likely very high by modern standards, likely comparable to or even higher than those seen in the 1970s. Use of lead paint actually peaked in the 1920s, with smaller peaks in the 1900s and 1940s. If lead was actually the cause of criminality, why did the rate of criminal activity only begin to rise in the 1960s, and then peak in the early 1990s, when lead exposure had begun more than half a century earlier? One response is that the poor quality of pre-1940s crime statistics makes the history of the crime levels hard to figure out, but there is some evidence that the rate of crime actually began to rise in the 1910s. Another response is that total vehicle numbers in the US increased dramatically after 1945, from about 35 million in 1945 to 170 million in 1985, and lead in petrol results in airborne lead pollution in high population areas, a much more likely vector for large-scale lead intake than paint-eating.
Alternate explanations [ edit ]
The cause of the international decline in crime in the developed world since the 1990s is a cause of frequent speculation including numerous competing hypotheses.
Gun ownership [ edit ]
One hypothesis is that an increase in gun ownership has discouraged people from committing crimes.
This is very unlikely; while per-capita gun ownership has risen in the US, the percentage of the population who owns guns has actually declined over time — while there are more guns in the United States, they are in the hands of a smaller percentage of the population than they were in the 1970s.[14][15] Another flaw with this hypothesis is that other countries have seen a decline in gun ownership and have experienced falling crime rates in many cases.[citation needed]
Gun control [ edit ]
Another hypothesis is that more stringent gun control laws have discouraged people from owning guns, in the belief that people with guns are more likely to commit crimes or that more severe crimes can be committed with guns.
This is also very unlikely; all locations and countries, with or without strict gun control laws, have seen similar declines in criminal behavior. Switzerland, which has about 70% as many guns as the US on a per-capita basis, has one of the lowest homicide rates in Europe.[citation needed]
Incarceration [ edit ]
Another hypothesis is that the crime rates have fallen because the criminals have been jailed en-masse. There is some evidence for this; people who commit crimes are vastly more likely to commit more crimes, and incarceration rates have risen dramatically since the late 1980s. By imprisoning all criminals until they are old enough that they are much less demographically likely to re-offend, you can, in principle, lower the crime rate.
While reasonable on the face of it, there are a few issues with it. The largest issue is that while incarceration rates in the US have risen dramatically while crime rates have fallen, crime rates in other countries have also gone down, without any similarly huge absolute increases in incarceration rates. A secondary issue is that incarceration rates have begun to fall since 2010 while crime rates have continued to fall, though supporters of incarceration have noted that criminals imprisoned in the late 1980s and early 1990s were unable to reproduce and thus may not have passed on the cultural memes/genes/broken family dynamics to produce more criminals.
Abortion and birth control access [ edit ]
The famous abortion-crime hypothesis forwarded by Freakonomics is suspect because of two reasons. The first is that it's not strictly causal i.e. cause precedes effect (crime rates were going up before Roe v. Wade) and the second is that it's not internationally expandable. For example, the Abortion Act of 1967 in the United Kingdom, all but legalizing abortion, occurred well before Roe but the UK had a surge in crime after the United States' peak (though only by a couple years). Contrariwise, Canada experienced tighter restrictions in legalized abortions from 1969-1988 but had a crime wave similar in duration, peak, and decline of that of the United States.[16]
A more plausible hypothesis is that greater availability of birth control in general may have caused the decline in the crime rates, and as more people used birth control in the late 1960s and 1970s, fewer unwanted children were born into unfortunate circumstances. This has the advantage of cutting across all countries and being an international trend. However, there remains a very large flaw in that crime rates were considerably lower in the 1950s than they are in modern times; the surge between the 1960s and 1990s and subsequent decline remains unexplained, and if lack of family planning was truly the cause, then crime rates should have been even higher before the mass availability of birth control in the United States. This is not the case.
Economic inequality and poverty [ edit ]
The largest evidence against the prevailing notion that economic inequality was the primary cause behind the post-Atomic Age crime waves so many OECD nations experienced is that economic inequality has been going upwards almost continually since the 1980s but the crime waves and their decline continued steadily. The Gini coefficient has been rising monotonically for the United States but crime has continued to plummet after peaking in the 1990s.[17]
What's more, economic inequality does not alone explain why the rise and fall of crime was concentrated in urban areas.[18]
Economic inequality is a poor measure of poverty in any case, used primarily for political purposes; absolute poverty has declined over the same timespan, and poor people have benefited from increasingly higher standards of living. However, this was occurring during the time of the surge in crime, and if destitution was the cause of the increase in crime, why weren't people born during the Great Depression especially likely to become criminals in the 1950s and early 1960s, versus people born in the relatively prosperous 1950s and 1960s who committed crimes in the 1970s and 1980s? One possible explanation might be that poverty needs to be paired with expectations of future prosperity. In the continuous post-WWII boom in the U.S., expanding legal economic opportunities might have been seen as a more attractive alternative to crime, while the economic problems in the 1970s and 1980s could have increased the attractiveness of the "crime economy" instead.
Predictions and public policy [ edit ]
The most salient prediction of the lead-crime hypothesis is that crime and incarceration rates will continue to go down in countries that phased out leaded gasoline. While the incarceration rates of age groups that were maximally exposed to aerosolized lead will still be record-settingly high as they age, the overall incarceration rates will continue downward, which is what we have seen.[note 2] Unfortunately, for the few countries that have only recently phased out leaded gasoline, such as Venezuela and Indonesia,[19] their crime rates are predicted to skyrocket for exposed age groups.
For those wanting a prospective study, Dr. Jianghong Liu is tracking 1341 children aged 3 to 5 years in China's Jiangsu Province that have elevated blood-lead levels.[20] Already the children are uniformly showing behavioral problems directly correlated with increased blood-lead levels.[note 3]
As far as the United States goes, since African Americans have an elevated exposure to lead due to their concentration in urban areas and likeliness of living in homes with lead paint, the IQ gap, contrary to what The Bell Curve predicts, should shrink over time. Indeed, the black-white IQ gap of children was already shrinking when the book was released in 1994.[21] A 2006 paper showed that it has decreased slightly further in the ten years since.[22]
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
↑ The same study also predicts unwed pregnancy, where total lead emissions have nearly the same impact as the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion in the US. As if that weren't enough, the article also takes an extended look at IQ and almost seems to suggest that the infamous results from The Bell Curve can be explained largely by increased lead exposure in minorities leading to lower IQ results. ↑ From 2002 to 2012, the incarceration rate fell 51% for men ages 18-19, 30% for men ages 20-24, and 21% for men ages 25-29… The prison population has fallen at a slower rate because steep incarceration declines for young men have been offset by rising incarceration for older adults. From 2007 to 2012, the incarceration rate increased by 21% for men ages 45-49 and surged 45% for men ages 50-64. ↑ The mean (SD) blood lead concentration was 6.4 (2.6) µg/dL, with the 75th and 90th percentiles being 7.5 and 9.4 µg/dL, respectively. General linear modeling showed significant associations between blood lead concentrations and increased scores for teacher-reported behavioral problems. A 1-µg/dL increase in the blood lead concentration resulted in a 0.322 (95% CI, 0.058 to 0.587), 0.253 (95% CI, 0.016 to 0.500), and 0.303 (95% CI, 0.046 to 0.560) increase of teacher-reported behavior scores on emotional reactivity, anxiety problems, and pervasive developmental problems, respectively (p<.05), with adjustment for parental and child variables. Spline modeling showed that mean teacher-reported behavior scores increased with blood lead concentrations, particularly for older girls.About a month ago we mocked the Albanian central bank when reports emerged that "two employees" had been charged with the theft of some $6.6 million in cash from the bank's vaults. Specifically, back in July the arrests come five weeks after a worker at the central bank admitted to stealing money over the course of four years, taking new bank notes printed in Switzerland when they arrived at his workplace and replacing them with old books. As it turns out, since there is a central bank involved, there is once again more than meets the eye, and the story has since mutated into something far more grotesque than even we could imagine, with news coming out late last week and over the weekend that not only was the theft by "two employees" a misdirection, but that the guilty party was none other than the Albanian version of Janet Yellen, the governor of the central bank himself Ardian Fullani.
From Reuters:
Albania's central bank governor Ardian Fullani was arrested on Friday evening in his office on charges of abuse of office over the theft of 713 million lek (6.63 million US dollar) from the bank's vaults, the prosecutor's office told Reuters. Fullani had refused to step down despite protests by citizens who started a petition to demand his dismissal. He had won a confidence vote in the supervisory board by a landslide. Fullani is the 17th bank employee to be arrested in the case.
Guess he has shared quite a bit of the nearly $7 million in CTRL-P proceeds with the supervisory board then. However, kickbacks or not, the disgraced money printer will find it next to impossible to print his way out of trouble now that the board appears to have changed its mind for whatever reason:
Albania's central bank board has proposed to parliament that governor Ardian Fullani be sacked after his arrest in connection with the theft of 713 million lek ($6.63 million) from the bank's vaults by an employee, the board said on Sunday. Fullani's fellow board members argued he had "violated ethical rules and heavily damaged the interests of the Bank of Albania". "We believe the absence of the governor does not create an institutional vacuum in the management of the institution since the law clearly enables the first deputy governor to take over the governor's competences," the board statement said.
But they had not problems with voting for Fullani a month ago: did the hush money kickbacks get clawed back?
Elisabeta Gjoni, the first deputy governor, will now be the acting governor. Fullani was arrested on Friday evening on charges of "abuse of office" and the bank's inspector general, Elivar Golemi, was held too, the 19th person at the bank to be prosecuted over the theft. The prosecutor's office said Fullani had failed to plug gaps in oversight at the treasury due to a lack of personnel and regulations, all of which had made the theft possible. He risks a seven-year jail sentence if convicted. A court in the capital Tirana ruled on Sunday that he should await trial in jail.
And this is where it gets hilarious:
Maksim Haxhia, Fullani's lawyer who met him in court on Sunday, told Reuters Fullani declared himself "absolutely innocent" of the charges. Haxhia said the charge was a "dangerous precedent" and the order to await trial in jail was so tough it was "ridiculous". "The head of an institution can never be held responsible when someone else has admitted a crime. We have an actual person admitting it. Why should the top director pay?," Haxhia said. "This is a very dangerous precedent," he told Reuters by phone.
Well, there is the open question of how much the scapegoat "admitting" to the crime was paid by the central bank head in order to take all the blame.
But we agree: it truly set a dangerous precedent when suddenly it becomes painfully obvious that even central bankers are subject to the same rules and regulations as everyone else.It seems that Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) would agree, perpetual war is making you poor.
To begin rectifying the situation, he’s joined with Congressman Alan Grayson (D-FL) in co-sponsoring the “War is Making You Poor Act,” which would limit defense spending to $548.9 billion: the exact figure alloted in the fiscal year 2011 budget.
The act also seeks to utilize an additional $159.3 billion set aside for “discretionary” operations abroad to relieve the full federal income tax burden on every American’s first $35,000 earned per year, or up to $70,000 per year for married couples.
According to Detroit publication MLive, Conyers, who chairs the powerful House Committee on the Judiciary, is adding his name to the roster of support.
“I believe that the thing we need to do is to take that $159 billion that the President has set aside – we’re not saying he has to stop the war, we’re not giving a cut-off date for the war – we’re simply saying you need to fund that out of the base budget of $549 billion,” Grayson said of his bill. “And we take 90 percent of that and give it back to the American people.”
He’s also launched an online petition in support of the “War is Making You Poor Act”. At time of this writing it had accrued over 45,000 signatures.
Surprisingly enough, even some conservatives see the legislation as a potential positive.
“Each troop we send to Afghanistan costs the public $1 million per year,” National Review‘s E.D. Kain noted. “That’s $1 million siphoned out of the U.S. economy and shipped overseas to the mountains of Afghanistan and the Iraqi deserts. As Veronique de Rugy pointed out in 2008, for years many of these costs were hidden, not even included in the Pentagon’s defense budget. This obscures not only the real cost of war, but the costs of all the extraneous programs our tax dollars end up going toward in the name of national defense.”
He goes on to call Grayson’s bill “a good start” toward slashing America’s massively bloated defense budget.
“The costs of the war have been rendered invisible,” Grayson said on the floor of the House. “There’s no draft. Instead, we take the most vulnerable elements of our population, and give them a choice between unemployment and missile fodder. Government deficits conceal the need to pay in cash for the war.
“We put the cost of both guns and butter on our Chinese credit card. In fact, we don’t even put these wars on budget; they are still passed using ’emergency supplemental’. A nine-year ’emergency’.
“Let’s show Congress the cost of these wars is too much for us.”
The bill, H.R. 5353, is currently before the House Armed Services and Ways and Means committees.
This video is from C-Span, broadcast May 20, 2010.This is the far more spectacular story I once promised to tell.
I began this history in mid-May, when Jill received her terminal diagnosis. Jill has read this fully and contributed. To the disappointment of many, she hasn’t yet dropped dead. But we have both decided it is time to make public the true story of why and how she is dying. This story started as something else. Not a eulogy, not a memorial, a written memento mori of incidents and echoes.
If there is purpose in all of this, I leave it to someone else to find.
This is what Jill wants to be said, what I want to say, for now, so that it is said.
The history begins and ends with Jill.
In Jill’s life, the chain of events has every link in place, starting with being an unwanted child from conception. Everything has fallen from that. Though the chain is clear, neither one of us have ever been able to discern a reason for each link, for the end. She often asked me why and I have no answer. Her conclusion is that she is paying for her sins, possibly from a past life. Why she should pay and in the manner she has while much worse people — such as the many who have actively contributed to her suffering — have not, is another question I cannot answer.
This is not the canonization of Jill. The better I got to know her, the more obvious her flaws became. Still, she did not deserve what happened. She has earned my gratitude and trust.
We discussed her death a lot, especially once it became clear in April that she was going to be killed. Her death is pointless on any scale, except to three lives whom it touches. The first is hers, of course. The second is a girl who has been dead for thirty years. The final one is mine. It is my fervent hope that Jill’s death pays her debts and buys her peace. She says that it has.
Liz
To understand the Jill’s actions of the last two years, you have to understand her past. You can read about it over at Maggie McNeill’s blog and get the gist of it.
When she was fourteen, after a lifetime of neglect and abuse by her mother, she was kicked out of the house for refusing to have sex with her mother’s boyfriend. She was on the road about six weeks and in Ohio when an attractive predator spotted her and brought her to his basement. She spent the next three years in captivity, usually bound in some manner. She was unbound for Bruce to “train” her. Once her “training” was complete, Bruce pimped her out as a professional submissive.
What that really meant was men paid Bruce hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars in the very early 80s to beat the life out of a bony, malnourished teenage girl. She ate so little she stopped menstruating. That Bruce made a thriving business off of her is horrific. The stories she’s told me of various appointments are appalling.
To those who doubt, her stories are true. They’re things only men would think up and most of the time, it’s the mundane details that stand out the most to both of us. I’ve read stories from so-called trafficking victims who describe ridiculous “Satanic” rituals or elaborate setups. The truth is, the men who were Bruce’s clients weren’t very bright, in my opinion, and they had a lot of the same stupid fantasies and beliefs that most vanilla clients do — only much darker and violent.
Bruce was making very good money with Jill. (Since his advertising predates the Internet, we have always wondered where he advertised and how he had so much success. He didn’t discuss the business with Jill so we don’t know.) She lived naked and bound in a cold basement, fed a tuna fish sandwich per day, if he remembered to or wasn’t punishing her. About a year into it, he brought home another runaway. She went by Liz but her real name is Maria Isabel Rojas and I look like her.
At first, Bruce set the girls in opposition to each other, telling Liz lies about the situation, forcing Jill to participate in Liz’s “punishments.” Liz hated Jill until she finally realized Jill was in exactly the same situation. Then they bonded.
They were sent out on doubles, earning even more money for Bruce. About nine months after Liz’s arrival, they were sent to a basement full of men. The party was supposed to be three men for three hours, instead the two girls faced twenty men. The fee was $2000 and the men didn’t feel like they needed to pay. Liz’s job was to collect. Bruce had sent a driver who was outside waiting and doing nothing. The girls were beaten until the driver wondered what was taking so long and came down to investigate. He brought Bruce and three other men to pull the girls out.
Since she tried to collect the money, Liz took the worst of the beating. The driver took Liz and Jill home, with no cash. The girls were taken down to Bruce’s basement. Bruce was furious and beat Liz some more, mostly in the head. Jill did not try to stop Bruce and has carried that guilt the rest of her life. Why a brutally-abused teenage girl in captivity who weighed about 100lbs thought she could do anything about a well-built 6’5″ man in a rage is beyond me. The driver and one of the other men actually stopped Bruce in an attempt to keep Liz from being beaten to death.
Liz lay on the cold concrete with her head on Jill’s lap, just like she had on the ride home. They talked a little, Liz slurring her speech. She wanted to go home and see her little sister.
Liz was bleeding heavily from the nose, mouth, ears, and a gaping open-head wound — as though her skull had been caved in. She said she tasted salt and bitter at the back of her throat, which Jill believes was spinal fluid. Both Liz and Jill had lost consciousness at various times while being beaten by the men. Bruce told Jill to clean Liz with a towel, which quickly soaked with blood. Liz had stopped speaking by this point. She had been holding Jill’s hand and she slowly relaxed her grip and her hand fell to the floor. Jill has never been sure whether Liz died or slipped into a coma. Bruce took Liz away.
The next morning Jill was packed into the trunk of Bruce’s car and he drove them to Los Angeles, where they remained for another year before Jill finally escaped him. He stayed in SoCal and is currently a CPA.
When Jill first told me about Liz only a couple years ago, I was surprised. Jill hoped Bruce took Liz to the hospital and that she survived, was maybe living her own life. We both know that is a fairy tale, desperate magical thinking. Liz died, Bruce dumped her body where he could, and left Ohio. Liz was a runaway from San Antonio. She said her family wasn’t looking for her. Liz had a hunger for life Jill did not and Jill feels the burden of guilt because she survived when Liz did not, and feels Liz paid for her survival. Liz may have been discovered at some point and is a cold case Jane Doe. Or she may never have been found.
Jill hadn’t even mentioned Liz to her therapists but after we started talking about Liz, she did. It never eased her survivor guilt but at least she could talk about Liz as a person — Liz now exists in the memories of three people other than Jill. And now, at least, she is known to a few more people. She existed and is acknowledged.
That I so closely resemble Liz has haunted Jill since we first met in 2007. Then, in 2012, I lay on a floor on the verge of dying because of a man. Jill saved my life. She felt she owed it to Liz not to let another friend die if she could do something to stop it. So she did. And she has paid for her actions.
june 13, 2012 – proof that pigs can’t fly
It is hard to know where to start with this day as everything that follows falls from this day. This is a long history but it’s really the shortest explanation of events I can offer while still showing the links of the chain. I leave out a lot and it’s still novella-length.
I had a client who likes to go to South Padre Island. He would rent a nice beach house. He’s a Houston attorney whom we refer to as Pig (one of his
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marijuana use, or if the marijuana use causes the cognitive impairments (sort of the ‘chicken or the egg’ question).”
The study, “Effects of Adolescent Cannabinoid Self-Administration in Rats on Addiction-Related Behaviors and Working Memory“, was also co-authored by Michael W. Pollock, Vidhya Nagarajan and Mary M. Torregrossa.0 SHARES Facebook Twitter Google Whatsapp Pinterest Print Mail Flipboard
An analysis of tracking polls since March has found a net 17 point swing towards Democrats on health care as Trumpcare is causing people to flee the Republican Party.
According to Morning Consult, “When Morning Consult began tracking voter trust on the issue of health care, Republicans held a 4-point edge, 43 percent to 39 percent, over Democrats. But as the majority party in Congress has moved through the process of trying to repeal and replace significant parts of the Affordable Care Act, former President Barack Obama’s signature 2010 health law, Americans have flocked toward Democrats. In the most recent survey, Obama’s party boasted a significant edge, with almost half (48 percent) of registered voters backing Democrats on the issue, compared with 35 percent who still trusted the GOP.”
The American Health Care Act (Trumpcare) is the ultimate pocketbook issue. Health care is something that touches every member of society. It should have been common sense for Republicans to know that putting forward a plan that raises costs, lowers coverage, and takes away insurance from 23 million Americans was not going to popular. The fantasy fueled GOP propaganda campaign against the ACA (Obamacare) has run into the real world truth that Obamacare is pretty popular.
People don’t want to pay more and get less, and they definitely don’t want their coverage taken away.
Russia is a big issue with the left, but if Democrats are going to take back all or part of Congress in 2018, it will be the health care issue that puts them back in power. The Russia scandal fires up the base, but it will be health care that gets swing voters to support Democrats and put the ultimate check on Trump.
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:Polygraph Statement of "No Such Author"
The following is an account of my application to the Central Intelligence Agency and subsequent polygraph interrogation.
The Central Intelligence Agency polygraph interrogation is administered as part of a three-day preliminary selection process at various sites in the Washington D.C. area subsequent to a personal interview and written test. The polygraph is only one element in the selection process, but is probably considered the most pivotal. Interrogators from the Office of Security administer the polygraph. Polygraph interrogation takes place in a textbook undecorated sound-proofed room furnished with a table and two chairs, the ubiquitus two-way mirror and of course, the polygraph apparatus. To the extent I have read about the polygraph I think of the "test" as a thirty-minute affair. I never consider it an obstacle and readily participate in the process. I have nothing to hide.
There is nothing unusual about the polygraph hook-up. Finger clamp on the index finger, two plastic tubes loosely connected around the torso: one around the chest, one around the lower abdomen. A blood-pressure arm-cuff is secured too tight for comfort. Once the various devices are connected they remain in place for the duration of the interrogation. The arm cuff is only inflated when the apparatus is on. The interrogation is conducted over two days by two different interrogators. Each interrogation lasts between three-four hours. I'm not told about the second interrogation. The impression the first interrogator gives me is "this is it."
One of the most striking things about the interrogation is my interrogator. He seems two years younger than I, and I am quite young. This would have not been such a big issue were it not that, perhaps to compensate for his youth, my interrogator tries to boost his own accomplishments by making an outrageous claim.
Before administering the polygraph, the interrogator covers the workings of the mechanism in some detail and then goes over the various areas in the personal questionnaire. The interrogator makes great pains to emphasize that the box is infallible and will readily detect deception. He urges over and over not to lie. Then he makes an astounding boast. Wrapping up his spiel he adds a little something about his own acumen: "I have conducted literally thousands of polygraph examinations..." he drones. And on and on. I tune him out. "Literally thousands." It's a boast of such phenomenal magnitude and seems so out of place in the setting of the small interrogation room I'm dumbfounded. I calculate how long it would take to conduct "thousands" of polygraph interrogations. The sum I reach has only one answer: his childish boasting is eroding his credibility.
His overboard presentation is disingenuous and reeks of cheap showmanship. The young interrogator suddenly seems foolish. Bragging about his accomplishments. Urging me, almost threatening me to come clean with him. I dub him Poly Babe. I am becoming increasingly reluctant to trust him as the ordeal drags on.
The interrogation covers areas from the lengthy application materials. The questions break down into roughly three areas: professional background, personal background and criminal background. The professional issues cover matters of loyalty to the United States and previous employment. The personal background questions have a component of questions called lifestyle questions, a euphemism for sexual history.
After the lengthy spiel selling the capabilities of the box, the interrogator calibrates the box. He instructs me how to sit. Not to move. Face straight ahead. Not to turn my head. Not to cough. To take relaxed, measured breaths. But sitting so still without moving at all becomes irritating. And after being instructed not to cough or sneeze, suddenly coughing and sneezing are the only things on my mind. I'm struck by an incongruity. The interrogator boasts about the box's infallibility, yet instructs me to sit rigidly still. Movement affects the results? It makes no sense.
We cover the questions. Have you ever lied to an employer? Have you ever stolen from an employer? Have you been contacted by a foreign intelligence service? Are you currently a member of or associated with a foreign intelligence service? To every yes response, we go into the particulars to eliminate the incident in question. I explain away incongruities in my character and conduct. The interrogator pretends his focus is on getting a good read; that "passing the test" is the focus of the inquisition. Of course, getting the applicant to volunteer wrongdoing is the focus of the interrogation.
After covering the questions, never more than twenty, the interrogator turns the machine on and goes through the questions in random order. The pace is unhurried. Several questions are covered repeatedly. At the end of the read, he removes paper from the box and leaves the room to interpret the results. Before leaving he admonishes me to come clean, not to lie, the same mantra, over and over.
I sit in the room for about twenty minutes. He returns. Looks grave. "You're showing signs of deception in response to some of the questions." He runs through his whole spiel about being honest for what must be the tenth time. But oddly, instead of going back over the questions again we proceed with the next batch of questions: the lifestyle questions.
During this series of questions I really lose it. The interrogation focuses on deviant sexual behavior. I'm unsure what he's fishing for and ask him to clarify. He explains deviant sexual behavior as any sex acts other than what is known as the missionary position. That strikes me as ridiculous and I ask him if he's kidding. Of course, he's not. The interrogator wants to know how many sex partners I have had; how many of them are married; if I have ever contracted sexually transmitted diseases, if so, how often, where, when. Have I ever paid for sex, when, where. Have I ever participated in sm., bondage, bestiality. What sort of positions. You name it, he wants to know.
I get really worked up over this. I'm put on the spot to divulge the most intimate secrets of my own sex life, for the sake of clearing the test. I'm reluctant to discuss anything at all about my sex life and decide it's none of their business. Job or no job. I know many people will disagree with me and decide to submit [to] anything in the name of getting the dream career. It's your choice. If you wish the CIA to have detailed records of every sex act you've ever performed, and the manner in which you performed it, be my guest. Bill Clinton, as the most senior officer in the federal bureaucracy seems to think such standards don't apply to him either. But hey, you go for it.
Another matter arises that should be remembered: for the past hour-and-half in the interrogation room I am badgered with threats of the box's infallibility and sensitivity. Yet, after the very contentious exchange I have with the interrogator, I am so riled up, the subsequent reading must be useless. Nevertheless, the examiner goes through the same routine at the end of the questions, removes the paper, leaves the room for twenty minutes, returns and announces we are having serious problems. The CIA's interpretation of outrage over their none-too-delicate attempt to dig into your sexual history is interpreted entirely as deception. I suppose the box doesn't register rage.
The interrogator tries to work through the questions again. I explain I am uncomfortable discussing details of my personal sex life with a total stranger with the implication the information will be recorded and a matter of record. He assures me everything said in the polygraph interrogation remains within the polygraph room (lie). I attempt to inquire whether the test is valid, since I have become noticeably aggravated. He reassures me it's a normal response and irrelevant to the detection of deception. This is another patent lie. He conveys it so poorly I think I catch him lying. We should both be rigged up to the machine.
After an attempt to secure more information on my sexual history we run through the questions again and do another polygraph read. At the end of the session he removes the paper and leaves the room for the third time. Twenty minutes pass. He returns and says that although we're still having problems we are going to proceed to the final segment of questions: the criminal background questions. I calm down considerably. This is another area that is irrelevant to me. We run through the questions. My answers are all straight no's. It goes quick. We do a read. Same questions, random order. He removes the paper, leaves again. This time the wait seems longer. After about thirty minutes he returns. He's sullen. "We're having a very serious problem." Now what I wonder? "It's obvious you're withholding information on your past history with use of illegal narcotics."
I am utterly stupefied. The entire polygraph experience has turned from surreal to farce to nightmare within an hour. I have lived overseas for over a decade. I have hundreds of foreign relatives and acquaintances. Some of them have lived in communist countries. One person is a registered card-carrying member of the communist party in his country. I had expected the most serious scrutiny would be directed to this area of my life. Instead, that area is covered in fewer than a handful of questions and never revisited. Instead I become embroiled in a very contentious exchange over my sexual past. And I have to admit, I'm utterly unprepared for the entire sexual inquisition and very reluctant to give them one iota. I have no criminal history and nothing to do with drugs. Yet, by the final segment of questions, the entire polygraph interrogation is a hoax. The most complicated area of my life is glanced over, I'm badgered to volunteer intimate details of my sex life, and as if things couldn't get any worse, finally, accused of concealing information on narcotics use.
I'm struck by an acute realization there is no way to dissuade him from his beliefs. A mere two hours ago I almost swaggered into the polygraph interrogation room. Two hours later I'm fatigued, humiliated, outraged, frustrated and now, dumbstruck. And then the badgering over drugs commences. My mind detaches itself. The entire issue is irrelevant to me. I'm attempting to rationalize how the entire process could have gone so wrong.
We do another run with his box, and again he returns alleging I am showing deception. At this point the polygraph is nothing but a bad joke. I look at him as if he's an idiot. My best friends would laugh at the thought of me "lighting a joint", let alone the insinuation I am doing hard drugs. Poly Babe takes it a step further. Wants to know if I'm trafficking. The farce becomes a parody.
It goes nowhere. Now Poly Babe reminds me without a good polygraph there is no employment offer. What can I tell him? At one point I consider manufacturing a story about some pot smoking, then laugh it off as preposterous. Poly Babe leaves.
I'm devastated. My dreams are in shatters. I run through the entire session in my mind, unable to understand how the interrogator could have screwed up so badly.
He returns. Here it comes I think. To my surprise he announces he has spoken to a supervisor about my case. I am being allowed a chance to retest. I'm ecstatic. "Because we want you to pass your polygraph, we are going to go ahead and schedule another polygraph exam tomorrow to see if we can't help you clear the test. You have to understand, this is a rare second chance. We don't do this often. We're doing this because we want to try to work with you. I want you to think very carefully about what has happened here today and reconsider some of the answers you have given."
I return to the waiting area. Other applicants are there, waiting. I'm surprised to hear from their conversations that nearly all of them have been offered "rare" second chances to retake the polygraph the next day. I don't sleep at all that night. By the next morning, I'm exhausted, doubtful and unsure how the entire thing is going to turn out. I tell myself the interrogator screwed up because he was young. Inexperienced. I was upset. The reading was off. Surely today they'll get a good read. They'll figure this out.
The second polygraph interrogation is a farce from the start. The interrogator is quiet and serious. Says little. Explains nothing. He fits the attachments and launches into calibrating with little preparation. The tone of the entire affair is different from the previous day. His attitude seems to be, "You're withholding information. I'm going to get it out of you."
After calibrating the machine something odd happens. He removes the arm cuff, leaves the room and returns with a gigantic rubber ring he fits around my thigh. I've never seen anything like it before. He runs the apparatus again. With the leg cuff inflated my leg goes numb. It gets weirder. He removes the leg cuff, leaves the room and comes back with a tiny little rubber that resembles a donut. He fits the donut onto my thumb and repeats the calibrating routine. I realize he's having a problem getting a good blood pressure read. I ask him about it. He ignores me.
He announces we're ready and launches straight into the narcotics issue. This isn't retaking the test at all: the entire interrogation focuses entirely on the narcotics issue. As far as I'm concerned, the "test" is over before it has even started. But I stick to it for at least two more hours, attempting to get through it and somehow salvage my candidacy.
It's hopeless. The interrogator talks to me as if I'm a drug kingpin awaiting trial. Any attempt I make to direct the interrogation back to the language that was used the previous day about clearing the polygraph is gone. Apparently, the second polygraph isn't about clearing the polygraph at all. The interrogator wants a confession. Over the course of two hours he becomes even more sullen. I become outraged. Struggle not to hurl obscenities at him.
At one point I ask him his name, attempting to ratchet down the hostility. Attempting to salvage my application. "I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name." His response almost sends me lunging for his throat: "My name is irrelevant. What's relevant is that you start cooperating and telling us about your drug use." I persist. "Look, what do I call you?" It gets more outrageous: "This is irrelevant to answering my questions about your drug use." Nothing. I'm livid. I mean white hot. I've never been treated like this before in my life. A day ago I had considered myself an applicant to a prestigious executive entry-level federal job and now I'm being treated as a drug suspect in an ongoing DEA investigation.
I terminate the "interview." Interrogator Ass does the same song and dance about my application status. My hopes of still securing a job had died two hours ago. But within those two hours, a new sentiment is forged. Where yesterday I was devastated at seeing my dreams in tatters before my eyes, the second interrogation is so patently abusive I start to wonder if I even want to be a part of an organization that treats people with such callous contempt.
It takes some doing for me to actually say it, but once I make up my mind, I go for it. Call off the interrogation. Rip the gadgets off. Screw you. Screw your incompetent little secret society and FUCK your polygraph.
That sums up my polygraph experience. I fretted a good deal about how the polygraph results could have been so completely wrong. Before going into the polygraph I was what you might call a believer. I must have been an ideal candidate for the polygraph since I bought into the institutional myths about its abilities. And yet, the entire polygraph experience was a catastrophe. Quite aside from the assumption of the interrogators I was being deceptive simply because I got worked up over intrusive questions that were far beyond the realm of decency, I am curious how the entire drug issue is brought up. Of all the accusations they could have come up with, they chose the one that was so far off to be almost comical. And I was also curious why the session on the second day had no pretense of being a polygraph session at all. The interrogator demonstrated to me with the rubber cuff routine he was experiencing difficulties getting a proper reading, and assumed such a hostile attitude from the start the entire second day's polygraph was invalid. I was seriously pissed off, especially when it became clear he had no intention of leaving the narcotics issue. His attitude was confess or fail. No amount of arguing with him was going to change it. Yet he persisted with the polygraph farce, in spite of my open hostility.
Months later I learned about Voice Stress Analysis. That inquiry lit a bulb in my memory, and almost a year after my polygraph, I was able to figure out what had happened.
Approximately a month before my three-day trip I got a phone call. It was so brief it was hardly worth remembering. But the call had been noteworthy for one reason. The caller said he was with the Office of Security. He wanted to go over the answers on my questionnaire to make sure there were no mistakes. I said fine. He said he would read the questions to me and asked me to answer with a simple yes or no. We ran through the questions. He thanked me for my cooperation and that was that. The whole call lasted no more than seven minutes. Why was it relevant almost a year later? It suddenly struck me that that one call had gone rather smoothly except for one question. And only one question. The caller had garbled it. Instead of responding immediately, I hesitated and asked him to repeat the question. He did so. I replied no and thought no more of it.
Until I came across information on Voice Stress Analysis. According to the literature, VSA can be administered by telephone. I got to thinking. If I were asked over the phone, "Have you ever tried or used illegal narcotics at any time?" and my response appeared hesitant, would that be enough to focus on that singular issue while administering a polygraph in which the interrogator is having an extremely difficult time interpreting his results?
I have no conclusive answer. Nothing in literature I have read indicates the CIA administers a surreptitious VSA as part of its screening process. But based on my personal experiences I am virtually certain a surreptitious VSA was administered, I must emphasize, without my knowledge, and that assumptions were made based on the VSA during subsequent polygraph testing.
VSA as a tool for truth telling is even more disreputable than the polygraph. Even the American Polygraph Association distances itself from VSA.
This is but one of many problems with the CIA polygraph process. The most troubling aspect of the polygraph interrogation is the sexual inquisition. And while applicants must fill out ponderous and lengthy questionnaires going into painstaking detail on their lives and backgrounds, the sexual inquisition is merely alluded to in one sentence. It's almost glanced over. Added as some sort of afterthought. Until they get you in that room. It is the one area where the applicant is ambushed and then required to make the fullest disclosures of the most intimate nature. Allegedly for the sake of national security.
After observing the antics of the Clinton White House for eight years, I am convinced the CIA polygraph is without any validity. Mere GS-7 applicants must explain away the most intimate details of their sex lives while the commander in chief plays goose the cigar with young female assistants in the Oval Office. It's a double standard that is utterly unpalatable to me. I will never subject myself to another polygraph again. And consider anyone who does a fool and a boob. The humiliation you will experience comes at your own expense.
The Office of Security uses the polygraph to catch criminals. Not weed out unfit applicants. When a certain percentage of applicants are rejected for being unable to pass their polygraphs, the Office of Security is unable to point to any successes. It can merely claim to have protected the organization from foreign agent penetration. But with the emphasis on catching criminals, they can uphold a record. "See? This box works. We get drug confessions. Rape confessions. Theft confessions." The cases they pass along to the FBI at least create a paper trail that substantiates the "validity" of their methodology and bolsters institutional faith in the box. It's all a scam.
I don't see the box disappearing anytime soon. As a scientific tool, it is without any validity. But as an interrogation tool that forces coerced statements from fearful subjects, it works wonders. Maybe they can't rig electrodes to your testicles, but they sure as hell can rig you up with other gadgets that operate on other human fears. Small wonder then that the agency's inept security apparatus swears by it. Instilling fear by suggestion is after all their specialty.
It is a tragic irony that it is considered detrimental to the security of the United States if even one mole can penetrate an intelligence organization, while it is considered part of doing business when hundreds of highly motivated and skilled applicants are summarily written off as unfortunate losses simply because of the ineptitude of interrogators. And all the while Aldrich Ames sits in his cell laughing.
prepared by
No Such AuthorFILE PHOTO: French President Emmanuel Macron addresses a speech at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, August 29, 2017. REUTERS/Yoan Valat/Pool
PARIS (Reuters) - France’s young new president, Emmanuel Macron, said life as a world leader is less “cool” than it might seem, citing talks with Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan as an example.
Asked by Le Point magazine in an interview if he was trying to be the new “cool” kid on the global stage, Macron replied: “The global stage is not really a ‘cool’ scene, you know.”
Asked to give an example, he said: “I am the one who has to talk with Erdogan every 10 days.” He did not elaborate.
Erdogan is often criticized by leaders in Western Europe and he has clashed with the European Union over human rights and other issues.
The last known conversation between Macron and Erdogan was on Aug. 27, when they discussed the fate of a French journalist jailed in Turkey.
An aide to Macron later said the French president had not meant to mock or criticize his Turkish counterpart.
“The conversations with Mr. Erdogan are always very serious,” the aide explained.Last season, my League Pass Legends squad shattered expectations and comfortably made the playoffs in a stacked Western Conference. While I wouldn’t be shocked if Phoenix had a similar breakout, expectations are generally much higher than they were for this team a season ago. Last season, projected by many to win 20-25 games, the Suns burst out of the gate and never truly slowed down, finishing 48-34. Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to crack the top eight in the absurdly stacked Western Conference (The Bulls and Raptors each won 48 games as well, and received home-court advantage in addition to making the playoffs out East).
This year, the Suns would likely have to win 50 games to qualify. That’s gonna be tough, but certainly not impossible. Phoenix is bringing back star guards Goran Dragic and Eric Bledsoe (fresh on a new long-term deal!) in addition to most of last year’s team. Dragic emerged as a stud last year, averaging 20.3 PPG on insane 50.3% FG shooting and 40%+ from downtown. That is some next level stuff right there. If Bledsoe can play 75 games, watch out. The kid is an athletic freak and in his first starting gig last season, he proved it.
The one key departure Phoenix is faced with is that of Channing Frye. Frye has had an up and down career in the NBA, including missing the entire 2012-13 season for heart surgery. He came back strong last year and provided a dangerous weapon in the Suns’ offense by spacing the floor as a big man. Frye is in Orlando now, and the Suns will struggle to fully replace his contributions with the Morris twins.
Speaking of the Morris twins, Markief and Marcus, they’re another fantastic reason to watch Phoenix on League Pass this year. The Suns, knowing the brothers prefer playing together, knew they could only afford to pay a combined $52 million to them. Rather than trying to figure out how to distribute the money, the Suns were upfront with the twins and let them decide how to split it. The Morris twins were locked up, the Suns received good deals on both players, and everyone’s happy. The Morris bros. should see a lot of playing time this year and their development, especially from range, is key to Phoenix staying afloat out West.
The biggest offseason addition the Suns made comes in the form of the NBA-tiny Isaiah Thomas. The Suns stole Isaiah on a four year, $28 million deal. The last pick (!) of the 2011 draft, Thomas has emerged as an elite scoring guard who can pass the ball as well. Thomas averaged over 20 PPG in Sacramento last year, which makes it all the more insane that the Kings think they improved by replacing him with the ever-mediocre Darren Collison. Thomas will be a huge addition to the Suns bench, and it’s hard to imagine a more fun/potentially great backcourt then a rotation of Goran Dragic, Eric Bledsoe, and Isaiah Thomas. I’m giddy just thinking about it!
Oh, and possibly most importantly…ZORAN DRAGIC!!!! The Bros. ‘oran Dragic are an incredibly fun thing about the Suns. I mean two talented, chippy, LEFTY, Slovenian guards playing on one team? And they’re brothers? So down. (Note: I don’t think Zoran will be particularly good or important to this team on the court.)
Overall, it’s going to be extremely tough for Phoenix to displace Memphis, Houston, Dallas or another Western Conference playoff team. However, this extremely talented core of young players combined with year two of the potentially great Jeff Hornacek at head coach means the Suns are a team I will rarely miss on League Pass.
AdvertisementsWow. Paul Krugman (my emphasis):
One of the more interesting documents published by the IRS — I know, I know, not the hardest criterion in the world — is its report on the income and taxes of the top 400 taxpayers (pdf). A lot of attention gets focused, rightly, on the remarkably low average tax rate these people pay — less than 17 percent in 2007, the lowest on record. But I was struck by something else: in several years during the last decade the top 400 accounted for more than 10 percent of all capital gains income in America. Just 400 people!
You don’t have to posit a Bilderberg Club, or whatever, to realize that these guys all know each other and hang out together. It’s a whole lot easier for a couple dozen billionaires to get coordinated than millions of Democrats. The billionaires can do it after golf.
By the way, I’m willing to bet the guys at the IRS who released that report will be getting a little phone call. Any takers?
GPThe original Quake wasn’t designed for esports when it took the PC gaming world by storm in the ’90s. In fact, the term didn’t even exist yet, and id Software’s studio director Tim Willits, who has been around since the dawn of Quake, is still surprised by how it grew into a model for esports today.
“I’ve worked on every Quake and I can tell you honestly we never thought that competitive gaming would be like it is today,” Willits told AListDaily. “It’s unbelievable. From the early days of Quake 1, clan play and tournaments naturally happened as people wanted to see who the best players were. Even QuakeCon wasn’t our idea. I’ve watched as Quake tournaments grew from 32 people in a hotel to filling up stadiums and with multi-million dollar prize pools. Gaming has evolved from friends seeing who’s the best player to mass market entertainment.”
Bethesda partnered with ESL to catapult Quake Champions into the esports space with the ongoing Quake World Championships in full swing across Europe and North America, featuring the new 1-vs-1 Duel and 4-vs-4 Sacrifice modes. The battle for the $1 million prize pool reaches the next stage at the Regional Finals, August 5 and 6, followed by the Finals to be held on the main stage at QuakeCon in Dallas, TX, August 24-26. Thirty-two Duelers and eight teams will compete for a share of the $1 million prize pool.
“Of the 32 Duelers, 12 will come from BYOC,” Willits explained. “You can come to QuakeCon and take part in Open Qualifier to compete for part of $1 million prize pool. One-versus-one is unique to Quake and a lot of fun to watch.”
Willits said his biggest worry with unleashing Quake Champions to pro gamers was that everyone would play as the same champion, but that hasn’t happened. Pros are using different champions and strategies.
“We’ve seen a good uptick in Twitch viewers with the championship,” Willits said. “We’re still in beta, but we’re adjusting the game and getting the network code as solid as we can. We’ve learned a lot and taken a lot of guidance from pro gamers.”
At QuakeCon last year and at IEM Katowice this year, id Software introduced 50 to 60 Counter-Strike and Overwatch pro gamers to Quake Champions to gather their feedback. That feedback led to the new Sacrifice game mode that was designed specifically for competitive play. It’s a mode that Willits said id tweaked three separate times to get it just right for the pro gaming scene. The first iterations of this 4-vs-4 team-based mode were fast and fun to play, but they lacked the central objective for spectators to follow. That’s been fine-tuned now, just in time for this massive tournament.
“We had an ESL event with Team Liquid and Team Rogue at E3 this year and the crowds were amazing,” Willits said. “A lot of these pro guys played Quake originally and a number of Overwatch teams have Quake players on them. We hired John ‘Zero Four’ Hill as our esports manager and he’s been working with these teams to get them on board. They’re excited about Quake Champions.”
While ESL is running the tournament for id Software, the game developer signed AMD on as its signature partner for QuakeCon. Other sponsors include AT&T, Twitch and Amazon.
“Our focus has always been around gaming, but we’re trying to do more this year,” Willits said.
Quake Champions is very uniquely positioned to not only take QuakeCon by storm, but also to find a place among the top esports. “Quake is the original arena-based shooter,” Willits said. “It’s very fast, movement is used as both offense and defense, and the dexterity and skill of the world’s best Quake players is amazing. It has a long legacy as the first 3D game and the first game to offer client server architecture. Most people have had their first PC experience playing a Quake game over the years.”
Willits believes the Duel mode in first-person shooters is a big hole missing in esports today—one that Quake Champions can immediately fill. “Pro gamers love it because it’s all about their skills and they stand on the stage alone as champion,” Willits said. “The fact that a lot of these guys love Quake, and a lot of the companies that run tournaments and events also love Quake, allows Duel mode to fill that spot.”
Allowing 15,000 members of the public into E3 this year gave Willits a preview of what QuakeCon and Quake Champions esports might look like. “The ESL space was next to the Bethesda booth and it looked like we had half of the show floor,” Willits said. “It was a well-trafficked area and the online traffic was good for us.”
With id Software designing Quake Champions from the ground up for esports and seeking pro gamers’ input during the development process, the stage has been set for something old, yet new, to rise up.
“We’re excited about the future,” Willits said. “The challenge for us now is to focus on QuakeCon, get through the beta, and get this game out in final release. Then we’ll build out that player base to accomplish what we set out to do with Quake esports.”At 8:05am on the morning of December 1, 2010, an FBI search warrant team swarmed up to a Silicon Valley home on an unusual misson: find the "sextortionist" who had been blackmailing pro poker players over the Internet. One agent pounded on the door and shouted out, "FBI!" Movement was heard inside, but no one opened the door. The agent knocked again, but the door stayed shut, so out came the battering ram. Wham—the door gave and FBI agents flooded inside, guns drawn in the dim light.
At the top of the staircase before them stood their target, Keith Hudson. "Show your hands!" demanded one agent. "FBI!" Hudson did not immediately comply; instead, he stepped back from the stairs and said he had to get his daughter. The agents commanded him to stop. Hudson did so, backing down the steps. He was handcuffed when he reached the bottom.
Outside and down the street, the force behind the search warrant was sitting in her car, waiting for the all clear. Special Agent Tanith Rogers had flown up from the FBI's Los Angeles office, where she had spent the last month flying across the country to investigate an online extortion plot. A key agent in the FBI's Cyber Division, Rogers had most of her answers already—the investigation documented in six notebooks stuffed with material—but she wanted Hudson to fill in some of the gaps. And to own up to what he had done.
Rogers entered the home with her partner, Special Agent Karlene Clapp, and the pair made sure that Hudson's three-year old daughter was taken care of before leading Hudson into his daughter's upstairs bedroom.
"I'm harmless," Hudson told them.
"But we're not," Clapp said lightly. It was a joke—sort of.
Hudson's handcuffs were removed; the bedroom door was closed. Hudson sat in a chair facing Clapp and Rogers. Advised that he had the right to remain silent and that he was not under arrest, Hudson nevertheless spoke to the agents. For two hours, the conversation revolved around a simple enough crime: someone had broken into the Hotmail account of professional poker player Joe Sebok and had grabbed copies of sexually explicit images featuring Sebok, which had been stored there as attachments. The mystery man then contacted Sebok repeatedly, demanding wildly varying sums of cash to keep the images under wraps. When Sebok did not comply, the extortionist released a pair of images to key people in the poker community.
“Did I really threaten to kill him?” Hudson asked.
The trail had turned up two sets of IP addresses. One belonged to Hudson, showing that he had looked at the images from within Sebok's Hotmail account. Hudson admitted to what the agents already knew, but he argued that extortion was the furthest thing from his mind; he had been, he said, simply helping out an online acquaintance, a college student and poker fanatic named Tyler Schrier, who had provided the login. Hudson said that Schrier, working from his dorm room in Connecticut, was the real mastermind.
Rogers was contemptuous.
"I am not going to lie to you," she told Hudson as the three spoke in the child's bedroom. "If you want to ask me any questions, I will tell you the truth. Here is what is going on right now: you're being silly. I know that you broke into Joe's account because I can show that your IP did it... So if you're going to lie, that's only going to make you look worse because here is what I have right now. I have three counts of extortion, and—I don't know—five or six counts of intrusion... This is where you get to decide if you want to be a witness or if you want to be a suspect. I know that you're lying because I can prove it."
"OK, I am not trying to lie to you..." Hudson said.
"The FBI does not fly us out here and we don't break into your door to talk to you if we don't have a substantial amount of evidence against you," Rogers said. "If you're going to tell me that some silly child who is in the East Coast and goes to college—who is 20—is the one behind it, I know you're lying."
Hudson, then in his late
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” and thanked people for their support. The governor’s office later said Dayton was at home after a routine check and planned to present his budget as scheduled on Tuesday morning.
“He quickly recovered, walked out of the Capitol, and returned home,” Dayton’s chief of staff, Jaime Tincher, said in a statement.
House Speaker Kurt Daudt, R-Crown, and Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka, R-Nisswa, expressed their well wishes for the governor, adding that they would hold off responding to his speech until Tuesday at the earliest.
Gallery: Gov. Mark Dayton fainted near the end of his annual State of the State address Gallery: Gov. Mark Dayton fainted near the end of his annual State of the State address
“Governor Dayton is in my thoughts and prayers tonight,” Daudt said in a statement. “I was encouraged to see him walk from the House Chamber on his own, and I join Minnesotans in wishing him a speedy recovery.”
Last January, Dayton fainted at a political event and was hospitalized overnight for observation.
Tincher said in a statement at the time that the event was hot and crowded, and Dayton fainted after feeling increasing pressure in his lower back.
Before the incident, Dayton gave most of his penultimate State of the State address, unveiling a broad vision for his final two years in office that calls for targeted “public investments” that include $371 million in additional funding for schools and the creation of a public health-insurance option.
Upbeat statistics noted
While reflecting on his six years as Minnesota’s chief executive, Dayton touted a number of metrics that have improved during his stewardship of the state.
The unemployment rate has fallen by nearly half from when Dayton first took office in January 2011, from 6.9 percent to 3.9 percent in December.
Instead of the massive budget deficit facing Minnesota six years ago, state budget officials currently project a surplus of $1.4 billion, and the state’s overall fiscal picture has improved, including a rainy-day fund that has reached $2 billion, a record.
Dayton, however, quickly pivoted to pressing problems facing Minnesota that he said will require bipartisan agreement, including aging roads and bridges, diminished water quality and racial disparities that threaten the state’s economic future.
Dayton, in his prepared speech, said “We will never solve the problems facing Minnesota, unless we first resolve our own. That is, our unwillingness to work together.”
Dayton pledged to safeguard the state’s budget from big tax cut proposals he said could push the state into deficit in future budget cycles. He spoke at length about economic uncertainty, including widening income inequality and the hollowing out of the middle class which he said state leaders should tackle more aggressively.
“We cannot entirely escape the ups and downs of the U.S. economy,” Dayton said, adding: “If our country is going to be mired in an era of slower economic growth, our public investments must be even more targeted to ensure that our state’s economic performance remains superior to most other states.”
To that end, Dayton called for additional spending on public schools that would ensure state funding keeps pace with inflation to avoid program cuts.
“When I took office in 2011, I promised to increase Minnesota’s investments in E-12 education every year I was governor — with no excuses, no exceptions,” Dayton said. “With your support, we have kept that promise, and I’m not going to abandon it now.”
Though he fainted before getting to the part of his speech about health insurance, the full text shows Dayton outlining a new public option for some Minnesota consumers facing skyrocketing health insurance premiums.
The governor is proposing the creation of a public option available to all Minnesotans, but those who make between 201 percent and 400 percent of the federal poverty line would qualify for federal tax credits.
:Gov. Mark Dayton collapsed near the end of his annual State of the State speech Monday night as bystanders rushed to help. They included state Sen. Matt Klein, far left, who is a doctor, Secretary of State Scott Simon at Dayton’s right and Lt. Gov. Tina Smith on his left.
If enacted, qualifying consumers would be able to purchase MinnesotaCare coverage, a publicly funded health insurance aimed at low-income residents. Unlike the existing MinnesotaCare program, which has more than 100,000 residents enrolled, the premiums would be paid for by consumers who purchase the coverage.
Complicating the fate of such a proposal is the dramatically different political climate Dayton faces after the November election. Republicans now control the Minnesota House and Senate, giving Dayton less leverage to guide legislation through the Capitol.
Negotiating strategy
But Republicans lack a veto-proof majority in either chamber, which means the threat of a veto could become an effective bargaining tool for the governor.
Just hours before Dayton’s speech, Daudt sent a letter to President Donald Trump asking him to take immediate action to make health insurance more affordable and ease mining restrictions imposed under President Barack Obama.
Daudt asked the president to extend the state’s open enrollment period, giving Minnesotans more time to assess their health insurance options. He is also asking Trump to grant the state permission to recreate a taxpayer backed high-risk pool, which he said will drive down costs for private insurers and lower rates for consumers.
House Republicans stand “ready to work in partnership with your administration to reverse the harmful policies inflicted by the previous administration,” Daudt wrote.
Dayton on Tuesday will unveil his final two-year budget proposal, which will guide negotiations with legislators in coming months.Google is saying adios to Google News in Spain, after announcing it will close the service down in the country on December 16 in response to the impact of a new law.
The company said that incoming legislation in the European country will force publishers to charge Google if and when it carries snippets of their stories in the news service. That’s not unlike the situation in Germany, where publishers have long argued that Google should compensate them for using excerpts of their stories in the service.
However, while German publishers have grudgingly accepted that Google News is valuable enough to their business to excuse compensation, Spain has gone ahead and inshrined the requirement to pay in its legal system.
“This new legislation requires every Spanish publication to charge services like Google News for showing even the smallest snippet from their publications, whether they want to or not. As Google News itself makes no money (we do not show any advertising on the site) this new approach is simply not sustainable,” Richard Gingras, who heads up Google News, wrote in a blog post.
Google said it is making the move this month ahead of the introduction of the law in January 2015. Come December 16, it will shutter the Google News service in Spain and remove all Spanish publishers from its international versions.
The four year old service is available in more than 70 global editions and in 35 different languages, Google said.Uber driving files (Photo by Luke Novak via the Creative Commons on Flickr)
I'm Lexus Jones. I have a regular full-time job but on the weekends and a few weeknight I drive for Uber. Over the last couple of years I have driven over 2,000 trips for Uber. At first I drove on the UberX platform. Now I drive a luxury car on the Uber Plus platform. Whenever I think that I have seen it all, something new happens. I will be sharing those stories here. I will also answer questions and give advice on how to get the most out of your rides.
What is it like to be an Uber driver?
It's fun. It's freaky. It's exciting. Sometimes it's scary.
Once I had a guy with an oversized white T-shirt, big baggy pants and a bandana on his head sit in the front seat (which is uncommon) and ask me to take him to a gas station and wait. I thought, "Is he going to rob this place and make me the getaway driver?" Fortunately he just wanted to some smokes and a 40 ounce beer. But I have had some other scary rides.
Another time, what appeared to be a pimp and his prostitute were in the back seat, very irritated at what went down before I arrived. They talked to each other about guns and how they would get some, and who they would use it towards.
I picked them up in a good part of town and dropped them off in an even better neighborhood. I was very confused.
What's not shocking is as soon as you put your Uber sign up on your windshield lots of people hate you who don't even know you. Cabbies, valet guys, the cops, and other ride share drivers often give you dirty looks and try to throw shade. (Keep trying.)
Some passengers treat you like their long-lost therapist. Some treat you like their long-lost chauffeur who they're pissed at for some reason and bark directions at you. Some people are obviously control freaks who want to backseat drive but also want to text. You can see them alternating every 15 seconds from their phone to your driving like a nervous tick. Chill out, boss, we'll get there.
Late at night you see car accidents and people puking. So much vomit.
In Long Beach I once saw a car speeding by at 2 am. A college girl's head sticking out of a rolled-down window. The side of the car was going to need some attention as she hurled and hurled. The car, probably an Uber, just kept going.
I've seen people asleep at the wheel at stop lights. I've heard college boys beg their date to let them have sex in the back of my car. People have snorted drugs back there while their friends protested. I may have delivered a hooker or two to their awaiting Johns.
Most of the time you're oblivious to the shenanigans. A good driver is more concerned with the traffic ahead and around them.
Underneath it all is Uber itself, who takes 20% of fares from UberX drivers (and an even bigger cut from UberPlus and UberSUV drivers) and invests millions of that into driverless cars so they can eliminate us.
It's weird driving all night and early in the morning for a start-up valued (on paper) for more than FedEx and who are doing everything they can to replace us with robots as quickly as possible. Perhaps you heard about Uber recently "gutted Carnegie Mellon’s top robotics lab to build self-driving cars"? Our "partner" gave a whole staff of scientists six-figure bonuses and huge raises to develop cars that would drive themselves. Human drivers at Uber have never received any bonuses for driving our own cars, paying our own gas, and helping build Uber to what it is. So yeah, that's not the best feeling.
It's also quite unusual to work for (with?) a company who doesn't give you their phone number and lowers your pay rate on a whim.
They call us partners, but we have no say. They call themselves a technology company, not a transportation company, yet the same exact technology that you use to hail an UberX vehicle also gets you an UberPlus sedan but they take a bigger cut from Plus rides. If the technology was the same, shouldn't the commission also be the same?
They disconnect us without warning over small matters and big ones, and then take days and sometimes weeks to work with us to resolve the problem (which is usually just a paperwork issue on their side).
And worse of all, the company floods the streets with as many drivers as they can sign up, with little regard to quality. You don't know how often I get passengers relieved that I speak English and actually know where their destination is. Uber didn't used to be like that. Cabs did.
Many of us stay with it because on any given day you can pick up someone who wants to go somewhere really far. And if we are extremely lucky, they will ask us to take them back. This doesn't happen all the time, but every day there are stories among drivers of people who just want to get in a car and go: price be damned.
The shorter rides can be fun. The passengers are usually going somewhere exciting, or returning from somewhere good. They're happy. Music is playing. If traffic isn't bad, you might find yourself living vicariously through them.
Some passengers teach you about certain buildings. Some tell you their personal love stories. Some whine. Some cry. But 9 out of 10 times it is a very, very positive ride with smart, happy, interesting people.
A few years ago, before the price slashes, driving was addictive because 8 hours could net you $300. For a while Uber was only taking 5% commission. You could work for a few hours and make $100 while driving around good people. Unless it was surging exorbitantly high, no one ever complained about the price because it was usually half of what cabs cost.
But since Uber was only taking a small percentage of the fare, the company never felt the pinch when they cut prices quarter after quarter, city by city. It's the drivers who pay for the gas, the cars, the "free" water, and the upkeep. As the "temporary" price cuts continued and became permanent, though, the buzz eventually faded.
Some of us bought luxury cars or SUVs to escape the downward spiral on Uber X to graduate to more profitable platforms, but now those platforms have too many drivers. You have to really hustle to make what we once made simply driving Uber X. It's not rare to see more Plus vehicles driving down Sunset than Uber X cars. We wait for Uber to advertise for Uber Plus to educate people that we exist and what we are, but they never do. Nor do they create any promotions. They just keep signing up more drivers and counting their money and investing in robots or China or anything other than existing U.S. drivers.
If it sounds like I'm whining, I am a little bit. We all do a little. A year ago Uber had ads on Facebook that you may have seen. It said things like "Make $75,000 a year with your own car." They don't say that any more. Their price cuts and hiring practices have ended any hope of making any real money as a driver.
So now being an Uber driver is more about trying to make $20 an hour, gross, if you can, as a side job. Which isn't horrible. It just isn't what many of us were promised or signed up for.
Meanwhile, Uber becomes the richest start-up in recent history, all while telling passengers not to tip their drivers.
That about sums up what it's like to be an Uber driver in L.A.
Next week Lexus will answer your questions. So leave them in the comments below or e-mail us at [email protected]. Follow Lexus on Twitter at @uberlexusThe internet "mannequin challenge" craze has finally gone too far, landing two Alabama men in jail after police stumbled upon their video and counted 19 guns in a staged shootout.
They later found drugs and even more guns behind the scenes of the “mannequin” video.
Two men participating in the video setup, Kenneth Fennell White, 49, and Terry Brown, 23, were arrested.
Shortly after White and Brown’s "mannequin challenge" appeared on Facebook last month, Madison County Sheriff's investigators accepted a “challenge” of their own. A warrant was obtained to check whether the guns had been properly registered.
Investigators ended up finding two handguns, an assault rifle and a shotgun, along with several rounds of ammunition at the home, which is clearly seen in the video. There was also a tactical vest and many rounds of ammunition as well as multiple magazines.
Capt. Salomonsky @ media event for search warrant at viral video mannequin challenge residence-guns & drugs seized. pic.twitter.com/qsDNcyLPQQ — Madison Sheriff AL (@mcsosheriffAL) December 6, 2016
Authorities also discovered several bags of marijuana, allegedly packaged for resale, scales and a special device for grinding the plant’s buds into powder.
White is now facing charges of marijuana possession and has been named a felon in possession of a firearm, Captain Mike Salomonsky told reporters Tuesday. His bond was set at $30,000. Brown, who arrived in prison with his own marijuana, has been charged with possession of drug paraphernalia, loitering and promoting prison contraband. His bail has been set at $3,800.
“There are several persons in the video who may be convicted felons,” Salomonsky said. “So, we’re going to try to do some identification, work with the ATF and see if we can generate any charges out of that.”
The video has been shared nearly 86,000 times since it was posted to Facebook on November 9, AL.com reported.Introduction
The Ordo Militaris Catholicus is a international defense and security initiative of Catholics for Catholics who are suffering persecution for their faith, where their defense and liberation requires military intervention or security actions, and this is allowed by local and/or international law. We were founded in the days following the martyrdom of Father Jacques Hamel, July 26, 2016 A.D., by Br. Alexis Bugnolo, a Franciscan hermit.
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Following in the footsteps of the brave Catholics of old, who forsook family, home and nation to go overseas to the rescue of Christians being persecuted for their faith, we have begun this security and defense initiative of Catholics for Christians who are being persecuted, where their defense and security requires humanitarian aid and security solutions which only a private military corporation could lawfully provide.
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Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello said today he briefed Vice President Mike Pence yesterday on the recovery efforts in Puerto Rico and underscored the need for urgent, ongoing support following the devastation from Hurricane Maria.
In a news conference today in San Juan, Rossello noted -- as Pence said yesterday during a visit to the island -- that President Donald J. Trump's administration is committed to the immediate and long-term needs of Puerto Rico.
"The vice president has a deep understanding that although a lot of the efforts are going on, there is still a lot to be done here in Puerto Rico," Rossello said.
The governor commended Pence for visiting the island. "We're grateful for his leadership, for his faith in the efforts that we are doing and of course his continued support for the people of Puerto Rico," he said. | Puerto Rico Governor: White House 'In It for the Long Haul'
The governor said he will reiterate to a congressional delegation visiting Puerto Rico today the need for urgent action, due to the magnitude of the challenges.
Working with Partners
Puerto Rico officials continue to work closely with the Defense Department and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as with Emergency Management Assistance Compact partners, he noted. | DoD to Build Additional Medical Facilities in Puerto Rico
"We have 12,300 DoD personnel here in Puerto Rico, more than 600 FEMA and more than 2,000 EMACs from 25 states in Puerto Rico serving through the emergency," he said, adding that the hospital ship USNS Comfort is serving around Puerto Rico with a capacity of about 1,000 patients.
DoD is working to establish hospital capabilities that will be built in the next weeks in Humacao and Aguadilla, the governor said. Those facilities will benefit not only those areas, but also the island as a whole, he pointed out.
The governor said 56 percent of the island has access to drinking water, with more than 700,000 clients with service. However, he added, the percentage is less than 50 in the island's northern and northwestern areas.
"So our focus will be on those areas both on generators and on getting bottled water and [water stations] to those sites," he said.
(Follow Lisa Ferdinando on Twitter: @FerdinandoDoD)House Speaker Paul D. Ryan says he’s been studying up on procedural issues ahead of next week’s Republican convention in Cleveland, where in his capacity as speaker he’ll be chairing the proceedings.
“I’ve been basically preparing on the rules package, which is just how the gavel works and how we open up the floor,” Mr. Ryan told reporters on Tuesday. “It’s just like opening up the floor in Congress, actually.”
“So I’ve simply gone through with the parliamentarians about the … procedure of starting the convention and closing the convention,” said Mr. Ryan, Wisconsin Republican.
Mr. Ryan also said he hasn’t started working on his speech yet, but he said he thinks he’s speaking Tuesday night. He said he also plans to spend time with various delegations and do some charitable events with friends of his in Ohio.
“And then I’m just going to make sure I get the procedural stuff down,” he said.
Asked about the prospect of Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, a former congressman, being selected as Donald Trump’s running mate, Mr. Ryan said he’s as anxious as others are about who Mr. Trump’s vice presidential pick will be.
“I’m familiar with this process,” said Mr. Ryan, the 2012 GOP vice presidential nominee.
“I have the highest, highest regard for Mike. He’s a personal friend of ours and mine,” Mr. Ryan said. “But I’m just as anxious as you are, and I’m just going to withhold any comment until the presumptive nominee makes his choice.”
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.As part of their IFA 2017 showcase, this morning LG is unveiling their long-rumored next-generation flagship phone, the V30. Like its predecessor, the LG V20, the V30 hasn't exactly been a well-kept secret, with several leaks springing over the last month. Still, with the official announcement from LG, we're finally getting a complete look at the phone.
Some of the feedback that LG received for the LG V10 and the LG V20 explained that the smartphones were considered ‘too professional’ for the mass market and younger generations. Despite LG’s heavy marketing to millennials using celebrities such as Joseph Gordon-Levitt, the dual screen combinations had an interesting feature set but often sat in the store next to their better selling competitors. To crank up the base of Generation V (what LG calls the millennial generation targeted by the V-series), the biggest and most noticable design change for the V series is that the new V30 drops the slightly esoteric dual screen design in favor of a single, larger FullVision OLED display, with super narrow bezels to make as much of the phone a display as possible.
LG V-Series Smartphones LG V30 LG V20 LG V10 SoC Qualcomm Snapdragon 835
4x Kryo 280 @ 2.45 GHz
4x Kryo 280 @ 1.90 GHz
Adreno 540 @ 710 MHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 820
2x Kryo @ 2.15GHz
2x Kryo @ 1.59GHz
Adreno 530 @ 624MHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 808
2x A57 @ 1.82GHz
4x A53 @ 1.44GHz
Adreno 418 RAM 4GB LPDDR4X 4GB LPDDR4 4GB LPDDR3 NAND 64GB (UFS 2.1) + microSD 64GB (UFS 2.0)
+ microSD 32GB/64GB
+ microSD 128GB for V30+ Display 6.0 inch 2880x1440 OLED 5.7-inch 2560x1440 IPS LCD
2.1-inch 160x1040 LCD (Secondary) 5.7-inch 2560x1440 IPS LCD
2.1-inch 160x1040 LCD (Secondary) Dimensions 151.7 x 75.4 x 7.3 mm
156 grams 159.7 x 78.1 x 7.6 mm
174 grams 159.6 x 79.3 x 8.6 mm
192 grams Modem Qualcomm X16 (integrated)
2G / 3G / 4G LTE
(Category 16/13) Qualcomm X12 (Integrated)
2G / 3G / 4G LTE (Category 12/13) Qualcomm X10 (Integrated)
2G / 3G / 4G LTE (Category 6/9) SIM Size NanoSIM NanoSIM NanoSIM Front Camera 5MP, f/1.9 5MP, f/1.9 Primary: 5MP, f/2.2 Wide Angle: 5MP, f/2.2 Rear Camera Primary: 16MP, f1/6, Sony IMX351, Laser AF, PDAF, OIS, LED Flash Primary: 16MP, f/1.8
Sony IMX298 Exmor RS
Laser AF, PDAF, OIS, LED flash 16MP, f/1.8 Laser AF, OIS, LED flash Wide Angle:
13MP, f/1.9 Wide Angle: 8MP, f/2.4,
Sony IMX219 Exmor R
Laser AF, PDAF, OIS, LED flash Battery 3300 mAh
non-replaceable
WIreless Charging 3200 mAh (12.3 Wh)
replaceable 3000 mAh (11.55 Wh)
replaceable Connectivity 802.11ac, BT 4.2, NFC, GPS/GNSS, DLNA, USB Type-C 802.11ac, BT 4.2, NFC, IrLED, GPS/GNSS, DLNA, USB 2.0 Type-C 802.11ac, BT 4.1, NFC, GPS/GNSS, SlimPort, DLNA, microUSB 2.0 Launch OS Android 7.1.2
with LGUX Android 7
with LGUX 5.0 Android 5.1
with LGUX 4.0
For our hands-on, LG requested that we clarify that the devices are pre-production preview models, and some features/issues may change between now and launch.
Under the hood, the V30 is powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 835, with LG using a heatpipe to assist in cooling. This is paired with 4 GB of LPDDR4X, and either 64GB or 128GB of UFS 2.1 storage. The 128GB model will be sold as the V30+ model, and will only be available in some countries (I was told that the V30 itself is not fully worldwide, and the V30+ will still cover most of those but not all). The battery is virtually unchanged from the V20, its 3300 mAh capacity being just 100 mAh larger than its predecessor. Some journalists suggested that this might be a design oversight, given the larger size and OLED display in this unit – LG stated that the battery life is still good for an honest day of use. On a personal note, just be wary of the brightness: LG does offer screen dimension reduction tools, which might help here. With the battery the V30 is supporting Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 3.0 technology, giving 50% charge in 30 minutes under supported chargers, and the V30 will also have wireless charging.
Overall, the main display is the hardest thing to miss when seeing the phone for the first time. The 6-inch diagonal QHD+ (2880x1440) resolution display is big and bright. And even though I've used phones like the Mi MIX, which does things like crazy placement, for all intents and purposes this is a very narrow bezel phone, and a large phone at that. LG uses their pOLED technology here, which they were keen to point out is still an ‘active matrix’ type of OLED, however AMOLED is the Samsung brand name. The technology means that LG is supporting HDR10 out of the box for suitable content, boasts an always-on lock screen at super low power, and can crank up the brightness that’ll tear through your battery life in a few short hours. With the 6-inch display, OLED, and a high 537 pixels per inch, LG is also supporting Daydream VR with the new V30.
The aim for the V30 is all about visuals. A better display, a better camera, new camera features, and overall a new visual experience for users that share content either as a video creator or as an image junkie. Moving to the camera, LG is employing a dual camera system, using a 71° degree main camera with the new Sony IMX351 sensor supporting OIS, and a 120° wide angle camera for wider shots and some zoom functionality. The primary rear camera is a 16MP design with a f/1.6 aperture, noted as being the widest in the market. This is combined with a new lens strategy, whereby the 6-element lens now makes one of them glass (rather than them all being plastic), which LG states as offering 4% more light into the sensor. We were told that the first lens element is the one updated, as when they tested the full range, this made the most difference. On the back of this change, LG is stating that their dynamic range is wider than their competitors, offering 11 stops at 6 dB rather than 9.5, and competing with more expensive cinema cameras and beating the smartphone competition. This also means wide color gamut support, using logarithmic color imaging (rather than a linear scale) for a much wider dynamic range. The log color support is via a new feature for their camera, LG Cine Log.
LG spent a lot of time talking to us about Cine Log. Using the manual video mode and enabling Cine Log, and recording the color information with the MPEG4 video, users can combine the data with their own custom look-up-tables using software such as DaVinci Resolve in order to adjust the color tone mapping. Inside the Cine Log portion of the app, users can already select 15 different cinematic effects that LG used experienced outside video editing professionals to help calibrate. This includes effects such as romantic, drama, mystery, thriller, documentary, noir, flashback, scenery, melodrama, classic and pop-art. On the face of it, these might appear to be extensions of popular filter apps, but LG states that their solution is more than just a simple filter, using specific color enhancement. We took a few photos of a lamp in a dimly lit room and could see a difference.
Documentary, Blockbuster, Beauty
Another feature of Cine Log is point-zoom, which allows the user to zoom in to any part of an image, rather than requiring the camera to be moved to actually face the object in the dead center.
Not specifically in Cine Log is an app called Graphy, providing a series of stock photos with various ‘looks’ and feels to them. Users can recreate the professional settings of these photos for any images of their own by selecting them – the app applies all the required settings.
For video recording, LG is promoting the inclusion of two high-performance microphones in the design. With the addition of the standard phone receiver, the internal DSP will combine the audio from all sources to provide a single output (although they don’t state what the target SNR of the path is). LG stated that this audio is good at 24-bits and 96 kHz, though that doesn’t state anything about the quality. I played around with the feature, and it does offer some immediate features that should be on all smartphones: additional gain jumps, low-frequency filters, and a limiter for clipping.
It’s worth noting at this point in our briefing, one of the analysts mentioned that at the beginning LG was targeting ‘Generation V’ / millennials with their new phone, but so far all the features being presented were still very hard technology tools for experts and professionals. LG responded by saying that most of these features were available as one-button behind the scene applications: many of these users know how to apply a filter, and the application of their tools that are more complicated underneath the surface can be done in the same way.
LG was keen to discuss their audio technology. In the V30 they are using a ‘Quad DAC’ implementation, supporting 24-bit lossless audio output through the headphones. They are keen to promote that the V30 is the world’s first MQA mobile player for HiFi streaming – MQA is the Master Quality Authenticated audio codec using compression and file fingerprinting suitable for high fidelity digital audio from internet streaming. The HiFi modes on the phone are only available through the 3.5mm TRRS audio jack, and offer a small selection of EQ modes for different types of music. To assist with the audio experience, LG is partnering with Bang & Olufsen Play to provide some very reasonable in ear headphones.
I tried to do some non-blind testing while I was at the show, however all my lossless audio files are at home. What I did have to hand was entirely subjective – I couldn’t blind test, and the only real difference I heard was when I adjusted the EQ settings. LG doesn’t implement a full EQ configuration tool here, although I assume a third-party app could do the business.
For non-audio-visual features, LG is promoting its new voice recognition unlock. This allows the user to pick their own 3-5 syllable phrase to unlock the phone. Technically all Qualcomm Aqstic capable smartphones should be able to do this, and it allows unlock functionality in combination with face recognition, fingerprint recognition, and LG’s Knock code. The lock screen also provides a permanent display of the clock, the battery life, and any relevant notifications. The OLED panel we were told helps keep the power low with this feature, especially as the refresh rate can be super low (I imagine as low as one frame a minute, perhaps).
LG is also playing the AI game, by providing Google Assistant with the device. LG has worked with Google for LG specific commands, mainly for the camera, to allow certain voice commands to start recording video in wide angle mode, in Cine Log mode, or in manual mode. The idea being that the user can prop the smartphone up somewhere and tell it to start taking a video. Unrelated to Google Assistant, but LG will allow the camera to take an image when the user says the word ‘Kimchi’. I found this mildly amusing and very Korean.
LG talked a lot in our pre-briefing about color accuracy, mainly pointing at the camera technology, although they didn’t state what color accuracy they were aiming for on the display. The software does have an additional option to enable sRGB mode for photos, but in our preview device even at minor viewing angles we saw a very noticeable blue tinge.
For the design, LG is using a Gorilla Glass 5 back and front cover here; with a choice of Aurora Black, Moroccan Blue, Cloud Silver and Lavender Violet colors (some regions may not have all colors). The design is tested to MIL-STD-810G standards, known as MIL spec, and carries an IP68 rating, meaning that it is waterproof in 150cm / 5 feet of water for 30 minutes. That also typically means that manual repairs are a pain without warming up all the waterproof sealant in the device, unless LG is using O-rings to do the business. I’ll wait
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days — from the southeast suburbs through central Denver.
Other giant projects have included two toll roads — E-470 and the Northwest Parkway — that suburban cities and counties pursued through farms and pastures by forming separate toll authorities to finish most of the metro area beltway, at a cost of more than $2 billion in today’s dollars.
And the Regional Transportation District is nearing the finish line on most pieces of the $5.3 billion-and-counting FasTracks rail system, offering more metro commuters an exit from the freeway grind.
But rather than new projects scaled as large as T-REX, which required voter approval for borrowing, the best hope state transportation officials say they can offer rests on two things: new technology and managed toll lanes.
Developing technologies are expected to make more cars less prone to gridlock-causing accidents and are producing new systems that hold promise for reducing road congestion.
In the next year or so, CDOT plans to launch a pilot on a portion of I-25, from Broadway to Ridgegate Parkway in Douglas County, by upgrading the northbound on-ramps’ metering system to a dynamic, computerized version. Drivers may wait longer to get on the highway at times, Bhatt says, but CDOT projects that the new system could improve I-25’s traffic flow as much as 25 percent.
CDOT already is embracing managed toll lanes, which carry the benefit of helping to offset construction costs, on some congested corridors.
Sometimes shoehorned into highway shoulders, those lanes are free for buses and carpools but charge varying tolls for single-occupant cars. They appeal to drivers who are desperate enough to pay to escape the snarl, and CDOT says they will ease congestion across all lanes.
Such lanes just opened along U.S. 36 and on the shoulder of eastbound Interstate 70 along a 13-mile mountain stretch for return ski traffic. They also are at the center of coming plans to overhaul I-70 through northeast Denver and a long-delayed upgrade of the most congested parts of C-470 that will start next summer.
A new set on I-25 from U.S. 36 to 120th, connecting with existing toll lanes to the south, soon may quicken the bus portion of Lloyd’s commute.
CDOT is making plans to extend managed lanes even farther north through the suburbs, rather than calling for a large-scale widening that many local leaders and commuters prefer.
Some transportation experts, though, say additional free-access lanes are more likely to fill up quickly by inducing drivers to switch back to peak times.
But Lloyd says he is holding out for RTD’s under-construction North Metro Rail Line, which could jettison the unpredictable I-25 from his commute by 2018.
49 hours in traffic
The average commuter in the Denver metro area spent 49 hours sitting in traffic last year, according to the Texas Transportation Institute’s Urban Mobility Scorecard. Denver ranked 19th among U.S. metro areas.
The annual report has improved its estimates in recent years by incorporating real-time speed data from a company called INRIX that is tracked from some drivers’ Global Positioning System-enabled phones and devices.
The delay measurement is lower than the 52 hours that the institute estimates Denver-area drivers spent delayed by traffic in 2005, when the T-REX project was nearing its end. But after several years of reduced delays following that project’s completion — and during the Great Recession — area commuters’ delays have been inching upward again.
Twenty years ago, according to the institute’s revised estimates, Denver-area drivers were delayed only 31 hours by traffic, ranking the region 40th for that year.
This year’s national report ranked I-25 northbound between Colorado Boulevard and 84th Avenue as the 51st-worst-congested corridor last year, while the southbound side was ranked 147th. In another ranking by the American Highway Users Alliance, I-25 between Santa Fe Drive and Logan Street — a stretch near recent construction projects — was the 35th-worst bottleneck this year.
Even in the T-REX zone in the south suburbs, where I-25 now has five continuous lanes in each direction, traffic levels cause daily frustration for some drivers.
“My commute is only going to get worse, thanks to the construction around my office (in the Denver Tech Center) and now my home,” said Brian Soucie, who lives off of Dry Creek Road and works for a financial investment firm. “The intersections and routes that I take are not capable of handling the amount of traffic that has been generated in the area.”
Transportation planners, CDOT officials and some observers say freeways and some arterial streets through older parts of the Denver area have little room left for expansion.
And they point out that Denver’s congestion rankings are comparable to its relative size as a metro area. In other words, traffic is a symptom of its success in attracting jobs and residents.
The average commute in most of the metro region, excluding Boulder, took about 27 minutes in 2013, according to U.S. Census estimates. That’s slightly above the national average of 26 minutes.
In the Texas Transportation Institute’s traffic-delay estimates, Denver ranks better than comparably sized — but notoriously snarled — Austin, Texas; Seattle; and Portland, Ore., while cities such as Chicago (61 hours of delay a year) and top-ranked Washington, D.C. (82 hours), have congestion that makes Denver traffic seem almost quaint.
“Our level of congestion, it is an issue,” said Rex, DRCOG’s transportation planning director. “But it seems to be on par with what our population is. Our economy is booming compared to many parts of the country, but we certainly can’t rest on our laurels.”
High marks from experts
The coming pace of the metro area’s growth initially was underestimated by DRCOG in the late-1990s, but the organization’s projections — by nature fraught with uncertainty — get high marks from transportation experts.
“DRCOG does a great job at projecting traffic levels,” said Bruce N. Janson, a civil engineering professor at the University of Colorado Denver. “They’re one of the most progressive metropolitan planning organizations in the country with regard to their traffic forecasting methodology.”
But with the traffic trouble spots known well, it was up to state and local officials to prioritize projects, given limited funding.
That led to the huge T-REX project still excluding several miles of I-25 that was in need of a fix, from Broadway to the Sixth Avenue Freeway. Only recently was CDOT able to clear the bottleneck created there by creating a fourth continuous lane to link to the end of the T-REX zone.
Other projects approached piecemeal over a decade or two included an extension of Interstate 270 from Interstate 76 to I-25, the complex remodeling of the “Mousetrap” interchange of I-25 and I-70, and widening of U.S. 285 into the foothills.
But some critics long have questioned transportation spending priorities, especially the FasTracks plan.
Randal O’Toole, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute who also is connected with Denver’s Independence Institute, says the money could have been put to better uses, and at lower cost.
“Instead of building six new rail lines, they could’ve built 50 bus rapid transit lines around the region and served a lot more people than the six rail lines are ever going to do,” said O’Toole, who lives in Oregon.
He also suggests that continuing funding gaps for transportation projects are due to politicians wanting glitzy projects to show off instead of what he considers more common-sense solutions.
O’Toole supports a recent Reason Foundation report on Denver’s congestion problems that advocates for a $52 billion plan that relies heavily on toll lanes added along most freeways and at some major surface street intersections as a form of congestion pricing. The plan, which would be much less costly than DRCOG’s 25-year plan, also incorporates a heavy expansion of bus service.
Repeated road expansion
But Bill Vidal, who was a CDOT chief in the 1990s, said the development of the rail system was a credit to good planning that incorporated new thinking beyond repeated road expansion, instead focusing on how to move people better. He later served as director of DRCOG and then as Denver’s public works director, retiring after a stint as interim mayor in 2011.
“As we started carrying big-city traffic, neighborhoods were affected by that traffic,” said Vidal. “So people are noticing that just driving a car may not be a good idea — even if they might be driving a car 100 percent of the time themselves.”
The transit lines also have been credited with spurring development near some stations, and Rex and others say they have helped people with more options to avoid driving in traffic than they had 20 years ago.
“Cities with congestion that do mobility well don’t rely on a single mode to meet their transportation needs,” Crissy Fanganello, Denver’s director of transportation, wrote in an e-mail. “They have robust transit system (bus and rail), they have bike facilities, people walk and in recent years new services have emerged,” such as Uber and bike-sharing.
Last year, RTD recorded nearly 104 million boardings, including 26.3 million light-rail passengers. In 1993, before the first light-rail line opened, its system ridership — entirely on buses — was 61.4 million.
Amid rising costs for 2004’s voter-approved FasTracks plan, originally set at $4.7 billion, RTD has put some components on hold, including most of the northwest rail line.
But next year will feature the opening of several lines that are nearing completion. Existing light-rail lines in central Denver and to the southwest, southeast and west will be joined by commuter-rail lines from Union Station to Wheat Ridge, Westminster and Denver International Airport, along with the completion of the I-225 light-rail line. And on Jan. 3, the Flatiron Flyer bus rapid-transit corridor will open on U.S. 36, using the newly constructed toll lanes.
For airport travel or suburb-to-suburb commutes, E-470 has become a popular alternative to freeways through Denver, with toll transactions increasing 71 percent from 2003, when the final section opened, through last year.
But the prospect of further large improvements to absorb more metro growth is daunting to planners, local officials and commuters alike.
There’s also the added uncertainty about how emerging social trends, including the effect of the coming baby boomers’ mass retirements and millennials’ preference for getting out of cars, will affect road congestion in coming decades.
Transportation frustrations — which extend to other parts of the state, too — are at the heart of varying efforts to find ways to raise yet another infusion of money for projects, from Gov. John Hicklooper’s office to the General Assembly to lobbying groups that have formed to push for additional lanes on I-25 even farther north, through Fort Collins. Without more money, CDOT says it can’t get that job done until 2070.
But taxing and spending restrictions under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights have long been a major hurdle, making borrowing a more attractive option in the past to raise infusions of cash for projects.
More recently, the state has raised vehicle-registration fees to pay for the FASTER program.
But it has been 22 years since both Colorado and the federal government last raised their gas taxes, a long-standing major source of transportation funding that has dwindled. Those taxes are a combined 40.4 cents per gallon.
Without new funding, CDOT says its current annual $800 million funding gap — on a $1.3 billion budget for its statewide mission — could grow to $1 billion in coming years.
Jon Murray: 303-954-1405, [email protected] or @JonMurray
How we commute
A U.S. census report on commuting for 2013 estimated how residents in the Denver area (excluding Boulder) traveled to work and how long it took, on average:
• By car: 75.4 percent (26 minutes).
• By carpool: 8.9 percent (29 minutes).
• By public transit: 4.4 percent (47 minutes). Surveys by the Downtown Denver Partnership, while not scientific, suggest that far more downtown workers — roughly 40 percent in the 2015 survey — commute most days using public transit.
• Another way: 11.3 percent (no time given).
Things you can do
Avoiding traffic can be tough, but there are ways to reduce the time stuck in gridlock:
• Use Google Maps, Waze or other mapping apps for your phone that collect real-time information from other drivers with phones to recommend ways around bottlenecks, accidents and other tie-ups.
• If you drive to work, see if transit might offer an appealing alternative.
• If you live within a few miles of work, consider commuting, on warmer days, by bike or on foot.
• Check the Denver Regional Council of Governments’ MyWaytoGo.org website. Enter your start point and destination, adjust the time for your commute and see comparisons of options, including the best bus or train routes and carpools registered along your route.
• Explore changes that might reduce time spent in traffic, including shifting your workday earlier or later, or working from home some days.Evolving Battle Point Booster
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Victory Prediction TauntWith a goal of announcing a site for their new stadium this year, the A's have reportedly decided on a plot of land near Laney College. Christie Smith reports.
A's Plan to Build New Stadium Near Laney College in Oakland
A coalition of community leaders, business and labor leaders and other Oakland city leaders are scheduled Monday to announce their support for the Oakland Athletics' plans to build a new downtown stadium.
The team last week announced plans to construct a new privately-financed stadium on a plot of land near Laney College in downtown Oakland.
The next step for the A's is evaluating the Peralta site, which consists of about 13 acres near Interstate 880, not far from Lake Merritt.
The stadium would be privately financed and close to BART, the A's said.
Athletics Announce Plan to Build New Stadium Near Laney College in Downtown Oakland
The A's have picked their next home. Bob Redell reports. (Published Wednesday, Sept. 13, 2017)
The A's have played at the Coliseum since 1968.
Check back for updates.The outcome document for this week’s Rio+20 summit is 49 pages long. Some 23,917 words.
Women were mentioned in less than 0.01 percent of the text. And only two of the 283 sections addressed women’s needs for family planning.
At first, this might not seem like a big deal. It’s easy to think of Rio as a purely environmental conference, dealing with issues related to sustainable development and a green economy. It’s easy to say that Rio is not about “women’s issues.”
Well, we have some news for you: You can’t have sustainable development without women. Despite the best efforts of women leaders in government and civil society, strong statements on access to contraception and reproductive health services are still in doubt. Of the seven priority areas of discussion at the summit, none included a focus on women’s health and empowerment.
The stakes at Rio are huge. Time is running out to develop plans for economic growth that reduce poverty without harming our environment. But there is no path to a sustainable future that doesn’t include women. Leave them out, neglect their needs, and risk failure.
Right now, more than 200 million women in developing countries want the right to plan their families, but lack contraception. Meeting their needs would not only improve their lives, but would help them respond to the effects of climate change, practice sustainability, and participate more fully in the economy and their communities.
Consequences of environmental change — floods, droughts, crop failure — affect everyone, but are especially hard on women and families. As the primary people responsible for gathering water, firewood, and other household resources, women are on the front lines of the climate crisis. When they are able plan the timing of their own childbearing, they can better adapt to the unpredictable impacts of climate change, and ensure the survival of their families.
Powering these households and ensuring access to electricity is essential. Investing in small-scale, distributed clean energy sources like solar is the fastest, cheapest, and most reliable method to provide electricity to women and families. This will create more resilient and robust rural communities while reducing the burden on families who are heavily reliant on dangerous kerosene for electricity.
Empowering women to make these critical decisions in their own lives can also contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Studies show that slowing population growth by giving women access to the contraception they already want could reduce emissions by between 8 and 15 percent [PDF] — roughly equivalent to ending all tropical deforestation.
Family planning and reproductive health are also fundamental to promoting environmental sustainability. A woman who cannot access contraception may have more children than she can afford to feed and educate. She will need more resources to take care of her growing family. In contrast, couples who can plan their own childbearing are better able to manage other aspects of their lives, including their use of natural resources. Access to family planning helps women raise healthy and stable families, which protects valuable natural resources for future generations.
As the world population grows, the demand for water, forests, and land mounts, and pressure on resources intensifies. The most resource-stressed areas typically have few resources, high population densities, and high population growth rates. Meeting the needs of a rapidly growing population not only taxes resources, but is a significant economic challenge for many of the world’s poorest countries.
Investing in women is a powerful antidote to poverty. Women who are able to delay childbearing are more likely to meet their educational goals, obtain productive employment, and increase household income. Smaller family sizes also allow more children to be educated, and promote girls’ education. In turn, educated women tend to have smaller families, and more resources to invest in their children.
Employment for women is also important to achieving full potential in the labor market, and growing a green economy. Currently, the proportion of working-age women who are employed lags behind men in all regions. Yet women are indispensable in agriculture, producing up to 80 percent of the world’s food, and their unpaid labor is estimated to contribute up to 50 percent of GDP in some countries. By preventing unintended pregnancies, family planning can enhance women’s employment opportunities, and increase their financial contribution to communities and nations.
In short, ensuring that women have access to contraception promotes sustainable economic growth. And it’s a cost-effective investment. Every dollar spent on family planning can save $2 to $6 in other development areas.
To those who say women’s issues are a distraction from the Rio+20 negotiations, we say nothing could be further from the truth. They are at the heart of this great challenge, and provide the foundation for creating a more sustainable world.
For all of Grist’s Earth Summit coverage, click here.FILE - In this Oct. 25, 2009, file photo Uruguay's President Jose Mujica, 74, stands in a tractor on his flower farm on the outskirts of Montevideo, Uruguay, Sunday. Uruguayans used to call their country the Switzerland of Latin America, but its faded grey capital seems a bit more like Amsterdam now that its congress legalized abortion on Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2012, and is drawing up plans to sell government-grown marijuana. (AP Photo/Matilde Campodonico, file)
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay (AP) — Uruguayans used to call their country the Switzerland of Latin America, but its faded grey capital seems a bit more like Amsterdam now that its congress has legalized abortion and is drawing up plans to sell government-grown marijuana.
Both measures would be unthinkable in many other countries. Cuba is the only other nation in the region that makes first-trimester abortions accessible to all women, and no country in the world produces and sells pot for drug users to enjoy.
But President Jose "Pepe" Mujica, a flower-farming former leftist guerrilla, vowed to sign whatever bill congress could settle on that can minimize the 30,000 illegal abortions his government says Uruguayan women suffer annually.
And while lawmakers have yet to debate pot sales, Mujica's ruling Broad Front coalition staked its ground in August by openly declaring that the drug war has failed. Smoking pot — if not growing and selling it — is already legal in Uruguay, and supplying the weed is a $30 million business, the government said.
This is democracy "a la Uruguaya" — the Uruguayan way — a phrase that reflects both the pride and the unmet promises of a society where finding common ground is a highly shared value, in stark contrast to many other countries where voters are divided by us-and-them politics.
Such outsized respect for the democratic process has enabled the country of 3.4 million people wedged between Argentina and Brazil to reach consensus on many issues that have stymied bigger and richer nations, from reforming health care to providing free university educations, to setting ambitious renewable energy goals. By embracing compromises, Uruguay has managed to hold onto its middle class through repeated economic crises, and pass laws that have consistently improved its citizens' quality of life.
But Uruguayans are increasingly concluding that Mujica has been too conciliatory — too aloof — and what they need now is more hands-on management. They love his crotchedy homespun humor and his man-of-the-people image, but they say Uruguay could benefit from a bit more decisiveness, historian Gerardo Caetano said.
Mujica, who entered politics after spending 14 years in prison during Uruguay's dictatorship, is an unusual leader by any standard.
He gives away 90 percent of his salary, doesn't have a bank account, drives a 41-year-old Volkswagen and never wears a tie. Now 77 and nearing the end of his five-year term, he has been talking a lot lately about stepping back and finding the joy in simple things, reflecting a personal style that goes to extremes of austerity.
"Mujica is a very strange, singular figure and yet he expresses this singular desire that Uruguayans in general have," Caetano said during an interview in his Montevideo apartment, where thousands of books spilled off the shelves. "Uruguayans like having unusual politicians, but they don't like authoritarians. They don't want leaders who are remote or confrontational."
"In Argentina, government is whatever the president says it is. Here, no president defines his performance without negotiation, and especially not Mujica. He really doesn't like to give orders. He doesn't want to be the chief," Caetano said. "In Uruguay, imposing things just doesn't work."
Creating a police state to take on drug traffickers would be anathema to Uruguayans, who have long been among the most secular, socially liberal and highly educated people in Latin America. Instead, the government hopes to drive traffickers out of business by providing a better service to drug users.
And in another reflection of Uruguay's national character, both the abortion and marijuana initiatives are intended to exclude foreigners. Only Uruguayans will benefit from these moves.
Still, many Uruguayans aren't exactly happy about either measure.
The activists who won the abortion battle last week applauded just briefly and then left the senate gallery complaining about the concessions they made.
"This is a solution very much 'a la Uruguaya,'" said Romina Napilote, a 27-year-old sociologist with the Pro-Derechos group who worries that the 10 pages of fine print added to win over a few reluctant lawmakers will end up forcing more women into risky clandestine abortions.
"We are very conciliating, always addressing what the conservatives want and trying for the middle ground," she said. "It's an issue in our political culture... Living in a society with so much tolerance for the opinions of others also holds us back."NEW DELHI: The highways sector could see a near doubling of allocation to Rs 45,000 crore as part of the government's push to infrastructure in the coming budget owing to confidence among planners that quick results can be achieved in this sector if funds are made available.The Narendra Modi government has managed to award contracts for about 4,000 km of roads of its target of 8,500 km in the current fiscal. The road transport and highways ministry has a target of another 8,500 km for 2015-16.With private sector investment almost drying up in the highways sector, the government has awarded nearly three-fourths of the roads through engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) route. Essentially, the government will have to build roads till the time private sector steps in. "We have asked for a hefty allocation and there is good chance we will get it," said a ministry official. Experts said that the sector can grow rapidly if funds are made available.If the issue of money is addressed, the sector can gather pace after the budget, said Manish Agarwal, leader - capital projects and infrastructure at PwC India. He added, though, that the government will also need to tackle other associated issues. "Land acquisition, permissions for rail overbridges, etc., need to be kept ready so that projects can take off," said Agarwal. The execution of National Highway Development Project (NHDP) slowed down to 3.2 km per day during April-October 2014 from 4.3 km per day in the year-ago period. Road transport minister Nitin Gadkari has set a target of constructing 30 km roads per day in the next two years. To achieve this target, the government has proposed to provide funds for projects which are stuck due to cost overruns. There is also a provision for developers to borrow from the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI).
"By the end of current fiscal, India will be able to construct 3,500 km of roads and highways against the target of 5,000 km," said Anand Kumar, managing director, National Highways & Infrastructure Development Corporation. The larger part of the funds will have to be disbursed by the government in the second year of construction for projects awarded this year, which will also call for an increase in allocation.
Some experts have said that the quality of roads remains an area of concern in this strategy. "In the case of EPC contracts, the quality of the roads constructed has been usually poor as the EPC contractor has no stake in the roads constructed by it, once it is handed over to the government," a recent study by Crisil and PHD Chamber said.By Miguel Rivera
According to Golden Boy Promotions President Eric Gomez, the negotiations for the anticipated fight between Orlando Salido and Takashi Miura is getting close for December 17 in California. Gomez views the fight as being one of the very best in 2016.
The hard-punching Miura (30-3-2, 23KOs) lost his WBC super featherweight title in a Fight of The Year encounter with Francisco Vargas last November as part of the Miguel Cotto-Canelo Alvarez undercard at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. Miura had Vargas down early, but was later stopped on the contest.
Salido (43-13-4, 30KOs) has been in three Fight of The Year contenders in a row. He had two wars last year with Roman Martinez, and then followed that up this past June by going to war with Vargas for for the WBC 130-pound crown. That fight ended in a twelve round draw, but there were a lot of observers who felt Salido did enough to edge it out.
Miura was ringside for Salido's fight with Vargas. Both Salido and Miura want to get Vargas back in the ring, but the champion - who is currently recovering from the serious cuts that were sustained in the fight with Salido - was recently ordered to make a mandatory defense against hard-hitting Miguel Roman.
Salido vs. Miura is a can't miss fight with a lot of potential to become a late frontrunner for Fight of The Year honors.
"It's a fight with great potential to close out the year. I think every promoter, every journalist, every analyst, every fan - will be eager to see the fight between Orlando Salido and Takashi Miura. We are trying to finalize the fight and we're very close to achieving this. We hope to provide some good news very soon," Gomez told ESPN Deportes.GOP presidential candidate Rand Paul on Saturday convinced Kentucky Republicans to allow him to run for reelection to his Senate seat while running for president, in case the latter doesn’t go his way.
Poll numbers show Paul is far behind in the contest to win his party’s nomination, polling at 4.3%, behind Carly Fiorina, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Ben Carson, Jeb Bush and Donald Trump, the current front runner, according to Real Clear Politics.
The Washington Post reports the process of getting Kentucky’s first presidential caucus together was rough, following Rand’s less-than-stellar summer of campaigning.
“I applaud the Republican Party of Kentucky on their decision to hold a caucus in the upcoming Republican presidential cycle,” Paul said in a statement, according to the Post. “The people of Kentucky deserve a voice as the GOP chooses their next nominee, and holding a caucus will ensure that Kentucky is relevant and participates early in the process.”
Paul personally attended the vote to lobby for the ability to run for president without jeopardizing his simultaneous campaign for Senate reelection, the Post reports.
In the end, Kentucky’s GOP central committee voted overwhelmingly to move from a primary to caucus system. This allows Paul to get around state laws forbidding candidates from appearing twice on the same ballot, Politico reports. Paul has promised to fund the caucuses, which could run him a $500,000-plus price tag.
The Post reports Paul’s campaign for president thus far has been rocky. In August, the heads of his super PAC were indicted on bribery charges, and his performance in the first GOP debate didn’t improve his numbers.NORFOLK, Virginia (CNN) -- Negotiators aboard a U.S. Navy warship are trying to secure the release of an American freighter captain who is being held by pirates on a lifeboat off the coast of Somalia, according to Maersk Line Ltd.
Capt. Richard Phillips of the Maersk Alabama is being held by pirates on a lifeboat off Somalia.
The crew aboard the destroyer USS Bainbridge could see the lifeboat where pirates have been holding Capt. Richard Phillips since Wednesday, the company said in a written statement issued at 5 p.m. ET.
Phillips has not been hurt, the statement said.
Phillips, who has received provisions and batteries for his radio, has been in touch with the crews of the Alabama and the Bainbridge, the statement said.
The pirates are the same four men who hijacked Phillips' vessel, the U.S.-flagged Maersk Alabama, early Wednesday hundreds of miles off the Horn of Africa.
The Alabama's 20-person crew later regained control of the ship, which is owned and operated by the Norfolk-based Maersk Line Ltd.
In a written statement, Maersk spokesman Kevin Speers noted that "there have been many questions about how the crew re-captured the ship and how the captain came to leave the ship."
But he would not clarify the matter.
"Our immediate focus has been to bring the current situation to a safe resolution," he said. "There will be time for due diligence and retrospective review once we have the safe return of all parties and the opportunity for a full de-briefing."
The U.S. Navy, which is in charge of the situation, requested the help of the FBI. FBI negotiators in the United States are in touch with the crew of the Bainbridge, which arrived on the scene earlier Thursday to assist, a senior U.S. defense official said.
According to Maersk's last communication with the Navy, the 28-foot lifeboat was disabled and "dead in the water," Speers said Thursday morning.
"We are encouraged that most of the crew is safe. They have been resilient and courageous throughout this crisis," Speers said. "But we will remain on watch, staffing our situation room and our family hot line until this situation is resolved and the captain is safely returned."
On Thursday, the Maersk Alabama resumed its journey to Mombasa, Kenya, with an 18-person armed security detail on board, according to Joseph Murphy, the father of the ship's first officer. Maersk and U.S. military officials confirmed the cargo ship had left the area on Thursday, but would not say where it was heading, citing security concerns. See how pirate attacks have increased »
Gen. David Petraeus, chief of U.S. Central Command, said Thursday that the Bainbridge would be getting backup shortly.
"I can tell you, there are definitely going to be more ships in that area in the next 24 or 48 hours, because there are two more sailing to it right now," he said.
"Needless to say, we want to ensure we have all the capacity that may be needed over the course of the coming days."
Vice Adm. William E. Gortney, commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, told CNN's Barbara Starr in Bahrain that, "We have been moving forces in that direction."
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said President Obama had been staying apprised of the situation.
"Obviously, his main concern is for the safety of the captain and the rest of the crew on the ship, and he will continue to receive those updates," he said.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said an international coalition of countries is working to address the piracy threat, but
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and countless other lesser-providers. However, following recent high-profile security compromises among services like these20, 21, even their staunchest fans have questions about trust. Storage start-ups like Sia22 and Storj23 are using blockchain technologies to store your information in a decentralised manner that, according to Bitcoin.org, makes access to it practically impossible24 to anyone without your own personal key.
ATMs
Recently 3000 bitcoin ATMs25 were planned to launch across Australia. As the ITNews article puts it: "This will solve a pain point for bitcoin enthusiasts, who generally need to wait days using existing digital currency exchanges to cash out."
Renting and sharing
Slock.it26 is an example of an Ethereum-based company which uses Blockchain to rent out things like infrequently-used cars, industrial tools and apartments.
Smart electricity grid
With more and more people using renewable technology27 like solar power to generate their own electricity, it shouldn't be a surprise that groups of like-minded people are collaborating to share energy and distribute it more efficiently. Once again, blockchain is at the centre of this power management, with companies like PowerLedger28 running smart grid operations in Australia29 already.
The future and potential of blockchain accounting
Bitcoin got off to a bumpy start in Australia with onerous regulation and double taxation. Fortunately, the Federal Budget of 2017-18 addressed these initial, decisions (more information is available in the Thomson Reuters Federal Budget Tax Bulletin 2017 - 201830) and it's now back to being officially regarded as a currency again.
As for blockchain, being a framework means that it can be understood as an enabler for new ways of working with money, rather than a fundamentally new economic paradigm. Could an innovator make our banks irrelevant? It would be extraordinary, but not inconceivable.
However drastic the disruption, at the centre of all such revolutions lie the people who manage, reconcile and keep track of the numbers. Gaining expertise in blockchain - at a time when there are few officially-recognised blockchain qualifications31 - could be a great idea for budding accountants. Blockchain might just represent the biggest change in accounting since double entry bookkeeping32.For those who have been following me these past two years, I am proud to announce that my book is finally out on the silver market. Here is an overview:
Why Silver?
Throughout Western history, silver has been at the center of the world economy, the driver of empires, and an asset that has probably cost just as much if not more blood and treasure to extract than gold. Today, as the world faces sobering realities ranging from debt crises to concerns about resource growth, silver is once again slowly coming onto people’s radar screens, and for good reason.
Silver has been money in more places and has been used by more people than has gold throughout history, even as silver is rarer today than at almost any other time in history (especially relative to gold). With the advent of the industrial revolution, silver became a go-to metal for everything from cameras, to dishwashers, indoor plumbing, television sets, computers, cell phones, adhesives, and now solar technology (besides others uses.) The industrial applications for silver far exceed gold, which ironically is part of the reason why silver is so undervalued and rare: governments and banks dumped all the silver they could dump to satisfy industrial demand which gave markets the impression of limitless official supply of the white metal. This mistake has led many to wonder whether or not a true industrial shortage in silver is possible in the coming years. I believe this market inefficiency has been encouraged by all sorts of pushers of “paper” silver, leading many to cry foul and to call the silver market one of the most manipulated markets in modern times. Hundreds of times as much paper silver trades today in our current financial casino than what actually exists in physical form. To me, this is just one more unsustainable practice among many in our financial and political system.
The Silver Story
I believe the silver story symbolizes dramatic shifts in mass psychology and the social mood which you ignore at your own risk as an investor/speculator. The silver story is about sizing up the craps table called modern capitalism, and understanding that someone is always the patsy or the mark—someone is always on the losing end in the zero sum game of markets and money. The silver story is about the existence of cartels, insiders, and people who distort or manipulate prices. The silver story is about the arrogance of central planning. It is about self-reliance. The silver story is about dissent, candor, frankness, freedom of speech, freedom of thought, a defiant independence against the state or the corporate controlled media. The silver story is about the blogosphere, about alternative media making a stealth attack on official accounts of reality from those dispensing propaganda. The silver story is about hidden knowledge, about those who suspect that average people are always in the dark about who is really in charge, about who is pulling the strings. A story about escaping the matrix of debt, about standing apart from the herd, apart from group think, from Orwellian mind-control schemes, the silver story is about ponzinomics, about system apparatchiks masquerading as experts who act like they know what they are doing. The silver story concerns the limits of the American Dream—a dream that maybe you can only believe if you are asleep (so said George Carlin).
The silver story is about the epitome of wastefulness, of a mistaken belief in abundance. The mistaken belief that new technologies can always be relied upon to drill deeper, to extract more and more miniscule amounts of ore, so as to satisfy society’s need for abundant, cheap amounts of a metal which can then be tossed away. Rather than conserve or preserve silver, governments and individuals consumed silver over the course of the twentieth century—billions of ounces of it in tiny amounts that can never be recovered. Now, silver is a metal that is truly rare, whereas not that long ago it was practically in the same category as base metals like copper, lead, or zinc. The silver story, then, is also about scarce resources in a world that seems to pretend scarcity is impossible.
The silver story is about finding the courage to be honest about the lies around you. The lie that debt and wasteful spending can go on forever. The lie that you “own” a home when you practically have to mortgage your first born to pay for it. The lie that it is somehow patriotic to consume. The lie that we have free markets. The lie that government programs are always going to be there for you.
It may be that some of us who have decided to invest in the white metal have a pessimistic, foreboding side—or it may just be that we are the only ones truly awake. After all, conventional society cannot stand to hear the truth that the cycles of boom and bust, of the birth, maturation, and decline of financial and political systems apply to all people. No one can avoid them. No matter how hard leaders try to maintain the confidence game—and scheme with efforts to paint the tape of group thought patterns—something turns, a tectonic shift occurs, and the world slips out of the hands of those who thought they called the shots.
Silver Investing and the Morality of Exchange
This last point brings me to why I decided to write a book about silver a little over two years ago. As a student of social movements, I noticed a palpable change in the civic and cultural discourse in my country and in other parts of the world. I noticed how the dissidents, the skeptics appeared to be gaining traction in their efforts to confront various aspects of the Madison Avenue, Wall Street/ K Street version of reality that shouts growth at all costs and that treats optimism as a religion. Optimism is wonderful in some ways, but one thing I learned growing up with people associated with finance (mainly Real Estate in Southern California) is that there is a fine line between optimism and fraud. This fraudulent optimism ignores the reality of resource scarcity. This optimism pretends deficits and debt don’t matter. Optimism that encouraged people to buy subprime mortgages, that sneered at anyone who didn’t understand how stock and real estate were destined to produce double digit returns and make you a fortune. Optimism that the U.S. can be an omnipotent world policeman, that democracy can flower everywhere, and that somehow all those jobs being shipped overseas are an acceptable by product of a New Economy that would still somehow make us all rich —this is the kind of optimism-as-fraud I am talking about. And in its wake, people have come slowly and in different degrees to the sobering realization that sometimes in life you are, in fact, on your own.
People can look around their neighborhoods, they can see signs of blight, they can see wages that are stagnant—or worse—they can see the unemployed. It is the family seeing health care costs exploding and wondering how they will send children to college. It is the neighbors who wonder why their son or daughter even bothered going into student loan debt just to have a career (if they are lucky) at Starbucks or McDonalds. It is the middle aged person hitting a wall in their career, or worse, finding out that they too have been downsized and then sent packing. These are frustrations that don’t fit the narrative of recovery, of hope, of just shutting up and believing that all will turn out right in the end so often pumped through TV screens. Some people—maybe a lot of people– have been through too much to believe the same old Siren Song sung to them by the established voices in media, finance, and government. And it is out of such frustrations that social movements—for better or worse—are born. The invisible casualties of this economy are not readily visible on the Evening News. But in what are often contradictory ways, average people have a way of making statements, they have a way of attempting to redefine their lives and their communities one by one.
Silver and the Social Movement Wildcard
I don’t pretend that simply buying silver makes all of the above problems go away. But I do believe that the money used by a society is a reflection of the values of that society. In our case, digital or electronic money says to me that work doesn’t matter, it says that actually having resources to trade for money are irrelevant, and it shows that people should trust the almighty power of the state or corporations to take care of everything, since unpleasant realities like saving for the future or looking after oneself are irrelevant. At least at the margins, I believe there are people who disagree with this version of reality, with this definition of the morality of exchange. They are voting with their feet. We’ll see how far they take it, and who knows where it will all end up. However, if you are someone wondering why the price of silver is moving higher, I think it is more than just about hot money, or some hedge fund billionaire moving the price. I think it is about people finally waking up.
For more on the silver story, please see my book available at amazon: Silver The People's MetalES Football Newsletter Enter your email address Please enter an email address Email address is invalid Fill out this field Email address is invalid You already have an account. Please log in or register with your social account
Tottenham are not in the Champions League to make up the numbers, according to Harry Kane.
Mauricio Pochettino's side are set to take part in Europe's primary club competition for only the second time in their history next season thanks to their third place Premier League finish.
Spurs have agreed to play their European games at Wembley to potential crowds of 90,000 and could face a difficult group, given that that the north Londoners will not be seeded.
Manchester City are just one example of how hard it can be for a Premier League side to reach the knock-out stages without a favourable draw but Kane is adamant Spurs are striving to go as far as possible rather than simply 'participate' in the tournament.
“It’s what the club has always been aiming for and that was the aim at the start of last season, to get into the Champions League, and we managed that," Kane told the club's official website.
"It isn’t just about participating in the Champions League, though, we want to progress, do as well as we can, keep getting better and hopefully go as far as we can in the competition," he insisted.
Tottenham's European campaign will put an added burden on Pochettino's squad, many of whom will have to juggle two high-profile competitions at once for the first tiem in their careers.
But while Kane admits the better calibre of opposition will make for tougher games, he is relishing an opportunity to prove his worth at the highest level of club football.
“It’ll be a challenge. We’ll be playing better teams and they’re tougher games so it maybe takes a little bit more out of you but that’s part of it.
"If you want to be a top team you have to be able to cope with that and deal with it so we’ll have to manage that throughout the season," he added.
Spurs will learn the identity of their three group stage opponents when the draw is made in Monaco on August 25.In what The Guardian's correspondent Ed Pilkington describes as a "bombshell" revelation, Bradley Manning on Thursday revealed that prior to reaching out to Wikileaks with a trove of government and military documents, the whistleblower first contacted more established media outlets, including the New York Times and Washington Post, but was brushed off by editors.
As Pilkington, present in the courtroom for the reading of Manning's statement, reports:
While he was on leave from Iraq and staying in the Washington area in January 2010 he contacted the Washington Post and asked would it be interested in receiving information that he said would be "enormously important to the American people". He spoke to a woman who said she was a reporter but "she didn't seem to take me seriously". The woman said, according to Manning's account, that the paper would only be interested subject to vetting by senior editors. Despairing of that route, Manning turned to the New York Times. He called the public editor of the paper but only got voicemail. He then tried other numbers on the paper but also got put through to voicemail, and though he left a message with his Skype contact details, nobody called him back. Manning added he had also contemplated going to the website Politico, but harsh weather prevented him.
Such testimony belies the US government's ongoing insinuation that Wikileaks—which specifically describes itself as a "not-for-profit media organization"—somehow played a role in compelling Manning to leak the documents. It further provides evidence that Manning was acting in the capacity of a true government or military whistleblower by proactively seeking out the media in hopes of bringing to light what he considered information vital to the public interest.
"I believed if the public, particularly the American public, could see this it could spark a debate on the military and our foreign policy in general as it applied to Iraq and Afghanistan. It might cause society to reconsider the need to engage in counter terrorism while ignoring the human situation of the people we engaged with every day." –Bradley Manning
Manning also explained his deeper motivations, which included hopes that the leaks documents would expose the "true costs of war". According to Pilkington's account, Manning stated:
"I felt we were risking so much for people who seemed to be unwilling to cooperate with us leading to frustration and hostility on both sides. I began to get depressed about he situation we were mired in year after year. "We were obsessed with capturing and killing human targets on lists and ignoring goals and missions. I believed if the public, particularly the American public, could see this it could spark a debate on the military and our foreign policy in general as it applied to Iraq and Afghanistan. It might cause society to reconsider the need to engage in counter terrorism while ignoring the human situation of the people we engaged with every day."
Thursday's courtroom proceedings were covered best on Twitter:
Tweets from @commondreams/bradley-manning-trial
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Thursday's revelations came as Manning read a prepared statement—reportedly handwritten over 35 pages—before a packed military courtroom. The statement is Manning's first complete account of what government and military information he leaked to Wikileaks, and an explanation of why he chose to do so.
Manning pled guilty to a series of charges, including providing Wikileaks with confidential military information, but denied the most serious charge against him, that of "aiding the enemy."
According to FireDogLake's Kevin Gosztola, reporting live from the courtroom, Manning's plea makes possible two rulings by the presiding judge: "guilty to lesser-included offenses pursuant to the plea" or "guilty of the greater offenses in the original charges." The court cannot find him “not guilty” based on his plea.
Pilkington also reported that Manning "confirmed he wants to be tried by military judge [Colonel Denise Lind] alone," with no military equivalent of a jury.
In addition to revealign his attempts to contact other outlets first, Manning also told the courtroom that once he'd established communication with Wikileaks, "No one associated with [the outlet] pressured me into sending more information."
In regards to his leak of the collateral murder video, Manning said, "I was disturbed by the response to injured children" and that the soldiers captured in the video "seemed to not value human life by referring to [their targets] as 'dead bastards.'"
He also said that he released the intelligence because he wanted to "spark a domestic public debate about our foreign policy and the war in general," and added: "At the time I believed, and I still believe, these are... [among]... the most significant documents of our time."
Pilkington continues:
Through his lawyer, David Coombs, the soldier pleaded guilty to 10 lesser charges that included possessing and wilfully communicating to an unauthorised person all the main elements of the WikiLeaks disclosure. That covered the so-called "collateral murder" video of an Apache helicopter attack in Iraq; some US diplomatic cables including one of the early WikiLeaks publications the Reykjavik cable; portions of the Iraq and Afghanistan warlogs, some of the files on detainees in Guantanamo; and two intelligence memos. These lesser charges each carry a two-year maximum sentence, committing Manning to a possible upper limit of 20 years in prison.
Manning also pleaded not guilty to 12 counts, including to the largest charge of "aiding the enemy," which would have supposed that he knowingly gave help to al-Qaida either by leaking secret intelligence directly or via its publication on the internet. He also denied that at the time he gave the information to Wikileaks, he had "reason to believe such information could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation".
According to Gosztola, Manning pled guilty to "all that was anticipated except he did not plead guilty to releasing the Granai air strike video."
______________________________WASHINGTON — For more than five decades, the United States has found itself in periodic confrontation with two Communist nations that have survived on a diet of anti-Americanism, and defied the overwhelming odds that they would have collapsed years ago.
Now, in the same week, Cuba and North Korea have veered in entirely different directions, posing opposite challenges for the Obama administration. Cuba is now the newest experiment in integration, and North Korea a case study in how to contain an old adversary brandishing an entirely new weapon.
The Cuba question boils down to this: Now that President Obama has abandoned a policy of isolation that has failed for 53 years, what are the prospects of changing the nation the way the United States has tried to change China and Vietnam — the two former adversaries the president cited Wednesday as examples of successful engagement? In both cases, the idea is to lure such adversaries into adhering to Western-designed rules for dealing with the world, in return for the economic benefits of economic integration. In each case, it is still a work in progress.
North Korea, in contrast, has escalated its confrontation with the United States, but in a far more innovative way than building nuclear weapons or firing off missiles. Instead, it has turned to a new tool — easily deniable cyberattacks — and so provoked the White House that a spokesman said on Thursday that the United States was looking for a “proportional response.” But deterring cyberattacks from an isolated nation like North Korea is notoriously difficult — and in that battle, Kim Jong-un, the North’s leader, not only won the first round, but still holds a few cards.A directory to Wikipedia lists of earthquakes
Earthquakes (M6.0+) between 1900 and 2017
The following is a list of earthquake lists, and of top earthquakes by magnitude and fatalities.
Lists by period [ edit ]
Lists by country [ edit ]
Lists by region [ edit ]
Largest earthquakes by year [ edit ]
These are the largest or most notable earthquakes per year since the start of the 21st century.
Largest earthquakes by magnitude [ edit ]
pie chart comparing the seismic moment release of the three largest earthquakes for the hundred-year period from 1906 to 2005 with that for all earthquakes of magnitudes <6, 6 to 7, 7 to 8 and >8 for the same period. Notably, the 2011 Japan quake would be roughly similar to Sumatra.
[1] The colour indicates the continent, and the legend counts the number of quakes for each. Notice the absence of Africa. Earthquakes of magnitude 8.0 and greater since 1900. The apparent 3D volumes of the bubbles are linearly proportional to their respective fatalities.The colour indicates the continent, and the legend counts the number of quakes for each. Notice the absence of Africa.
Listed below are all the 36 known earthquakes with an estimated magnitude of 8.5 or higher since the year 1500. Limited to a timeframe with enough data, this gives a rough estimate of its frequency per century. (The timeframe does not include outlying events like the earlier 1361 Shōhei earthquake and 869 Sanriku earthquake, both estimated to have magnitude ≥ 8.5.)
Prior to the development and deployment of seismographs – starting around 1900 – magnitudes can only be estimated, based on historical reports of the extent and severity of damage.[2]
Statistics are,
Century Number with
magnitude ≥ 8.5 1501–1600 1 1601–1700 4 1701–1800 8 1801–1900 7 1901-2000 10 2001–present 6 Total 36
Note that historical records are known to be incomplete. Earthquakes that occurred in remote areas prior to the advent of modern instrumentation in the early to mid 1900s were not well-reported, and exact locations and magnitudes of such events are often unknown. Therefore, the apparent increase in large earthquake frequency over the last few centuries is unlikely to be real.
Largest earthquakes by country/territory [ edit ]
This list is a work in progress. Information is likely to be changed.
Please note, multiple countries could have the same earthquake listed, such as the 1906 Ecuador–Colombia earthquake being listed for both Ecuador and Colombia.
Unless otherwise noted, magnitudes are reported on the Moment magnitude scale (M w ).
Costliest earthquakes [ edit ]
This is a list of major earthquakes by the dollar value of property (public and private) losses directly attributable to the earthquake. Rank values are assigned based on inflation-adjusted comparison of property damage in US dollars. Wherever possible, indirect and socioeconomic losses are excluded. Please note that damage estimates for particular earthquakes may vary throughout time as more data becomes available.
Deadliest earthquakes [ edit ]
The following is a summary list of earthquakes with over approximately 100,000 deaths:
Most studied earthquakes [ edit ]
The 50 most studied earthquakes according to the International Seismological Centre (ISC), based on a count of scientific papers (mostly in English) that discuss that earthquake; subsequent additions are not included in the counts. The "Event #" is linked to the ISC Event Bibliography for that event.
Transcribed from figure 2, "The most studied events", at the ISC's Overview of the ISC Event Bibliography.
International Seismological Centre. Event Bibliography. Thatcham, United Kingdom, http://www.isc.ac.uk/. 2018.
See also [ edit ]Fixed an issue with matchmaking that could erroneously queue players into a game with an open Nephalem Rift where the Rift Boss had already been defeated. *
Legendary drop rates have been permanently increased by 100%, to match rates seen during our 2 Year Anniversary Community buff.
Vote Kick will no longer immediately eject players from the party without party confirmation; other members of the party are now properly prompted to confirm or deny the request.
The Plagued monster affix is no longer dealing unusually high amounts of damage.
Fixed a bug where the level 70 Hellfire Ring's legendary proc was not dealing damage.
Heroes below level 70 will now receive less Blood Shards from Nephalem Rifts than level 70 characters.
Level 70 heroes will now receive a greatly reduced amount of Blood Shards from Nephalem Rifts when playing in sub-level 70 games.
Fixed an issue that allowed crafted set items to roll for class specific properties that were not available to your class when Enchanting.
The Tall Man's Finger: Legendary affix will now only apply to Witch Doctor Zombie Dogs.
Inna's Mantra:
4-Piece Set bonus will now only apply to Monks.
Different Warcry runes now properly stack with one another and are no longer overwritten.
Below you will find a list of hotfixes recently applied or coming soon that address various bugs or mechanic tweaks.These hotfixes should not require you to download a new patch. Some of the hotfixes below will go live the moment they are implemented while others may require restarting the game to go into effect. Please keep in mind that some issues cannot be addressed without a client-side patch. Also note that changes to certain abilities will not be reflected in its tooltip until a patch is issued.Previous hotfixes can be located here: [2.0.1] Last Updated - June 5th. Items with an asterisk () are most recent.There are no upcoming hotfixes at this time.Sex Offender Nabbed Playing "Pokemon Go" With Kid
(GREENFIELD) - Authorities arrested an Indiana sex offender after they say a probation officer spotted him playing "Pokemon Go" with a 16-year-old boy on the county courthouse lawn.
The Greenfield Daily Reporter reports that probation officer Nick Layman saw 42-year-old Randy Zuick playing the popular cellphone game with the teen Wednesday. Wayne Addison, the chief probation officer, says a colleague who was with Layman ran into the courthouse to alert a security officer, who took Zuick into custody.
Records show that Zuick pleaded guilty in April to fondling a child under the age of 14 and has been on sex-offender probation, which prohibits the Greenfield man from interacting with children.
A judge will decide whether to revoke his probation.
Greenfield is about 20 miles east of Indianapolis.
Have a question or comment about a news story? Send it to [email protected]’s Android has seen an incredible rise in popularity since its first handset was launched less than two years ago. Google has worked hard to earn that popularity, regularly releasing fantastic new improvements to the platform in the form of Donut, Eclaire, and now Froyo. Unfortunately, many users of the Android ecosystem won’t see these improvements for years, if at all. The reason? Manufacturers of Android handsets are building custom versions of the OS to add eye-candy and make the UI seem more attractive, at the expense of upgradeability.
HTC has its Sense UI and Motorola has MOTOBLUR. Samsung and Sony have also thrown their hats into the “heavily modified UI” ring. While these packages may serve to help differentiate from the competition, they are hammering the Android ecosystem by causing fragmentation (and yes, I do think that’s the right word). But it isn’t all their fault. One can certainly understand how, when competing against the likes of the iPhone, manufacturers would want to “pretty up” the Android experience. So I’ve got a few words for these OEMs, and Google as well.
Dear Google
I’m really happy that you’re ‘laser focused’ on the user experience for the next release. Now that you’ve got it humming at lightning speed with Froyo, it’s time to add some polish. Fantastic. But making a better stock UI isn’t the only thing that needs to happen to prevent this fragmentation.
You should be doing everything you can to prevent version fragmentation because it’s hurting developers and consumers. When people with G1s see “official Android Twitter client released” but can’t download it, they’ll get frustrated. They don’t know or care about the fact that the G1’s limited internal storage means that it can’t get the next upgrade, they only care that they’re supposed to have an Android but they can’t get the software they want.
Here’s my advice: take the feature lists of Sense and MOTOBLUR et al as a laundry list of areas where your API needs more robustness. If the capabilities of Sense and MOTOBLUR were exposed at an application level, this problem would simply disappear. You’ve built your platform to be backwards-compatible; if HTC wants to build a “Sense UI” app that changes the appearance of the UI and adds a bunch of widgets, and they want to make that only available on their handsets, more power to them. When the next version of Android comes out, it’ll all work seamlessly because they’ve simply built an app, like any other developer.
So keep up the good work on Gingerbread, I’m looking forward to the UI improvements. But also make your UI reachable by applications, provide hooks into the very guts of Android so that manufacturers and developers alike can really “make it their own” without building a custom ROM.
Dear HTC /Motorola/Samsung/Etc.
Thank you for making Android handsets. I’m a huge supporter of the platform, and the level of competition and innovation on Android phones has been amazing. Keep it up! But you’re doing yourselves a disservice by building these custom UIs that inhibit the Android version upgrade process.
Google has huge teams of people working to continuously upgrade the Android experience. You get the fruits of this labor 100% for free. I understand that as a handset manufacturer the idea of upgradeable phones isn’t necessarily the most appealing: if people can upgrade the software on their phones, maybe they won’t want a new one in 2 years! But trust me, you’ve shown that you’ll make the hardware good enough that people will want new phones.
Instead of locking down a handset to a specific Android version, create an unbeatable suite of applications that comes pre-loaded on your phone. Work on top of, instead of within, the Android operating system. Then you can leverage all of Google’s work and all of your own work to provide customers with a great experience. Work with Google to add pieces of API that will help you provide all of the value you want to provide; I’m sure Google would be happy to help as best it can.
Also, while I’m at it, can one of you please create a 4.3" handset running the stock Froyo UI sometime before November? I’d love to get a big-screen phone when my contract’s up, but I don’t know that I can handle dealing with these custom UI jobs. It’s just not for me.
Unicorns and Rainbows
I think that Android is a very important project that came along at just the right time. It has applications far beyond mobile handsets and we’ll begin seeing Android in cars, tablets, and more in the very near future. This will mean even more work will be poured into the Android ecosystem creating greater and greater benefits for everyone from consumers to handset manufacturers. All that needs to happen to take advantage of those benefits is for Google to help handset manufacturers free themselves of the idea that they need to “make it their own”.
I’m looking forward to the next 40 Android phones, and the 100 after that. I truly think that Android is going to dominate the mobile market five years from now (Apple will still have about the same piece of the pie, but Android will have displaced RIM and Microsoft entirely). So keep up the good work, but how about we all just get along in the meantime.In 2017, Congress has been debating legislation, the American Health Care Act (AHCA), which would end the enhanced federal matching funds for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Medicaid expansion and fundamentally alter the structure and financing of the Medicaid program. Specifically, it would cap and significantly reduce the amount of federal funding provided to states for Medicaid through a per capita cap or block grant. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the AHCA as passed by the House would reduce federal Medicaid spending by $834 billion from 2017-2026 and reduce enrollment by 14 million by 2026 compared to projections in current law. The proposed Trump Administration budget for FY 2018 would have deeper Medicaid reductions.
The cap on federal funding would lock-in current state spending patterns that reflect historic Medicaid policy choices. Today, Medicaid is a state and federal partnership where the federal government sets core requirements for Medicaid and states administer the program; financing for Medicaid is shared by states and the federal government with no caps. Due to flexibility in the current law, states historically have made different Medicaid decisions related to coverage, scope of benefits, reimbursement rates and delivery system models. In response to a funding cap, each state would need to make budget decisions to fill in gaps in federal funding (through taxes or other budget cuts) or to restrict Medicaid programs.
All states could face challenges responding to federal Medicaid cuts and caps to varying degrees, but states with certain characteristics are more at risk. This analysis examines 30 factors in five groups that could be high risk factors affecting states’ ability to respond to federal Medicaid cuts and caps and identifies states ranked in the top five for each factor as high risk (ES-1). This analysis shows that more than 6 in 10 states rank in the top five for multiple risk factors. Eleven states rank in the top five for five or more risk factors (Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, South Carolina, Texas, and West Virginia).
States that adopted the Medicaid expansion have experienced gains in coverage and financing that are at risk under proposals like the AHCA that would end the enhanced federal match for the expansion. However, states that have not adopted the expansion would lose the option to access enhanced federal matching dollars for coverage in the future.
Arkansas, Kentucky, Nevada and Oregon are among states that rank in the top five for multiple risk factors tied to the end of enhanced funding for expansion (i.e. large coverage gains, a high share of expansion enrollees, and a high share of expansion funding relative to the total). In total numbers, California, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Illinois account for the largest number of enrollees in the expansion group (54%) and California, New York, Ohio, Michigan and Illinois account for the highest levels of federal expansion funding (52%).
are among states that rank in the top five for multiple risk factors tied to the end of enhanced funding for expansion (i.e. large coverage gains, a high share of expansion enrollees, and a high share of expansion funding relative to the total). In total numbers, California, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Illinois account for the largest number of enrollees in the expansion group (54%) and California, New York, Ohio, Michigan and Illinois account for the highest levels of federal expansion funding (52%). Non-expansion states would lose the future option to provide coverage to poor uninsured adults with enhanced federal dollars. Florida, Georgia and Texas have the largest number of uninsured residents who fall into the coverage gap (i.e. not eligible for Medicaid but have incomes below poverty so are not eligible for tax credits in the Marketplace) and the highest overall uninsured rates.
States with limited Medicaid programs and other challenging characteristics such as poor demographic indicators, poor health status, high cost health care markets and low state fiscal capacity could face more challenges in responding to per capita cap or block grant policies. States with limited Medicaid benefits or low provider reimbursement rates have less room to make further restrictions in benefits or to lower rates in response to reductions in federal financing. For these states, trade-offs within Medicaid would be difficult. States with an aging population, high levels of disability, a high share of people in health professional shortage areas or low per capita income may have higher demand for Medicaid services, but less capacity (especially with limited federal financing) to address those issues. In addition, because financing caps lock states into historic Medicaid decisions, states with limited programs and other risk factors will have a harder time adapting to future changes such as increased costs or changing demographics. One example of an emerging health issue is the opioid epidemic. Medicaid plays a central role in the nation’s effort to address the opioid epidemic through coverage of people struggling with opioid addiction and financing for states, limited funding could impede efforts to address this as well as other future health issues.
The findings below show states that rank in the top five for multiple risk factors within each of the five categories (beyond expansion):
Medicaid Policy Choices: Alabama, Hawaii, Mississippi and Missouri have more than one restrictive Medicaid policies that would make it more challenging for them to implement additional program reductions (i.e. low eligibility levels, limited benefits, low provider reimbursement, high managed care penetration and/or a lower share of community based long-term care services).
have more than one restrictive Medicaid policies that would make it more challenging for them to implement additional program reductions (i.e. low eligibility levels, limited benefits, low provider reimbursement, high managed care penetration and/or a lower share of community based long-term care services). Demographics: Alaska, District of Columbia, Louisiana, New Mexico and Wyoming each have multiple demographic characteristics that indicate higher needs for Medicaid (i.e. high poverty, high unemployment, faster expected growth in the 85 year old population, high share of the population in rural areas, and / or high share of the population that is non-white).
each have multiple demographic characteristics that indicate higher needs for Medicaid (i.e. high poverty, high unemployment, faster expected growth in the 85 year old population, high share of the population in rural areas, and / or high share of the population that is non-white). Health Status: Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and West Virginia have populations with multiple high health needs (i.e. overall poor health status, high share reporting a disability, high share reporting poor mental health, high opioid death rate and/or high rate of new HIV cases). Ohio, New Hampshire and West Virginia reported the highest opioid related drug overdoses at over 24 people in every 100,000.
have populations with multiple high health needs (i.e. overall poor health status, high share reporting a disability, high share reporting poor mental health, high opioid death rate and/or high rate of new HIV cases). Ohio, New Hampshire and West Virginia reported the highest opioid related drug overdoses at over 24
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With this change health of all zombies have been adjusted up. When a zombie is in the prone stunned state players deal 3X damage and while in the kneeling stunned state deal 2X damage. The system tracks accumulative damage to an upper body knockdown pool for prone knockdown and accumulative damage to a lower body knockdown pool for the kneeling knockdown. For each knockdown pool the damage is accumulative and must reach 0 in a limited time for a knockdown to occur as there is a constant refill rate.
We like it Cold, Hot and Wet! Extreme Weather Survival System
World Temperature – The world has a global temperature in Fahrenheit Degrees and is displayed in the new map under map stats and can also be seen by hitting F8 in debug mode only. This world temperature fluctuates per biome, per time of day, and gets colder the higher you are and warmer the lower you are. Wind speed can also impact the temperature which is also shown in the map screen maps stats section.
– The world has a global temperature in Fahrenheit Degrees and is displayed in the new map under map stats and can also be seen by hitting F8 in debug mode only. This world temperature fluctuates per biome, per time of day, and gets colder the higher you are and warmer the lower you are. Wind speed can also impact the temperature which is also shown in the map screen maps stats section. Player Temperature – The player has a core temperature in Fahrenheit degrees which is the world temperature +/- how it feels to the player and is displayed in the new character menu in the player stats section next to the thermometer icon.This can also be seen by hitting F8 in debug mode only. When the player gets too cold a snowflake buff displays in the lower right corner of the screen with the players core temperature next to it warning the player of his current status. When the player gets too hot a sun buff displays in the lower right corner of the screen with the players core temperature next to it warning the player of his current status. These buffs can also be seen and examined in the new active buffs panel in the new character screen.
– The player has a core temperature in Fahrenheit degrees which is the world temperature +/- how it feels to the player and is displayed in the new character menu in the player stats section next to the thermometer icon.This can also be seen by hitting F8 in debug mode only. When the player gets too cold a snowflake buff displays in the lower right corner of the screen with the players core temperature next to it warning the player of his current status. When the player gets too hot a sun buff displays in the lower right corner of the screen with the players core temperature next to it warning the player of his current status. These buffs can also be seen and examined in the new active buffs panel in the new character screen. Player Wetness – The player can get wet by moving through water volumes in the world or by being exposed to rain or snow overtime. The more the player submerges himself in water or the longer he is exposed to rain or snow the higher the wetness % goes up to 100%. When the player gets wet an umbrella buff displays in the lower right corner of the screen with the players wetness % next to it warning the player of his current status.
– The player can get wet by moving through water volumes in the world or by being exposed to rain or snow overtime. The more the player submerges himself in water or the longer he is exposed to rain or snow the higher the wetness % goes up to 100%. When the player gets wet an umbrella buff displays in the lower right corner of the screen with the players wetness % next to it warning the player of his current status. Temperature and Wetness Defense – All clothing has a positive or negative insulation degree value which can be seen by left clicking an item and examining it which displays the stats in a new Item info window above the backpack. Most items have a positive insulation defense value but a few are special and have a negative value for hot weather survival. Some clothing have a waterproof defense % which can be seen by left clicking an item and examining it which displays the stats in a new Item info window above the backpack with full item stats. A players total summed Insulation and Waterproof values can be seen in the new character screen in the upper left of the character window next to the thermometer and umbrella icons.
Temperature Modifiers Wearing clothing that has a negative insulation value will cool down the player and is desirable for hot weather survival. F.E. the cowboy hat keeps the player cooler in the desert. Wearing clothing that has a positive insulation value will warm the player and is desirable for cold weather survival. Getting wet by moving through lakes, rain, or snow will make the player wet and colder when he’s cold and cool the player down when he’s hot. Activity that uses stamina, like running or swinging a pickaxe, will warm up the player. Standing near a campfire or forge that is burning will warm up the player. All clothing will have a waterproof % capping how wet the player can get. Going indoors will warm you when you’re cold and cool you when you are hot. Exposure to direct sunlight will warm, and shade will cool, the player. Some foods and drinks have temporary core temp warming or cooling properties. F.E. drinking coffee warms you while water, goldenrod tea, red tea and yucca juice will cool you. Wind speed can also cool the player down and will be seen in the new map screen under map stats.
Harvest and Universal Block Upgrade System
Harvest System – We’ve overhauled block health so everything in the world from a wood wall to a deer carcass has a health and when attacked decreases and adds resources into the player’s inventory automatically showing both added and dropped inventory changes with a GUI informational pop-out on the bottom right corner! The system is global giving the player the right feedback and additionally allows the player to yield bonus items when using the right tool for the right job. For Example using a wrench to take apart a car or air conditioner or using a knife to harvest a deer can yield special bonus items or larger yields. The system also communicates resources removed or needed when attempting to repair or upgrade blocks. Note: With the introduction of harvest and crafting list we have had to majorly change the amount of resources the player receives from wood, stone, metal, clay basically everything and the costs for crafting them so a lot of rebalance has gone into this.
– We’ve overhauled block health so everything in the world from a wood wall to a deer carcass has a health and when attacked decreases and adds resources into the player’s inventory automatically showing both added and dropped inventory changes with a GUI informational pop-out on the bottom right corner! The system is global giving the player the right feedback and additionally allows the player to yield bonus items when using the right tool for the right job. For Example using a wrench to take apart a car or air conditioner or using a knife to harvest a deer can yield special bonus items or larger yields. The system also communicates resources removed or needed when attempting to repair or upgrade blocks. Note: With the introduction of harvest and crafting list we have had to majorly change the amount of resources the player receives from wood, stone, metal, clay basically everything and the costs for crafting them so a lot of rebalance has gone into this. Universal Block Upgrading – We’ve added a universal block upgrading system. With it nearly every block in the game can be upgraded if the player has a construction class tool such as a Stone Ax, Wrench, Claw Hammer or Nail gun and the right resources such as wood or scrap iron on his person. The game knows what a blocks core materials are to start with such as wood or brick and takes it to the next higher tier in the games overall upgrade hierarchy. This allows players to take over locations easier and save them the trouble of tediously tearing out a block to upgrade it unless it’s part of a new floorplan design. Not to worry we have maintained our old building system so you can still build and the old way. This includes every door, window, most full size wall blocks, roofing blocks and more.
– We’ve added a universal block upgrading system. With it nearly every block in the game can be upgraded if the player has a construction class tool such as a Stone Ax, Wrench, Claw Hammer or Nail gun and the right resources such as wood or scrap iron on his person. The game knows what a blocks core materials are to start with such as wood or brick and takes it to the next higher tier in the games overall upgrade hierarchy. This allows players to take over locations easier and save them the trouble of tediously tearing out a block to upgrade it unless it’s part of a new floorplan design. Not to worry we have maintained our old building system so you can still build and the old way. This includes every door, window, most full size wall blocks, roofing blocks and more. Block Upgrade Hierarchy – So the overall upgrade system hierarchy is listed below including 1 meter blocks, stairs, roofs, poles, windows and doors. Building has never been more fun! Wood blocks upgrades to reinforced wood blocks by right clicking with a repair tool and using wood resource Reinforced wood blocks upgrade to metal reinforced wood by right clicking with a repair tool and using scrap iron. Metal reinforced wood blocks upgrade to a scrap iron blocks by right clicking with a repair tool and using scrap iron. Scrap iron blocks upgrade to a reinforced scrap iron blocks by right clicking with a repair tool and using scrap iron. Reinforced scrap iron blocks upgrade to a reinforced concrete block by right clicking with a repair tool and using concrete mix. Reinforced concrete walls upgrade to steel walls by right clicking with a repair tool and using forged steel.
– So the overall upgrade system hierarchy is listed below including 1 meter blocks, stairs, roofs, poles, windows and doors. Building has never been more fun!
Brand New GUI with added functionality and Skill System
New Inventory controls – Ok before you get on our case about changing inventory controls please try it and give it a chance. Your muscle memory will fight you at first but after you get use to the new controls we think you’ll like it. We had to change them to allow item inspection and actions to be done from a static window. So here are the new controls: [Left Click] to inspect an item, recipe or active effect [Left Click] hold and drag to take a stack [Left Click] to drop or swap a stack [Right Click] hold and drag to take a half stack [Right Click] to drop one item at a time
– Ok before you get on our case about changing inventory controls please try it and give it a chance. Your muscle memory will fight you at first but after you get use to the new controls we think you’ll like it. We had to change them to allow item inspection and actions to be done from a static window. So here are the new controls:
New Clean GUI Design Framework – The first thing you’ll notice is the minimalistic new clean design. The minimalistic design is more immersive improving flow and conveying needed information better displaying it all in one large page not sub-pages under sub menus. Even veteran players will appreciate the new flow and ease of use. Our team members have even commented that they find themselves crafting items they never knew existed. The system will allow us to iterate much faster and add new stations quicker and provide a great framework for mod support. In the video options we’ve added UI background and UI foreground opacity with defaults of 50% for background and 100% for foreground which can be tweaked to your liking. Note: there are some minor issues and elements to be grouped with this.
– The first thing you’ll notice is the minimalistic new clean design. The minimalistic design is more immersive improving flow and conveying needed information better displaying it all in one large page not sub-pages under sub menus. Even veteran players will appreciate the new flow and ease of use. Our team members have even commented that they find themselves crafting items they never knew existed. The system will allow us to iterate much faster and add new stations quicker and provide a great framework for mod support. In the video options we’ve added UI background and UI foreground opacity with defaults of 50% for background and 100% for foreground which can be tweaked to your liking. Note: there are some minor issues and elements to be grouped with this. Paging System – We have integrated a new global player inventory paging system accessed by hitting the ‘Tab’ key. The new paging navigation system is located at the top center of the screen and clicking on the icons switches between crafting, character, map, skills, players, and creative screens. The old short cuts still exist ‘m’ key for map, ‘I’ key for the scoreboard which is now the player’s screen, ‘U’ for the creative and new ones ‘B’ for character screen and lastly ‘N’ for skills all of which can be rebound to your liking.
– We have integrated a new global player inventory paging system accessed by hitting the ‘Tab’ key. The new paging navigation system is located at the top center of the screen and clicking on the icons switches between crafting, character, map, skills, players, and creative screens. The old short cuts still exist ‘m’ key for map, ‘I’ key for the scoreboard which is now the player’s screen, ‘U’ for the creative and new ones ‘B’ for character screen and lastly ‘N’ for skills all of which can be rebound to your liking. Item info window – We have added an item info window that appears on every screen that the players backpack does right above it. With it you can read descriptions and stats for every item, recipe, skill or buff in the game and where applicable perform actions taking the place of the old right click menu. Note: We have done a first pass on descriptions buffs and skills all have descriptions and most items you can loot, or make have them except for some of the misc. décor type items.
Crafting System – The new crafting system can be accessed by hitting the ‘Tab’ key or the crafting icon in the new paging system header. The crafting system has been overhauled with a large generous recipe window on the left which includes a favorite’s button, search and page scrolling. We’ve also added a brand new info window over the backpack which allows item description information to be displayed with a left click. The info window also shows available actions per item such as scrap, drop or equip. When you click on a recipe the info window changes to a crafting window which displays in a table format the recipes required items, names, amounts needed and the amounts you have. In the crafting window action panel you can increment the amount you want up or down or hit the max count button and simply hit craft. The crafted items will go into the crafting queue under the recipe window with a timer and will dump into your backpack when they are done. Up to 4 recipes can be queued at once. You can cancel queued items by clicking on them. Inventory management has been changed to left click to view an item info, left click and drag to take an item, right click and drag to split a stack, right click to drop one item at a time and shift left click to move a stack between spaces.
Character System – The new character system can be accessed by clicking on the character icon in the new paging system header. The new system offers a generous new larger character window to see your character better than ever playing a cool animation with no sub-page clicking to see what you need. On the upper left of the character window you can see your characters total clothing defensive values displayed. We have streamlined these defensive clothing attributes into 7 core groups including: Concussive defense % by the hammer icon, puncture defense % by the knife icon, fire defense % by the fire icon, radiation defense % by the nuclear icon, insulation defense temperature by the thermometer icon, water defense % by the umbrella icon and clothing weight % by the weight icon. Worn clothing can also be individually inspected showing stats in the new info window. We’ve also added a new player stats window with many valuable player stats and a new buff window where active buffs can be viewed and inspected for more information.
Map System – The new map screen features everything the old one did and so much more including a full 3 kilometer zoom out. It can still be accessed by ‘M’ shortcut or by clicking on the map icon on the new paging system header. On the top left you’ll notice a new map stats window which displays time and day, outside temp, wind speed and your elevation. The central map window top bar has a row of buttons where you can see your player’s current position, show it on the map, see your bedrolls position and show it on the map, see your cursors position and remove your quick waypoints. When you right click on the map you can set a quick waypoint or save a waypoint picking an icon for it and naming it which adds it into the new waypoint window on the top right. In this waypoint window you can click on a waypoint in the list and in the button bar track it on your compass, show it on your map, remove it from your saved waypoints or share it with allies or everyone on the server. These shared waypoints will go out to others who will receive them in the new waypoint invites window on the lower right. Here you can add the waypoint to your waypoint list, show it on the map or remove it. Who needs google maps with a system like this?
Players System – We’ve decoupled the old player invite screen from the map and combined it with the scoreboard. It can still be accessed by the ‘I’ shortcut or by clicking on the players icon in the new paging system header. The new screen offers everything the old one did and a lot more. You can see all the player’s on a server and their important stats, invite them as allies, track multiple allies, show them on the map and see their distance from you in Km. Note players must be allies to track them or show them on the map.
Skill System – We’ve added a first version of skills which we have big plans to expand with a lot more skills, special perks and a way to choose your initial profession and hobby. The page can be accessed by clicking on the skills icon on the new paging header. The system divides a lot of the major items into both usage and crafting groups. F.E. you can level up your mining tools usage expertise by using a mining tool like a pickaxe to mine and level up your tool smithing expertise by crafting mining tools. Many of the weapons, tools and activities in the game are combined into skill groups including blades, blunts, construction, mining, fists, pistols, shotguns, rifles, cloth clothing and fur clothing, scrap clothing, iron clothing and more. There are 37 total in our first version. These skills level up to 100 and can be leveled up 2 ways: First by performing activities like attacking, firing, repairing or crafting with an item from a skill group and the second way to level up a skill is to purchase the next level up in the skill purchasing menu. Skill points to spend are awarded whenever you level up your player level. You can inspect an item to see what skill groups it belongs to and see what your level and progress is in that group. In this first version there is only one perk available we call Quality Joe which has 3 tiers adding 25, 50 and 100 quality to found looted items but we have lots more planned for this so stay tuned.
Creative Menu Page & System – The new creative menu can still be accessed by the ‘U’ hotkey or by the new paging system light bulb icon. The new GUI provides 3 main categories all, all items and all blocks. We’ve also added a quick select and a show dev blocks toggle for modding. You can mouse wheel scroll for pages of blocks or click on the paging arrows at the top as well as search. This new creative GUI has made building more fun than ever.
Campfire System – The overhauled campfire system has a large generous recipe window on the left which includes a favorite’s button, search and page scrolling. Just like the new crafting system the campfire has an info window over the backpack which allows item information to be displayed with a left click. The info window also shows available actions per item. When you click on a recipe the info window changes to a cooking window which displays in a table format the recipes required items, names, amounts needed and the amounts you have. Like crafting in the cooking window action panel you can increment the amount you want up, down or hit the max count button and simply hit cook. The cooked items will go into a queue under the recipe window with a timer and will dump into the campfires output overflow when they are done. Up to 4 recipes can be queued up at once. On the top right is the new 3 slot tool/utensil window for adding the cooking pot, cooking grill and beaker. Recipes that have utensil requirements will list the required tools on the cooking window header showing a green check if you have the right utensils and a red X if you do not. On the middle right is the 3 slot fuel window for adding burnable items which has a new button for turning on and off the fire to preserve fuel and control how much you alert zombie hordes. And lastly on the bottom right the campfire has a generous 6 slot output overflow for finished recipes. Like Emeril you’ll be saying ‘Bam’ before you know it.
Forge System – Like the crafting and campfire the new forge system has a recipe window on the left which includes a favorite’s button, search and page scrolling. Just like crafting and campfire the forge has an info window over the backpack which allows item information to be displayed with a left click. The info window also shows available actions per item. When you click on a forge recipe yes the forge now has recipes the info window changes to a smelting window which displays in a table format the recipes required materials, names, material amounts needed and the amounts you have. Like in the crafting window the in the forge window action panel you can increment the amount you want up, down or hit the max count button and simply hit smelt. The smelted items will go into a queue under the recipe window with a timer and will dump into the forges output overflow when they are done. Up to 4 recipes can be queued up at once. On the top right is the new 3 slot tool window for adding the new forging tools the anvil, the caliper and the tool and die kit which have replaced the molds. The anvil can be crafted in the forge but the calipers and tool and die set can only be found in rare loot. Recipes that have tool requirements will list the required tools on the smelting window header showing a green check if you have the right tools and a red X if you do not. On the middle right is the 3 slot fuel window for adding burnable items which has a new button for turning on and off the fire to preserve fuel and control how much you alert zombie hordes. Also on the middle right the new forge has a material input where players can process a huge amount of 6 raw material types including: iron, brass, lead, glass, tone and clay. Forge recipes can now require up to 5 material types and a tool. Lastly on the bottom right the forge has a generous 6 slot output overflow for finished recipes.
New Compass – We’ve added a new compass on the top center of the screen. The new wider compass allows more tracked icons to be seen easier. All saved waypoints, player backpacks, bedrolls, tracked friends and waypoints show on the compass. But now they scale and fade based on their distance and importance giving the player a sense of how far things are away on the compass.
– We’ve added a new compass on the top center of the screen. The new wider compass allows more tracked icons to be seen easier. All saved waypoints, player backpacks, bedrolls, tracked friends and waypoints show on the compass. But now they scale and fade based on their distance and importance giving the player a sense of how far things are away on the compass. New Buff and Inventory change pop outs – We’ve changed buffs to have a new semi-transparent gradient background behind the icons and they can pop-out as warnings or lasting problems. The pop-outs allow additional information to be displayed next to the icon such as the stage of the buff or the percentage it’s affecting you. In the lower right corner of the screen the same pop-outs are used to display ammo count and resources added, resources subtracted and finished recipes.
– We’ve changed buffs to have a new semi-transparent gradient background behind the icons and they can pop-out as warnings or lasting problems. The pop-outs allow additional information to be displayed next to the icon such as the stage of the buff or the percentage it’s affecting you. In the lower right corner of the screen the same pop-outs are used to display ammo count and resources added, resources subtracted and finished recipes. Health, Stamina, Food and Water – To reduce GUI clutter and improve the games immersion the food and water stats have been moved to the character screen but will show up as warning buffs to give the player the needed information. The Health and Stamina GUI have changed to larger horizontal bars. The bars now display 2 numbers each separated by a forward slash representing current level and maximum capacity governed by the players wellness.
– To reduce GUI clutter and improve the games immersion the food and water stats have been moved to the character screen but will show up as warning buffs to give the player the needed information. The Health and Stamina GUI have changed to larger horizontal bars. The bars now display 2 numbers each separated by a forward slash representing current level and maximum capacity governed by the players wellness. Gun and Item Assembly System – We’ve changed guns, chainsaws and augers so they players can inspect them and change parts assembling them in a different way. Basically you can left click on any gun, chainsaw, auger or single part of one of these and you’ll see a preview of every part or attachment it has and the quality of those parts across the bottom of the info window. If you’ve read the right book or schematic for a gun, chainsaw or auger you can click on the new ‘Assemble’ action in the item actions pane. Once clicked a new assembly window will appear. Here you can add parts and drag them onto slots or the larger preview window just like the minibike or character screen. The system allows you to combine 2 or more parts to start making a gun, chainsaw or auger even if you don’t have enough parts to finish it. The partial gun will show up with no quality and a grey bar and cannot be fired. Note if a gun is locked by a book you have not read the part or gun will display a book next to the word assembly in a greyed out color letting you know you need to read the book before you can perform gun crafting with that gun.
Characters, Clothing and Items
UMA 2 – We’ve updated to latest version of UMA integrating the Unity 5 standard shader on players. We’ve clamped bad looking sliders in the character creation tool and fixed bad rigging on neck and shoulder bones and small gap in male players mouth.
– We’ve updated to latest version of UMA integrating the Unity 5 standard shader on players. We’ve clamped bad looking sliders in the character creation tool and fixed bad rigging on neck and shoulder bones and small gap in male players mouth. Hair Styles – We’ve added a unisex afro and dreadlocks hair style to the game which allows players to make a convincing black character
– We’ve added a unisex afro and dreadlocks hair style to the game which allows players to make a convincing black character Clothing – We’ve redone the leather clothing, iron armor, added a new early game craft-able plant fiber clothing set, added a new animal hide clothing set which can be crafted without leather knowledge, added a new long leather duster, added puffer coats for cold weather survival of several colors, added a new black cowboy hat, and a complete hazmat outfit for upcoming radiation survival. If that wasn’t enough we’ve added functional night vision goggles to the game that turn on with the flashlight key.
– We’ve redone the leather clothing, iron armor, added a new early game craft-able plant fiber clothing set, added a new animal hide clothing set which can be crafted without leather knowledge, added a new long leather duster, added puffer coats for cold weather survival of several colors, added a new black cowboy hat, and a complete hazmat outfit for upcoming radiation survival. If that wasn’t enough we’ve added functional night vision goggles to the game that turn on with the flashlight key. Player Animations – We’ve redone or added many player animations including: Death animations, place block, nailgun use, wrench harvest, animal harvest, Ak47, Machete and more.
– We’ve redone or added many player animations including: Death animations, place block, nailgun use, wrench harvest, animal harvest, Ak47, Machete and more. New Items – we’ve added a bunch of new items including a new baddish makeshift rocket launcher, AK-47 Assault Rifle, Machete, Chainsaw and Auger are craft-able and improved and much more!
World and Blocks
Location Updates – We’ve added 8 old abandoned houses that don’t have zombies in them but don’t have much loot either. They work perfect for a starter for or a place to hold up for an early night. We’ve also added a new fenced in parking lot and a new Water works Utility complex to the game and 2 new ponds for random gen. On top of that we added a destruction pass and garbage debris pass to many of the old buildings making the apocalypse that much more gritty. If that wasn’t enough we have flooded some areas basements forcing players to swim to get loot and 2 new water towers.
– We’ve added 8 old abandoned houses that don’t have zombies in them but don’t have much loot either. They work perfect for a starter for or a place to hold up for an early night. We’ve also added a new fenced in parking lot and a new Water works Utility complex to the game and 2 new ponds for random gen. On top of that we added a destruction pass and garbage debris pass to many of the old buildings making the apocalypse that much more gritty. If that wasn’t enough we have flooded some areas basements forcing players to swim to get loot and 2 new water towers. Block Updates – We’ve added a new chain-link fence set, a new industrial pipes set, a new loot-able dumpster, new decal trash piles, new industrial control panel set, new duct-work, new vault doors, new vault hatches, new old sinks and cabinets and a new industrial pipe set that replaces the old one.
– We’ve added a new chain-link fence set, a new industrial pipes set, a new loot-able dumpster, new decal trash piles, new industrial control panel set, new duct-work, new vault doors, new vault hatches, new old sinks and cabinets and a new industrial pipe set that replaces the old one. Random Gen – We ‘ve added all the new locations to random gen and fixed some previously overlooked locations such as vacant lots that weren’t spawning. Also added country housing to wilderness POIs, abandoned houses to town hubs and more. We’ve also added the first pass of randomized lakes.
Audio
Recording Session – We recorded our first pass professional voice over audio session at Okratron 5000 a popular Dallas based recording studio casting the talents of Ric Spiegel, Caitlin Glass and Mike McFarland who have combined credits in many projects including Borderlands, Duke Nukem Forever, Full Metal Alchemist and Dragon Ball Z to name a few. We captured both male and female player sounds, base and special infected zombie sounds and future audio for traders, quest givers and bandits so stay tuned.
– We recorded our first pass professional voice over audio session at Okratron 5000 a popular Dallas based recording studio casting the talents of Ric Spiegel, Caitlin Glass and Mike McFarland who have combined credits in many projects including Borderlands, Duke Nukem Forever, Full Metal Alchemist and Dragon Ball Z to name a few. We captured both male and female player sounds, base and special infected zombie sounds and future audio for traders, quest givers and bandits so stay tuned. New Audio Mixing System – We’ve added a brand new audio mixing system for mixing all game sounds and setting custom falloff, digital signal processing effects and so much more. We’re just scratching the surface of its capabilities but you’ll immediately notice a big improvement in footstep, zombie audio and general mixing right away.
– We’ve added a brand new audio mixing system for mixing all game sounds and setting custom falloff, digital signal processing effects and so much more. We’re just scratching the surface of its capabilities but you’ll immediately notice a big improvement in footstep, zombie audio and general mixing right away. Player Audio – Using source from our recording session we’ve added all new male and female player sounds replacing the old small pains, large pains, deaths and out of stamina sounds. On top of that we’ve added new jump, land soft, land hard, hot debuff, cold debuff, run cycle loops and more
– Using source from our recording session we’ve added all new male and female player sounds replacing the old small pains, large pains, deaths and out of stamina sounds. On top of that we’ve added new jump, land soft, land hard, hot debuff, cold debuff, run cycle loops and more Zombie Audio– We’ve also integrated a new screamer zombie sound set from our recording session source a new base male second set for Boe the Infected Survivor and Moe our new Bloated Walker. If that wasn’t enough we’ve added a second base female set we’re using on Marlene ‘The Decayed Mother’ and Darlene ‘The Departed Woman’.
Dynamic Fluids System
No more BLOCKS – Water now takes the shape of its surroundings more naturally, though still voxelized, it has a much smoother look.
– Water now takes the shape of its surroundings more naturally, though still voxelized, it has a much smoother look. Reduced viscosity – We’ve loosened up the water a bit to allow it to flow more; with weaker polar attractions between the voxels so the water will act less like sticky blobs of jello, yay!
– We’ve loosened up the water a bit to allow it to flow more; with weaker polar attractions between the voxels so the water will act less like sticky blobs of jello, yay! Pathing – Water now takes on new paths, looking for the easiest path “down”, trying to find its way through openings, and slipping over itself and filling those caverns. It might feel a little different from what you’re used to in 7 Days to Die but we’re all about a dynamic world.
– Water now takes on new paths, looking for the easiest path “down”, trying to find its way through openings, and slipping over itself and filling those caverns. It might feel a little different from what you’re used to in 7 Days to Die but we’re all about a dynamic world. Water flow and Flooding – You can control where the water goes now by digging trenches for the water to flow through. Drop enough water into a hole and it will fill up. Dig a trench to your friend’s base and let the water flow and flood their belongings (Note: you will need a water source with enough water and elevation in order to flood other areas).
– You can control where the water goes now by digging trenches for the water to flow through. Drop enough water into a hole and it will fill up. Dig a trench to your friend’s base and let the water flow and flood their belongings (Note: you will need a water source with enough water and elevation in order to flood other areas). Wet loot – Get your lungs ready, because we’re putting some of the loot you may want deep under water. Swim through flooded basements or even lakes to find extra survivalist treasures.
– Get your lungs ready, because we’re putting some of the loot you may want deep under water. Swim through flooded basements or even lakes to find extra survivalist treasures. Evaporation – Water must be kept in buckets, enclosed structures or holes in the ground or it will evaporate and soon be gone.
– Water must be kept in buckets, enclosed structures or holes in the ground or it will evaporate and soon be gone. Buckets, Jars, Cans & Hands – Buckets pickup 3 water, lowering the waters density, while jars and cans pick up 1 water block, also lowering a water block’s density. Drinking water with hands does not lower the water density, but will still satiate your thirst a bit.
All the Other Stuff
Added
Added: Car batteries can now be repaired with repair kits
Added: Potassium nitrate formations to the world
Added: Specular to female shaggy hair
Added: Kitchen sink harvesting
Added: Light to the new spot light.
Added: Clay harvesting, you now get clay lumps directly from harvesting clay. Changed all recipes using clay to use clay lumps.
Added: Destroyed stone harvesting
Added: Cinderblock harvesting
Added: Oven harvesting. They yield scrap metal and additionally scrap cables and short metal pipes if disassembled with a wrench.
Added: New player death animations, specific to being shot in the head, chest, each arm and leg
Added: Torch idle sound
Added: Oil mining and refining. You can find oil deposits in the desert and mine them to get oil shale. Oil shale is refined into gasoline in the beaker
Added: Random cars to roads, and replaced old wasteland voxel cars with new mineable prefab cars
Added: Ingredient based crafting time to all cooked items. Recipes are now calculated by how long each ingredient takes to cook rather than a generic time
Added: Car harvesting. Players need to use a wrench to get parts from it. Parts include small engine and batteries (30% chance), radiators and oil (50% chance), and springs, scrap metal, and cloth (100% chance)
Added: UNET networking
Added: Sand recipe from crushed sand
Added: Corn meal and honey to canned food loot group (Joel)
Added: Honey to tree stump loot
Added: harvest to planted trees and stumps
Added wood log recipe and wood log harvest (Joel)
Added: Sub biomes grass patches with cars in them to the wasteland biomes.
Added: Spider zombies are back in regular spawn groups
Added: scrap hatch, made from 10 scrap metal, upgrades take 5 scrap metal
Added: Vault hatch which is made from steel ingots, springs and is upgradeable
Added: Campfire harvest
Added: Insulation to skullcaps and unified them using extends feature
Added: Insulation to bandanas and unified with extends
Added: Shade and enclosure effects on core body temp added
Added: weathersurvival console command: weathersurvival on/off
Added: Machete weapon
Added: Chainsaw blade item to rare automotive parts group
Added sledgehammers and schematics to working stiff tools
Added: First aid schematic to rare medical
Added: Particle effect for first person breath in cold environments
Added: LODs for new zombie nurse model.
Added: All brick blocks (not ramps, stairs etc) are now repairable with cobblestones, and can upgrade to reinforced concrete with concrete mix and a repair tool. They are downgraded to
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ard Street were built to handle, he added. Construction on the plan would begin this fall and coincide with planned improvements to the Burrard Bridge and water main replacement in the area near Seaforth Peace Park.
The changes are being considered at a time when tensions on Vancouver's west side are running high over proposed traffic calming measures that would see a section of Point Grey road converted to local vehicle traffic only and redesigned to better accommodate pedestrians and cyclists.Sudden death of popular athlete stuns Pearland school
Falobi Akanbi, a 17-year-old senior and honor student at Pearland's Dawson High, had recently signed a letter of intent to play football at Montana State. Falobi Akanbi, a 17-year-old senior and honor student at Pearland's Dawson High, had recently signed a letter of intent to play football at Montana State. Photo: Twitter Photo: Twitter Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Sudden death of popular athlete stuns Pearland school 1 / 3 Back to Gallery
Students and staff at Pearland's Dawson High School are mourning a popular athlete who collapsed while playing basketball after school Wednesday.
Falobi Suleiman Akanbi, a 17-year-old senior, was pronounced dead at Memorial Hermann Southeast Hospital. An autopsy was scheduled Thursday, said Tricia Bentley, spokeswoman for the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences.
Akanbi, an offensive tackle on the Dawson football team, got out of school early and was playing a pickup game with friends about 2:30 p.m. when he collapsed on a court at Pearland ISD's Silverlake Elementary, 2500 County Road 90, officials said. Friends tried to perform CPR until paramedics arrived.
Akanbi was an honor student and well-liked around both the campus and the community.
"It's always hard when you have a loss," Dawson head football coach Eric Wells said, "but that kid had a lot going for him with such a great family. He was part of our family, and it's tough."
Akanbi's death came three weeks after the 6-foot-5, 290-pound offensive lineman signed a letter of intent to play football at Montana State. In a statement, the university said players and staff members who met Akanbi found him gracious and intelligent.
"Our hearts go out to Folabi's family and friends, and his teammates and coaches," Montana State coach Rob Ash said in the statement. "He was a wonderful young man who captivated everyone he met, and had such an incredibly bright future."
Akanbi had started at offensive tackle for Dawson, helping the Eagles to a 12-1 record.Story highlights Comey says Trump asked him to drop investigation into key advisor
Trump denied Comey's claims in a Friday news conference
(CNN) House and Senate investigators fired off a series of requests after former FBI Director James Comey's testimony, seeking memos of his private discussions with President Donald Trump and any records the White House kept of their discussion -- including audio recordings.
The leaders of the House Russia investigation, Reps. Michael Conaway, a Texas Republican, and Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, sent a request Friday directly to Comey for copies of his memos. They sent a separate request to Trump's White House counsel, Don McGahn, for any record the White House had of their meetings.
The House requested Comey and the White House provide the records, including tapes if they exist, by June 23.
The Senate judiciary committee, meanwhile, sent a request to Columbia University law professor Daniel Richman for Comey's memos. Richman confirmed Thursday that he was the friend Comey testified who had discussed the memos with the press.
The leaders of the Senate judiciary's probe sent Richman the request Thursday and asked he provide it by Friday. A source familiar with the matter said Richman has been in touch with Senate judiciary through special counsel Bob Mueller's office, and that there will be movement after the weekend.
Read MoreCLOSE Batman teams up with Cyborg, Wonder Woman and others against Lex Luthor in this exclusive clip from "LEGO DC Comics: Batman: Be-Leaguered," airing Oct. 27 on Cartoon Network. Cartoon Network
Heroes come together as the Justice League in the new Cartoon Network special "LEGO DC Comics: Batman: Be-Leaguered." (Photo: Cartoon Network)
LEGO Batman is as big a star as anybody these days, since the blocky superhero has his own upcoming LEGO Movie spinoff as well as a trio of video games with his name.
Cartoon Network's getting in on the cartoony Dark Knight action with the special LEGO DC Comics: Batman: Be-Leaguered, airing on Oct. 27 (6 p.m. ET).
Batman's a rebel and a loner when it comes to superhero team-ups, even with constant pestering by Superman to join the Justice League. But when the Man of Steel disappears and a bunch of baddies such as Captain Cold start raising a global ruckus, Batman decides it might be time to finally be a team player and works alongside the likes of the Flash, Wonder Woman, Aquaman and Cyborg.
In this exclusive clip from the Be-Leaguered special, Cyborg and Wonder Woman set up Lex Luthor for a pounding by Batman, Cyborg gets starstruck and Robin plays a prank.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1wg4YbpWith Jim Harbaugh likely to bring a Stanford assistant with him to the 49ers, Mike Johnson is headed back to college.
Johnson, who became the 49ers’ offensive coordinator last season, will become the offensive coordinator at UCLA, according to Scout.com.
A source told the Mercury News that Harbaugh had informed Johnson he might still have a role on the 49ers’ staff, just not as offensive coordinator.
Even before Johnson’s departure, the 49ers were zeroing in on Greg Roman or David Shaw as their next potential coordinator. Roman is Stanford’s associate head coach, and Shaw is the team’s offensive coordinator. Both also are candidates to replace Harbaugh as Stanford’s head coach.
A source confirmed that Roman will have the opportunity to join the 49ers’ staff if he is not named Stanford’s new coach. Roman worked in the NFL from 1995-2007 as an assistant with Carolina, Houston and Baltimore. Shaw also has NFL experience, having worked from 1997-2006 with Philadelphia, the Raiders, Baltimore and San Diego.
Johnson lasted 13 games as the 49ers’ offensive coordinator. The former quarterbacks coach was promoted when Mike Singletary fired Jimmy Raye after a 31-10 loss at Kansas City in Week 3.
Johnson had mixed results. The 49ers offense perked up at times, including a 40-point game against Seattle and a 38-point output against Arizona over the final month.
But Johnson also presided over a 21-0 loss to Tampa Bay, the first time the 49ers had been shut out at home since 1977.
UCLA officials did not confirm the hiring, and Johnson did not immediately return a call to his cell phone. Norm Chow, the Bruins’ current offensive coordinator, has not been fired and is due $1 million over the next two years.
Harbaugh, a longtime NFL quarterback, will have a major influence in the 49ers’ offensive game plan. The play-calling responsibility at Stanford was a well-kept secret, with each offensive assistant specializing in an area such as third-down calls or red-zone plays.
Johnson’s departure extends the 49ers’ annual tradition of changing offensive coordinators. They have had a new play-caller every year since Greg Knapp held the job from 2001-03.
They hired Ted Tollner (2004), Mike McCarthy (2005), Norv Turner (2006), Jim Hostler (2007), Mike Martz (2008), Jimmy Raye (2009-10) and Johnson (2010).
Mercury News writers Tim Kawakami and Elliott Almond contributed to this report.It’s no secret that doctors often work shifts of more than 24 hours without time to adequately rest or eat. It’s no secret either that many practicing physicians and medical students are tasked with punishing workloads, and either blame themselves when something goes wrong or become frustrated at a work culture that is rapidly changing.
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And for many in the medical community, there’s another thing that’s no secret. Physicians and residents have a high suicide rate. Pamela Wible, a physician in Eugene, Oregon, self-published a book last month that promptly became Amazon’s top best-seller for medicine and psychology. It was a book of suicide letters from doctors and medical students. And many of the book’s purchasers, she says, are other physicians. According to a study published in 1996, physicians are more than twice as likely to kill themselves as non-physicians–and female physicians are three times more likely than males. A separate 2005 project found similar metrics. It isn’t a new phenomenon, but the rise of social media and changing social mores are making some health care professionals more comfortable talking about it. Physicians are more than twice as likely to kill themselves as non-physicians–and female physicians are three times more likely than males. A Stress-Fueled Epidemic Onstage at the 2015 TEDMED conference in Palm Springs this past November, Wible talked to an audience of prominent health care experts about suicides in the medical community. She told attendees something astounding: That approximately 1 million Americans lose their primary care practitioners to suicide each year.
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Wible says that statistic reflects low-end estimates of approximately 400 doctors committing suicide yearly. Each of those doctors, if they work in primary care, cares for approximately 2,300 patients. That equals 920,000 people a year, she says, who cope with the loss of a physician. In the TEDMED talk, she blamed two different phenomenons for a high suicide rate among doctors: A medical school culture of “hazing, bullying, and name-calling” that continues into residency and results in poor medical care for patients and occupational-induced depression for both students and residents, and a professional culture for practicing doctors that dissuades them from seeking mental health treatment. Photo: megaflopp via Shutterstock ”Death Certificates Are Often Miscoded” Wible believes the suicide rate among physicians is even higher than the National Institutes of Health’s cited rate. She says that she believes many death certificates for physicians are miscoded, and that many practicing physicians and residents commit suicide through ambiguous methods such as car crashes. Her crusade, as it turns out, is personal. “I realized there was an epidemic when I had gone to my third memorial service in a year and a half,” Wible told Fast Company. “A third doctor in my town had died of suicide in 18 months–a top-notch pediatrician shot himself in the head. I was at his memorial service, and started counting on my fingers how many suspicious deaths among doctors and potential suicides I knew, including men I dated in medical school. I was suicidal in medical school, too... and it was occupational induced.” In 2012, Wible started blogging about mental health issues among medical professionals; suicide letters sent to her by loved ones and other physicians comprise the core of her new book.
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An Informal Code Of Silence One of the biggest problems reformers like Wible face is the fact that health care professionals have been aware of the anomalously high suicide rate in their field for a long time. Every once in a while, a medical journal or a trade publication will run an article about the problem. It’s not unknown. Robert P. Bright and Lois Krahn of the Mayo Clinic sum up the problem as follows: Physicians have a much higher rate of suicide than the general population, but are less likely to seek treatment because of fears of losing their licenses or being thrown out of medical school, fear of losing patients if word gets out they are seeking mental health treatment, or simply not having time to seek treatment due to their workloads. Certain traits they say are common to physicians and medical students, such as perfectionism and a tendency toward self-criticism, also lead to raised suicide risks. “Residents dealing with this issue don’t want anyone to know who they are because they can lose their position,” Wible added. “That means they lost $350,000 to get their education. They’re kind of pushed into a corner, but are happy to reach out to me and confident I’ll protect their anonymity. They want someone they can talk to who won’t rat on them.” Photo: mihalec via Shutterstock A Crisis That Affects Everyone According to a massive study published late last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association, a staggering 29% of young doctors struggle with depression. The authors of that study also cite causes ranging from workload to sleep deprivation to bullying by other doctors to a culture that stigmatizes mental health treatment. This affects everyone, Wible says. “The outcome for patients isn’t great when you have wounded healers staggering around, trying to help others. It’s a recipe for poor patient care, which should be obvious to everyone. Do you want someone who is being bullied controlling your ventilator? Is that a good scenario?” Wible says.
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The challenge is that there are no easy answers. Wible calls for a wholesale overhaul of the way doctors talk about their own mental health. A big part of this is greater understanding from the medical establishment about the high rate of depression among doctors and that it shouldn’t just be repressed; another part is creating treatment options for physicians and medical students that won’t offer what she calls “punitive” stigma for their careers. In the meantime, the fact that her book is an Amazon best seller signifies one promising change: Medical professionals are, at the very least, acknowledging that there’s a problem.One of the biggest upsets surrounding Call of Duty: WWII at launch (other than server issues) was the multiplayer maps. A week before launch, via leaked copies, it was noted that the game would only have 9 MP maps (10 if you bought the Season Pass), making it the lowest amount of maps in a Call of Duty base game in history. The second lowest was Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 and Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare with 12 maps. Sledgehammer Games’ last title, Advanced Warfare, launched with 13 maps on the disc.
Yes, Call of Duty: WWII does have its new War mode, which brings its own 3 separate maps, but that’s where the distinction is made: it has its own 3 separate maps which cannot be played in regular MP. So while MP delivers a total of 12 maps for all modes, only 9 can be played outside of War. In a World War II shooter, there is no D-Day map in regular rotation, which seems like an oversight. Operation Neptune delivers a D-Day experience specifically for War, but what about players that do not want to play War?
You can say that if the map design is great across the maps, and the maps are enjoyable, then maybe 9 maps is a good fit. The quality over quantity argument. But not all Call of Duty: WWII map designs are that great. There are some maps which shine — like London Docks and Sainte Marie du Mont. Sainte Marie du Mont is a typical Call of Duty design map: the map plays great across modes, especially Hardpoint. The map utilities the 3 lane structure and flows really well for objective modes. London Docks is also fun to play on. The overall design also has a 3 lane structure, while providing easy access to get across the map, with the dock side area to get by the center, and the underground tunnel.
But there are others that just do not live up to Call of Duty map styles. Let’s talk about Gustav Cannon…this map is…well, um, kinda…not a Call of Duty map style at all. I have been playing it on Hardpoint (Hardpoint is my favorite mode to play) because for some reason it keeps appearing in the rotation. (Side note: don’t get me started on the map vote system in this game…why do I need to press L2 first then vote on a map? Many players already do not vote on maps in lobbies, and now there’s an extra button ensuring even lower amount of players vote for the map). If you are not a sniper, the map puts you at a disadvantage. Almost every sight line across the maps can be seen by a sniper, which makes it difficult for different style of players to enjoy this map. The huge, useless cannon in the center — which is not even symmetrical on both sides (why does one side have additional ways to get up on the cannon and camp while the other side is limited?) — is just odd for a Call of Duty map design. It kinda works for objective modes — and even that, not that well. If you get into a TDM lobby with it, many players end up leaving the lobby. The map just does not work in Call of Duty that well.
Now about USS Texas. This map appears to have taken its form from a similar design style to Hijacked in Black Ops 2. But Hijacked was a lot better. The biggest gripe with USS Texas, however, is the vantage points and how fast the spawns change. If you play Hardpoint on this map, it seems like, if your team fails to move on one specific objective, you are basically punished immediately for the next hill, because the spawn instantly flips to give the team with the last control of the hill a closer spawn to the newest hill. And if you push a little into the enemies’ spawn side, it flips it. There is no way to control the map — it is complete chaos of running back and forth. USS Texas could be a good map with spawn updates, but right now, it just seems like you are playing a chaotic mess.
Out of the 9 maps in game, only about 3-4 maps keep showing up in the rotation. I have spent a majority of my gameplay time playing Gustav Cannon, Gibraltar, London Docks, and Sainte Marie du Mont; sometimes Flak Tower and Pointe du Hoc do show up as well. Those maps seem to be most appearing in Hardpoint. There is a 10th map if you got the Season Pass — Carentan. This is a fantastic map, but if you have to play the Carentan 24/7 playlist to play on the map, and not everyone has the Season Pass. This map should have been a pre-order bonus for Call of Duty: WWII not tied to the Season Pass. It does not make sense why they did this — Infinite Warfare and Black Ops 3 gave away a free map for pre-orders. Activision really should consider un-bundling Carentan from the Season Pass. It is a great map, but unfortunately many players will never experience it.
Sledgehammer Games seemed to have gone for the “quality over quantity” idea in MP for the nine base maps, but that did not seem to pay off. The maps are not that great, and I do worry fans will start to quickly get bored of them. In previous Call of Duty games, there would always be that one map that everyone could pick out and say was their favorite, but I cannot really tell SHG a map I would want a 24/7 playlist of in this game. No map really stands out.
Let’s hope the DLC season brings some better maps.Major US news media have presented a grossly distorted and misleading interpretation of vaccines and their relationship to public health since early January. These journalistic organs have suggested the recent measles outbreak in the Western US has been a crisis of monumental proportions.
This flagrant and cynical sensationalism has become a foundation for intense advocacy on behalf of the pharmaceutical corporate and regulatory cartel targeting patient informed consent—a founding principal of modern medical practice and personal freedom. Keeping in mind the close to 300 vaccine products now in the pharmaceutical industry’s pipeline,[1] closer analysis of “measles outbreak” press coverage suggests a conscious effort by corporate news media to virtually banish such notions and practices from the public mind. A news media dependent on over $1 billion in advertising dollars from big pharma must almost by necessity indulge their clients’ broader agenda.
David Dees (right)
An impartial journalistic approach to the question of vaccination and personal choice would provide equal and unprejudiced airing of “both sides,” in addition to the varied grey areas in the debate, from the corporate and statist entities flying the banner of mandatory vaccination to cautious segments of the citizenry voicing reservations toward such technology alongside the foremost prerogative of personal choice.
A LexisNexis search of US newspaper and wire service articles from December 28, 2015—the official start date of the California measles outbreak—to February 8, 2015 [2] using the search terms “measles” and “vaccination” yields 799 press releases or wire stories and 746 newspaper articles and opinion pieces. Much of this coverage predictably emphasizes the array of vaccine-friendly assumptions and pronouncements from entities abetting the pharmaceutical industry’s long-term profit-specific objectives.
For example, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is, alongside the Food and Drug Administration, the most powerful bureaucratic arm utilized by the global pharmaceutical cartel to elicit compliance with the federal vaccine schedule for children from the medical profession and broader population. Of the article sample referenced above, close to one-third (517) reference the “Centers for Disease Control” or “CDC” in their text, suggesting citation of the agency and its policies to persuasively instruct readers on vaccine efficacy and safety.
In contrast, the same body of over 1,500 press releases, news stories and editorials reference “informed consent” only three times—and when the term is used it is done so either in passing or to disparage the practice itself. For example, Arthur Caplan, a professor of medicine at New York University, warns against doctors even considering the practice of informed consent in regard to vaccines. “The science is unimpeachable,” Caplan proclaims. ” Vaccines do not cause autism; measles is dangerous and contagious; inoculating against the disease is neither pointless nor riskier than abstention.” The physician then amazingly suggests that genuine informed consent–explaining how a vaccine such as Measles, Mumps, Rubella, which can severely injure, incapacitate, or kill the child patient–must be categorically replaced by the dissemination of pharmaceutical industry propaganda and half-truths. “Those doctors who counsel otherwise – who distort what patients need to know to preserve their health or that of their children – have crossed a bright red line. They have violated a patient’s right to informed consent, which depends on accurate information.”[3]
The foremost US organization advocating the fundamental doctrine of informed consent, the National Vaccine Information Center, is referenced a paltry 22 times in the sizable article sample. And while the NVIC routinely emphasizes that it is not “anti-vaccine” and merely advocates that patients or their parents fully understand the risks associated with the industrialized, “one size fits all” immunization process, it is nevertheless framed as the official voice of “anti-vaccination.” A recent New York Times article from the data set is exemplary of this practice. “Members of the anti-vaccine movement said the public backlash had terrified many parents. ’People are now afraid they’re going to be jailed,’ said Barbara Loe Fisher, the president of the National Vaccine Information Center, a clearinghouse for resisters.”[4]
Of the 746 articles published in newspapers, 143 are editorial and opinion pieces. Almost without exception each vigorously supports wide-scale vaccination, even proposing punitive measures for those clinging to informed consent and personal choice. Such uniform opinion among newsroom management provides a clear indication of exactly how warped the overall news coverage of the “measles outbreak” has been.
“If we’re not willing to permanently exile anti-vaxxers from the public square,” one opinion in the Philadelphia Daily News remarks, “we should at least make emergency provisions to do so. Anti-vaxxers should be made to understand that when there is a public-health emergency – such as a measles outbreak – they’ll be quarantined for the duration.”[5] “Those who refuse to vaccinate are wrong,” the Salt Lake Tribune argues. “They endanger themselves and those around them.”[6] “The growing anti-vaccination movement is one of the most frustrating developments of this decade,” the San Jose Mercury News similarly contends. “Some of the parents who mistrust vaccine are uneducated and have no access to pediatric counsel, but there’s no excuse for the irresponsible parents who have access to the latest science yet irrationally fear that vaccines are not safe for their children.”[7]
In an effort to console parents concerned about the very real possibility of vaccines causing autism, US government press releases and US news outlets alike reference a 1998 study authored by British physician and medical scientist Andrew Wakefield linking vaccination to Crohn’s disease and autism. “Public health officials blame a decline in parents having their kids vaccinated that began after a now-thoroughly discredited 1998 British report alleged that common early childhood vaccinations triggered autism,” the San Diego Union Tribune grouses. “Unfortunately, that discredited report continues to be cited by know-nothing celebrities and vapid New Age authors who broadly reject modern medicine. They do so even as life expectancy hits all-time highs and medical researchers make steady progress on many fronts.”[8]
The US government’s own public relations service—US Official News—likewise chimes in on Wakefield’s alleged deceit. “A 1998 article in the medical journal The Lancet caused a firestorm of controversy when it was published and helped create the anti-vaccine movement that continues today,” one US government press release reads. “There’s only one problem–the article was later retracted by the publisher for being ‘utterly false,’ and the author, Andrew Wakefield, was found to have been paid big bucks by plaintiffs’ lawyers.”[9]
The fact that Wakefield’s 1998 findings have been upheld in 19 peer-reviewed papers he has contributed to the literature between 1998 and 2010, in addition to 28 studies from other scientists around the world [10] has been consciously overlooked by US newspaper editors and other drug industry propagandists. That this key piece of disinformation–soundly rebutted in the published research–continues to be repeated by journalists and government publicists alike suggests the hardcore disinformation tactics deployed to perpetuate the misunderstanding and unwarranted faith the majority of US families continue to place in big pharma’s immensely profitable vaccine agenda.
As direct result of this well-coordinated publicity campaign and resulting hysteria the legal right by which families may exercise informed consent is now under intense legal assault across the US. “Hearings to remove philosophical/conscientious exemptions to vaccine mandates have already taken place in Washington and Oregon,” NVIC reports.
California, Maine, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Vermont all have bills already filed or press announcements of bills about to be filed to remove philosophical/conscientious exemptions. Maine, Minnesota and Texas have bills to substantially restrict philosophical/conscientious exemptions. Religious exemptions are also under attack. Maryland, New Jersey, Texas and Vermont have bills filed or announced to eliminate religious exemptions, and Illinois, New Mexico and Texas have bills filed or announced to unconstitutionally restrict religious exemptions.
In addition, Connecticut, Florida, Indiana, Maine, Maryland, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, and West Virginia all have legislation underway to expand vaccine mandates.[11]
In light of the above one should be unsurprised at the mob-like antipathy toward “anti-vaxxers,” and how the notions of personal liberty and informed consent have been made to appear increasingly bizarre by being effectively stricken from public discourse. The population has been expertly propagandized on the issue by medical practitioners, their professional associations, and regulatory agencies tethered to the pharmaceutical industry’s agenda vis-a-vis a news media reliant on drug advertising revenue. With these observations in mind one must seriously ask themselves, In what meaningful way would a wholly scientific authoritarianism differ from what is witnessed in America today?
Notes
[1] Medicines in Development: A Report on the Prevention and Treatment of Disease Through Vaccines, Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America, 2013.
[2] Jennifer Zipprich, Kathleen Winter, et al, “Measles Outbreak – California, December 2014-February 2015,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, February 20, 2015.
[3] Arthur Caplan, “Quacks Against Vaccines? Revoke Their Licenses,” Washington Post, February 8, 2015.
[4] Jack Healy and Michael Paulson, “Vaccine Critics Turn Defensive Over Measles,” New York Times, January 31, 2015.
[5] Joel Mathis and Ben Boychuck, “The Vaccination Debate Continues,” philly.com, February 9, 2015.
[6] “Washington Post: Measles in America,” Salt Lake Tribune, February 3, 2015.
[7] “Disneyland’s Measles is a Hard Lesson in How Vaccines Work,” San Jose Mercury News, January 29, 2015.
[8] “Anti-Vaccination Charlatans Take Toll on Public Health,” San Diego Times Union, January 19, 2015.
[9] “Flashback: The Anti-Vaccine Movement and a Trial Lawyer-Funded Climate of Fear,” Plus Media Solutions/US Official News, February 17, 2015.
[10] Joseph Mercola, “Why Medical Authorities Went to Such Extremes to Silence Dr. Andrew Wakefield,” Mercola.com, April 10, 2010, http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/04/10/wakefield-interview.aspx
[11] “You Need to Act Now: Vaccine Exemptions and Mandates Threatened in Even More States,” National Vaccine Information Center, February 23, 2015.From Trussville Tribune staff reports
CENTER POINT — The Jefferson County sheriff’s office has confirmed a shooting occurred tonight in Center Point at 9:30 p.m. in the 1400 block of Huffman Road.
Multiple reports say the shooting happened during a fair being held at Cathedral of the Cross.
Sources indicate that at least five people were injured during the gunfire and transported to area hospitals.
According to the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, four were shot and another was injured after being knocked to the ground. One of the victims was a child, likely under the age of one, the other three injure by gunfire are teenagers. None of the injuries are reported to be life-threatening. A pregnant woman was knocked down and injured during the event.
Five people have been taken in for questioning.
Mayor Tom Henderson said he was disappointed.
“It’s very disappointing that people can’t go out and have a good time,” he said. “We’ve been having these fairs for 15 years and nothing like this has ever happened (at said events).
“We’re praying for the victims.”
Henderson said deputies have told him few details and said the situation is currently “fluid”.
This story will be updated as information is received.Nominations for the 75th annual Golden Globe Awards were announced on Monday morning on NBC’s “Today” show live from the Beverly Hilton Hotel.
Guillermo del Toro’s “The Shape of Water,” Steven Spielberg’s “The Post,” and Martin McDonagh’s “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” led noms on the movie front. On the TV side, HBO’s “Big Little Lies” picked up six nominations, while FX’s “Feud: Bette and Joan” followed with four. Meanwhile, “Fargo,” “The Handmaid’s Tale,” and “This Is Us” all landed three nods.
Presenters Alfre Woodard, Garrett Hedlund, Kristen Bell, and Sharon Stone were joined by Golden Globe ambassador Simone Garcia Johnson, Hollywood Foreign Press Association president Meher Tatna, and Dick Clark Productions executive vice president of television Barry Adelman in revealing the nominees.
Seth Meyers will emcee the 2018 ceremony from the same location on Jan. 7. The Golden Globes will air live at 5 p.m. PT/8 p.m. ET on NBC.
Produced by Dick Clark Productions in association with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the Golden Globes honor achievements in film and television, both domestic and foreign.
Related 'Fiji Water Girl' Sues the Company for Using Her Likeness Without Permission Golden Globe Winners Aren't a Bellwether of the Oscars, but May Help TV
Here is the full list of 2018 Golden Globe nominations:
Best Picture – Drama:
“Call Me by Your Name”
“Dunkirk”
“The Post”
“The Shape of Water”
“Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”
Best Picture – Comedy or Musical:
“The Disaster Artist”
“Get Out”
“The Greatest Showman”
“I, Tonya”
“Lady Bird”
Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama:
Timothée Chalamet, “Call Me by Your Name”
Daniel Day-Lewis, “Phantom Thread”
Tom Hanks, “The Post”
Gary Oldman, “Darkest Hour”
Denzel Washington, “Roman J. Israel, Esq.”
Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama:
Jessica Chastain, “Molly’s Game”
Sally Hawkins, “The Shape of Water”
Frances McDormand, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”
Meryl Streep, “The Post”
Michelle Williams, “All the Money in the World”
Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy:
Steve Carell, “Battle of the Sexes”
Ansel Elgort, “Baby Driver”
James Franco, “The Disaster Artist”
Hugh Jackman, “The Greatest Showman”
Daniel Kaluuya, “Get Out”
Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy:
Judi Dench, “Victoria & Abdul”
Helen Mirren, “The Leisure Seeker”
Margot Robbie, “I, Tonya”
Saoirse Ronan, “Lady Bird”
Emma Stone, “Battle of the Sexes”
Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture:
Willem Dafoe, “The Florida Project”
Armie Hammer, “Call Me by Your Name”
Richard Jenkins, “The Shape of Water”
Christopher Plummer, “All the Money in the World”
Sam Rockwell, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”
Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture:
Mary J. Blige, “Mudbound”
Hong Chau, “Downsizing”
Allison Janney, “I, Tonya”
Laurie Metcalf, “Lady Bird”
Octavia Spencer, “The Shape of Water”
Best Animated Film:
“The Boss Baby”
“The Breadwinner”
“Coco”
“Ferdinand”
“Loving Vincent”
Best Director – Motion Picture:
Guillermo del Toro, “The Shape of Water”
Martin McDonagh, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”
Christopher Nolan, “Dunkirk”
Ridley Scott, “All The Money in the World”
Steven Spielberg, “The Post”
Best Screenplay – Motion Picture:
Guillermo Del Toro, Vanessa Taylor, “The Shape of Water”
Greta Gerwig, “Lady Bird”
Liz Hannah, Josh Singer, “The Post”
Martin McDonagh, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”
Aaron Sorkin, “Molly’s Game”
Best Original Score – Motion Picture:
“Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”
“The Shape of Water”
“Phantom Thread”
“The Post”
“Dunkirk”
Best Original Song – Motion Picture
“Home,” Ferdinand
“Mighty River,” Mudbound
“Remember Me,” Coco
“The Star,” The Star
“This Is Me,” The Greatest Showman
Best Motion Picture – Foreign Language
“A Fantastic Woman”
“First They Killed My Father”
“In the Fade”
“Loveless”
“The Square”
Best Television Series – Drama:
“The Crown”
“Game of Thrones”
“The Handmaid’s Tale”
“Stranger Things”
“This is Us”
Best Television Series – Comedy:
“Black-ish”
“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”
“Master of None”
“SMILF”
“Will & Grace”
Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series – Drama:
Jason Bateman, “Ozark”
Sterling K. Brown, “This is Us”
Freddie Highmore, “The Good Doctor”
Bob Odenkirk, “Better Call Saul”
Liev Schreiber, “Ray Donovan”
Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series – Drama:
Caitriona Balfe, “Outlander”
Claire Foy, “The Crown”
Maggie Gyllenhaal, “The Deuce”
Katherine Langford, “13 Reasons Why”
Elisabeth Moss, “The Handmaid’s Tale”
Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy:
Anthony Anderson, “Black-ish”
Aziz Ansari, “Master of None”
Kevin Bacon, “I Love Dick”
William H. Macy, “Shameless”
Eric McCormack, “Will & Grace”
Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy:
Pamela Adlon, “Better Things”
Alison Brie, “Glow”
Rachel Brosnahan, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”
Issa Rae, “Insecure”
Frankie Shaw, “SMILF”
Best Television Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television:
“Big Little Lies”
“Fargo”
“Feud: Bette and Joan”
“The Sinner”
“Top of the Lake: China Girl”
Best Performance by an Actor in a Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television:
Robert De Niro, “The Wizard of Lies”
Jude Law, “The Young Pope”
Kyle MacLachlan, “Twin Peaks”
Ewan McGregor, “Fargo”
Geoffrey Rush, “Genius”
Best Performance by an Actress in a Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television:
Jessica Biel, “The Sinner”
Nicole Kidman, “Big Little Lies”
Jessica Lange, “Feud: Bette and Joan”
Susan Sarandon, “Feud: Bette and Joan”
Reese Witherspoon, “Big Little Lies”
Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television:
David Harbour, “Stranger Things”
Alfred Molina, “Feud”
Christian Slater, “Mr. Robot”
Alexander Skarsgard, “Big Little Lies”
David Thewlis, “Fargo”
Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television:
Laura Dern, “Big Little Lies”
Ann Dowd, “The Handmaid’s Tale”
Chrissy Metz, “This is Us”
Michelle Pfeiffer, “The Wizard of Lies”
Shailene Woodley, “Big Little Lies”Slipknot
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your kid. Need company to watch a football match? There is a large screen and a bar in the common house. Trying to save money? Cohousings get volume discounts and free delivery because they are buying in bulk. The group dinners mean that you actually get to know your neighbours. All of that sounds perfect to families ‒ for a reason. The cohousing movement started with a 1964 article titled “Children Should Have One Hundred Parents”.
It all seemed a bit too utopian for me. Croatia is a long way away from Scandinavian social experiments, and the whole idea went stealth for two years. Until I went to San Francisco in 2012.
Cohousing in the States is often about ideology, not convenience. Many of the projects there are ecological, religious or hippie-like communes. Not my cup of tea. However, Americans are also fond of cohousing’s smaller brother, coliving. Instead of building houses, a group of people just rent one and share the rooms. They are more than merely flatmates, because they organise and share activities. Whatever interest you can imagine, there is a house for that. Startup house, social entrepreneurs house, yoga house. Most of them recruit members publicly; others rely on wild rumours as the only advertising channel. For example, an invitation-only startup house in San Francisco accepts only entrepreneurs who have already sold their first company. Which is quite boring compared to a pick-up artists house or a clitoral stimulation house. The latter is not a joke. I met a guy who lived in an orgasmic meditation house (read about OM houses and 1080 Folsom Street). Imagine that, every morning female residents line up for a clit massage. Guys do the stroking for twenty minutes, everybody says thank you, and then they go off to work. California.
I didn’t have the pleasure of living in an OM house, but I spent two winters in the Slovenian Startup House and Embassy SF. I was sceptical at first, thinking I was too old to be in roommate arrangements. But although there were no naked women laying around, I really enjoyed the experience. The cleaning lady would come once a week; we had common meals and shared food. Embassy SF even had a sauna, coworking space, 3D printers, bowling alley, automated food delivery and shared cars. I was sharing an enormous residence with interesting people for the price of a small Airbnb room. Impressed by my San Francisco experience, I decided to create a similar thing in Croatia ‒ a simple house for young working people, nothing niche.
An opportunity soon arose. My new startup needed an office space. I decided to upgrade my flat. Rent for each was around €400 per month, so the total was €800. For just a bit more I could get an entire house. Within a month I had found the perfect place: 250 sqm, completely new, with 5 bedrooms, a view, gym, sauna and a backyard ‒ all for a mere €1200 per month. Outside rush hour, it was an 18-minute drive to the city centre. To test an idea before putting down a deposit, I created an “MVP”. I posted an ad and copied agency pictures, as though I already had a house. I named it “Zagreb Cohousing” and declared it was for “young professionals (24-44) with a steady income”. Six people applied. Perfect! I started negotiating with a landlord. She stared blankly while I explained cohousing and told her that I wanted to sub-let the rooms. Two meetings later and after doubling my deposit, she agreed. After signing the contract I felt enormously happy. Every room was screaming with unrealised potential. Not for long, I thought.
It started superbly. I found my first roommate in one day. Jure, who had responded to the “fake” ad, was enthusiastic and moved into the large room two days before I did. He had a job in nearby Slovenia but was drawn to Zagreb’s bigger city vibe. Every weekend, his girlfriend and friends would come over for a barbecue. We joked that his ensuite bathroom was so large that people could live in it ‒ because they often did. If he put a mattress on the heated floor, two extra people could sleep over. They would often make extra food and leave it with a cute post-it note.
The lobby became the work space for my startup. A cleaning lady would come weekly. “Cleaning” doesn’t do her justice, because she also did the ironing, changed the bed sheets and cooked one or two meals for us ‒ all for €25 a week. We felt like the Rockefellers.
We started organising parties and potluck dinners. A girl whom I had been seeing previously called me up and said, “I hear you have a sauna. When can I try it out?” Life was great.
But there was a problem. The house was half empty. I put more effort into marketing and created a website and a Facebook page. I was featured in the local newspaper. The more people contacted me, the more obvious it became that my initial MVP test was wrong. I hadn’t investigated the target market. For a start I was surprised that most of the applicants were heavily into an alternative lifestyle. That wouldn’t have been a problem, but our house didn’t have anything to offer them. Do you have an organic garden? Are you vegetarians? How far is the house by bicycle? I organise monthly energy healing classes ‒ does that count as a steady income? They were disappointed to hear the landlord didn’t want a garden planted, that we ate meat, and that the house was a one-hour bike ride from the city centre. Their biggest disappointment was the price of €160 per month for a modest room.
I knew Croatia has a high rate of unemployment and that many people don’t have cars, but surely there were three people in the capital city who wanted to pay a little extra for a nicer lifestyle? But how to find them? Since the price was about the same, I placed an ad in classifieds for single-room apartments. The next day, I got a call. “We’ve deleted your ad,” the moderator said, “because it belongs to the rooms-for-rent section.” After I did exactly that, I started laughing. The photo of our house was squeezed between pictures of small rooms with ʼ80s furniture and for half the price. Then I realised that that small money is still enough for some old lady to pay her monthly bills, and I stopped laughing.
There was another problem. A few of the application emails were enthusiastic, especially from girls. They loved the concept and wanted to visit. The next email was less eager and, by the last one, they had changed their mind. I realised later that between the first and the last emails they had had talks with friends and family. Some people asked me straight out if we were a sect or a hippie/free love commune. One real estate agent called our landlord and claimed that we would destroy the house. Nobody had heard of Danish cohousing, but everybody watched Hollywood movies. Somehow, I became a cohousing/coliving evangelist in Croatia. I did a few interviews and even appeared on national TV.
After New Year, Jure decided to move back to Slovenia. He was replaced by two others: Andreja, a very active girl who worked as a medical researcher, and Vlatko, a calm guy who translated French comics for a living. Same as Jure, they were a great fit; on evenings when we stayed in, we would always hang out in the winter garden. My brother moved in for a few months and converted a small room to a tricopter factory. Great, but we still needed two more permanent residents to consider it a success.
As the end of our first year in the house approached, I realised it was probably not going to happen. At the end of August, five people applied, all wanting the €160 room that was already taken. When I told them we had a €180 room available, they all said the extra €20 was more than they could afford. A few people came for a drink but decided they didn’t like the furniture or the location. Residents aside, I didn’t need an office anymore. My cofounder became a dad and started working from home, and our marketing guy decided to work from the Canary Islands. At one point I started looking for houses closer to the city centre, but they were double the price or simply in a bad condition. Running out of options and with two rooms still empty, I decided not to extend the lease.
Price wasn’t the main reason. Sometimes you need to quit in order to move on to new things. Andreja, Vlatko and I found a large three-bedroom flat nearby. It also has a large living room, a balcony and a view. Funnily enough, the price per room is the same. Nice places always cost money. We still have our cleaning lady, but that is it from shared economy. No work space, gym or garden. Large dinners, grocery delivery and car sharing don’t make sense with only three people.
I learned many things in the past year and the key takeaway is that most people are unwilling to pay extra for a shared housing arrangement. A flatmate situation is a typical tragedy of the commons; everybody values only their own property (private room) and sees little value in the public property (shared rooms). More than once people complained the price was too high for a room in the suburbs. Yes, it was ‒ but the price was for a house, not just for a room. In every sense, we felt like the house was ours and we made use of the shared spaces when we wanted. Having nice flatmates at the same time was an advantage. But people would disagree, and not just in Croatia. For example, a new trend in UK is rent-to-rent. Property investors rent houses and convert living and dining rooms into extra bedrooms. That way they rent out a three-bedroom house as five individual rooms and make a nice profit. Beautiful ‒ the total antipode of the cohousing/coliving concept. You sleep in a dining room, and the only way to socialise with flatmates is in the queue for the bathroom.
Still, I feel positive. The experience of living in the house was great; the only part I didn’t like was organising it. I met many, many people from all over the world excited about that kind of lifestyle. As I was leaving for the last time, I paused and looked back at what had been our home for one year. Maybe some other time, some other place.
Would you like to live in a world where coliving and cohousing are normal? You can help, just share this with your friends.It’s early yet and there’s a chance that the skewed Obamacare numbers of young and healthy enrollees being dwarfed by old and sick ones may not be as bad as some analysts are predicting.
But Big Insurance companies who salivated at the chance for tens of millions of new customers driven into their laps by a coercive government didn’t take any chances when the law was being written. By dint of the millions of dollars they’ve contributed to the campaigns of both parties, they were able to sneak into Obamacare a bailout provision that would have taxpayers footing the bill for the administration’s incompetence and their own greed.
Dan Mitchell compares a potential insurance bailout with the TARP program:
Some financial institutions gambled on the government’s misguided policies and got caught with their pants down when the bubble burst. But rather than let those companies fail and use the sensible and non-corrupt “FDIC resolution” method to recapitalize the banking system, we got a taxpayer-to-Wall-Street bailout. Or, from the perspective of the big banks, they got a very good return on their campaign contributions (read Kevin Williamson if you want to get upset about this disgusting form of cronyism). Well, as Yogi Berra might say, it’s deja vu all over again. Except now the fat cats lining up at the Treasury door are the big health insurance corporate titans. They got in bed with the White House to push Obamacare and now they’re worried about losing money now that it’s becoming more apparent that the American version of government-run healthcare doesn’t work any better than the British version. (H/T: Instapundit)
Mitchell points to this Charles Krauthammer column that explains the insurance bailout mechanism in Obamacare:
…there’s a Plan B. It’s a government bailout. Administration officials can’t say it for political reasons. And they don’t have to say it because it’s already in the Affordable Care Act, buried deep. First, Section 1341, the “reinsurance” fund collected from insurers and self-insuring employers at a nifty $63 a head. (Who do you think the cost is passed on to?) This yields about $20 billion over three years to cover losses. Then there is Section 1342, the “risk corridor” provision that mandates a major taxpayer payout covering up to 80 percent of insurance-company losses.
Mitchell speculates that the reason the bailout provision is in the bill is because “maybe the White House knew that Obamacare would be unstable and they needed a bailout option to keep the system from totally unraveling. Particularly when it seems that the Obama Administration is arbitrarily changing the system every other day.”
So, in addition to making a deal with the devil that will enrich their companies by tens of billions of dollars, the titans of the health insurance industry made damn sure that if things went south, they wouldn’t be stuck holding the bag.
How did Republicans miss this? This would have been a deal killer even with some Democrats if it had come out before the final vote. Regardless, the question is what to do about it.
Krauthammer:
…the GOP needs to act. Obamacare is a Rube Goldberg machine with hundreds of moving parts. Without viable insurance companies doing the work, it falls apart. No bailout, no Obamacare. Such a bill would be overwhelmingly popular because Americans hate fat-cat bailouts of any kind. Why should their tax dollars be spent not only saving giant insurers but also rescuing this unworkable, unbalanced, unstable, unpopular money-pit of a health-care scheme? …Do you really think vulnerable Democrats up for reelection will vote for a bailout? And who better to slay Obamacare than a Democratic Senate — liberalism repudiating its most important creation of the last 50 years. Want to be even bolder? Attach the anti-bailout bill to the debt ceiling. That and nothing else. Dare the president to stand up and say: “I’m willing to let the country default in order to preserve a massive bailout for insurance companies.” …Who can argue with no bailout? Let the Senate Democrats decide: Support the bailout and lose the Senate. Or oppose the bailout and bury Obamacare.
Some choice. The problem is, if there’s no bailout and the insurance companies suffer enormous losses, what happens to the individual insurance market? Or group plans? Might premiums be massively increased to offset the losses? How else can the companies recoup their losses? How many more Americans will be unable to afford insurance of any kind if the government lets them hang?
No one knows, and the insurance companies are banking on that uncertainty — just like the big banks did for TARP when they warned of a depression if they didn’t get their bailout.
“Too Big to Fail” may become “Too Important to Fail” if the companies get their way.Looking down on Gramercy Park, 1944 (Courtesy Museum of the City of New York)
PODCAST Gramercy Park is Manhattan’s only private park, a prohibited place for most New Yorkers. However we have your keys to the history of this significant and rather unusual place, full of the city’s greatest inventors, civic leaders and entertainers.
Literally pulled up from swampy land, Gramercy Park naturally appealed to the city’s elite, a pocket neighborhood with classic old brownstones so vital to the city’s early growth that two streets sprang from its creation — Irving Place and Lexington Avenue.
Within the story of Gramercy Park there are echoes of modern debates over class and land usage. The area’s creator Samuel Ruggles was a New York developer before his time, perfecting techniques that modern developers are still using to convince both the city and its residents of the importance and vitality of their high-end projects.
At right: Inside the park with Edwin Booth (Photo by Helaine Magnus, courtesy NYHS)
In this show, we give you an overview of its history — a birds eye’s view, if you will — then follow it up with a virtual walking tour that you can use to guide yourself through the area, on foot or in your mind. (You can follow along virtually starting here.) In this tour, we’ll give you the insights on an early stop on the Underground Railroad, the house of a controversial New York mayor, a fabulous club of thespians, and a hotel that has hosted both the Rolling Stones and John F. Kennedy (though not at the same time).
ALSO: We tell you the right way to get into Gramercy Park — and the wrong way.
To get this week’s episode, simply download it for FREE from iTunes or other podcasting services, subscribe to our RSS feed or get it straight from our satellite site.
You can also listen to the show on Stitcher streaming radio and Player FM from your mobile devices.
Or listen to it straight from here:
The Bowery Boys #171: The Keys To Gramercy Park
Below: Looking west onto Gramercy Park, photo between 1909-1915. You can see both the Flatiron and the Metropolitan Life Tower in the distance. [LOC]
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Samuel Ruggles, the mastermind behind the Union Square and Gramercy Park developments, two parks with drastically different fates. While Union Square would eventually be considered ‘the people’s park’ and a center of working class protest, Gramercy Park would retain its guarded, exclusive character.
A 1831 map outlining the lands owned and developed by Samuel Ruggles. Lexington Avenue and Irving Place have already been planned by this time. (Courtesy MCNY)
The 1918 unveiling of Gramercy Park’s one permanent resident — the statue of Edwin Booth. (NYPL)
The esteemed Dr. Valentine Mott who lived (with his large family) at 1 Gramercy Park. (
3 and 4 Gramercy Park from 1935 — and they look exactly the same today! The lampposts indicate that this was once the home of former mayor James Harper. (Photo by Berenice Abbot, NYPL)
A architectural cross-section of 4 Gramercy Park, showing the size of the house.
New York governor and almost-U.S. president Samuel Tilden lived in Gramercy Park. His home would later be transformed into the National Arts Club.
Enjoying a banquet at the National Arts Club in 1908. As you can see, the membership has always been open to both men and women, a trait few social clubs of the day enjoyed. (NYPL)
The Players Club in 1905. In this photo the building is mournfully adorned in black crepe in honor of the actor Joseph Jefferson.
The Friends Meeting House in 1965. It would become the Brotherhood Synagogue ten years later. (Courtesy Wurts Brothers, MCNY)
Children within the park, 1944. The Edwin Booth statue stands in the background here (MCNY)By Brian Wheeler
Political reporter, BBC News, Lib Dem conference
Charles Kennedy is concerned about cuts proposals Former Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy has warned successor Nick Clegg the party is in danger of losing its "heart" over proposed spending cuts. He said party members were concerned when they heard "words like'savage' being bandied about". And they were against Mr Clegg's proposals to drop a pledge to scrap university tuition fees in England. Mr Kennedy was speaking in Bournemouth on the second day of the Lib Dem's annual conference. He told the BBC News Channel: "We have got to keep our head and make sure the numbers add up, in terms of public policy, but we have to show particular groups in society we haven't lost our hearts as well." Mr Clegg said the pledge could cost £12bn and he had to be "realistic" about whether it was affordable right now. The possibility of scrapping one of the party's flagship policies has risked putting Mr Clegg on a collision course with activists and influential figures on the left of the party. The party's Federal Policy Committee, which has the final say on the party's programme for the next election, voted earlier this year to keep the policy. We want to deliver that policy but it is a policy which has significant financial implications
Nick Clegg Many Lib Dem supporters are worried that the policy, which they say distinguishes the party from Labour and the Conservatives, is being downgraded from a concrete goal to a long-term aspiration as all parties compete to identify spending cuts. Earlier Mr Kennedy said the party should be "careful" about ditching policy promises such as tuition fees and free care for the elderly that are at the core of its values. "I think that's served us well but I think those are also defining features, if you like, of a Liberal Democrat society," he told the BBC's Andrew Marr programme. Asked if the tuition fees pledge should be retained, Mr Kennedy replied: "Well, I think so. I think you should do so in terms of principle. "And I think in addition if you simply look at the parliamentary reality, those age groups were very important to us at the last election, some of the gains that we made, not least against Labour." Former Lib Dem president Simon Hughes said the entire education budget should be protected during a future spending squeeze, describing it as "absolutely sacrosanct". He said the party was having an "honest" debate in public about what its priorities should be given the tight budgetary constraints. Although that debate had not "concluded", he said it was clear most party members wanted the fees pledge to be retained. Mr Clegg and Treasury Spokesman Vince Cable have insisted that nothing is off-limits as they are determined to show they are serious about slashing spending to tackle Britain's record national debt. 'No question mark' Mr Clegg told party members on Sunday that the issue was one of affordability, not commitment, since experts had told him that the policy could cost £12.5bn to implement over the next four years. "There is no question mark over the policy of the Lib Dems on tuition fees," he said. "There is no question about my personal commitment to that policy. The only question is when we can afford to scrap tuition fees." "We want to deliver that policy but it is a policy which has significant financial implications." Mr Clegg has warned of "serious and bold" cuts in spending under a Lib Dem administration - but said they will be in areas that allow vital public services to be protected. Withdrawing tax credits from high earners and freezing public sector pensions were a price worth paying to ensure the party could cut class sizes, support disadvantaged pupils and keep key public sector workers in their jobs, he has argued. The autumn conference is the last before the next general election, which must be held within the next nine months.
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StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable versionThe American Family Association’s Tim Wildmon was the guest on “WallBuilders Live” today, discussing his organization’s “bigotry map,” which it recently released in response to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s decision to designate his organization as an anti-gay hate group several years ago.
The AFA released this map in a desperate attempt to brand the organization’s critics as “bigoted anti-Christian zealots” for daring to point out the AFA’s own unrelenting stream of vitriolic bigotry, with Wildmon explaining that it is necessary for the AFA to fight back against the “sexual anarchists” who attack them simply because they “represent God’s message of a moral standard having to do with sexuality” in America.
“One of the things that the secular humanists, secular progressives like Obama and others want to push is sexual anarchy,” he said. “They really want to force GLBT, homosexual politics on America because they hate the Christian moral standard having to do with sex because it judges some things as moral and immoral and they can’t stand that. They can’t stand God telling them how to behave. And we, as Christians in this country, represent God’s message of a moral standard having to do with sexuality and God’s word teaches that homosexuality is a sin and they can’t tolerate that. So they go after us as the messenger”The MySQL Development team is very happy to announce that MySQL 5.7.7, the first 5.7 Release Candidate (RC1), is now available for download at dev.mysql.com (use the “Development Releases” tab). You can find the full list of changes and bug fixes in the 5.7.7 release notes. Here are some highlights. Enjoy!
SYS Schema
Include SYS Schema in MySQL 5.7 (WL#8159) — This work by Mark Leith integrates the SYS Schema (formerly ps_helper) within the MySQL Server by default. The MySQL SYS schema project has become increasingly popular within our user base over the last year. Many DBAs and developers within our user base noted that it brought some needed simplicity to configuring and querying the Performance Schema, integrating it with Information_Schema, and more. For example, see a community post here. The works also implements the feature request from Bug#71207.
Scalability
Improve scalability by partitioning LOCK_grant lock (WL#8355) — After we improved scalability by not using THR_LOCK locks for InnoDB tables (WL#6671), the LOCK_grant lock then became more visible as the next scalability bottleneck in some workloads; for example, the single table InnoDB POINT_SELECT Sysbench tests (see also Bug#72829). This work by Dmitry Lenev addresses this issue and further improves scalability by partitioning the LOCK_grant lock.
Improve scalability by not acquiring unnecessary locks for internal temp tables (WL#8356) — This work by Dmitry Lenev removes bottlenecks around LOCK_plugin and THR_LOCK_lock in workloads which involve the creation of internal memory based temporary tables; for example, like Sysbench’s SELECT_DISTINCT test for InnoDB. There is no real reason why we should acquire these locks for internal temporary tables, so we removed this unnecessary overhead.
Replication
Binlogging XA-prepared transactions (WL#6860) — This work by Andrei Elkin adds full support for XA-transactions within replication. An XA-transaction allows the client to participate in a two-phase commit protocol. The state of the XA-transaction being prepared is persisted in the database; this means that a prepared XA-transaction will survive client reconnects and server restarts. This work fixes Bug#12161.
Deprecate @@session.gtid_executed (WL#7518) — This work by Shivji Jha causes deprecation warnings to be generated when a user accesses the @@session.gtid_executed Server status variable. We plan to remove the session variable completely in MySQL 5.8 (leaving only the globally scoped variable).
Security
Support SSL by default in libmysql (WL#7712) — This work by Yashwant Sahu ensures the use of SSL whenever it has been enabled within the Server. If none of the SSL options are specified, libmysql client will attempt an SSL connection if it is supported by the Server. If an SSL connection is not possible, however, then libmysql client will fall back to an unencrypted connection.
Expand proxy user capabilities for built-in authentication plugins (WL#7724) — This work by Todd Farmer extends the built-in authentication plugins to support proxy users. MySQL Server had an existing concept of proxy users which can support a major use case that is typically met by SQL Roles: the ability to abstract user credentials/identity from the privileges assigned. This allows multiple users–identified, logged, and audited in a distinct manner—to share a single set of managed privileges. For deployments with many users having identical privileges, this can provide major operational benefits, but until now, proxy users could only be leveraged by external authentication plugins. This work removes that previous limitation.
Extend Secure Deployment work to all Unix variants (WL#7787) — This work by Surya Narayana extends the work previously done for Oracle Linux to all other Unix variants and Unix like operating systems. 1) For all Unix packages which do not prompt the user for an initial password, a random password should be generated by default. 2) For all supported Unix platforms, a package without the Test/Demo database(s), the Test/Demo libraries, and the Test/Demo scripts or binaries will be provided. 3) For all supported Unix platforms, no anonymous users or accounts will be created by default.
Upgrade
Ensure 5.7 supports smooth “live” upgrades from 5.6 (WL#8350) — This work by Robert Golebiowski ensures that during the upgrade process the 5.7 binaries will work with the 5.6 data directory layout, and without having to specify the --skip-grant-tables or other non-standard options. This work seamlessly and automatically handles all changes made to the MySQL system tables between 5.6 and 5.7 (most notably, in 5.7 the plugin field cannot be null and password field has been removed).
GIS
Implement ST_Buffer and ST_Distance with Boost.Geometry (WL#7929) — This work by David Zhao replaces the current ST_Buffer() implementation with the Boost.Geometry buffer implementation. This work also replaces the old ST_Distance() implementation with the Boost.Geometry algorithms.
Geometry Set Operations Depending on Boost Geometry Extensions (WL#7225) — This work by Norvald Ryeng replaces the old GIS implementation with calls to Boost.Geometry for the following functions: ST_Intersects(), ST_Union(), ST_Difference(), ST_SymDifference(), and ST_IsSimple(). This work fixes Bug#73850.
Parser
Parser for Optimizer Hints (WL#8016) — This work by Gleb Shchepa adds parser rules to support a new hint syntax for optimizer hints. Hints can now be specified directly after the SELECT|INSERT|REPLACE|UPDATE|DELETE keywords in an SQL statement, and they must be enclosed in /*+ */ style comments. Not only does this provide the end-user with a more consistent and easy to use method of managing hints, but the internal refactoring done makes it far easier to add Server side support for additional hints moving forward (see WL#8241 and WL#8243 below).
Optimizer
Infrastructure for Optimizer Hints (WL#8017) — This work by Sergey Glukhov implements the general infrastructure common to all hints given the new syntax (see WL#8016). This includes: 1. a data structure for associating hints with the relevant query block during parsing 2. utility functions for resolving the names of database objects (e.g. table names, index names, etc.) and associating the hints with the relevant objects 3. a data structure that the Optimizer can use to look up hints within the current query.
Hints for Join Buffering and Batched Key Access (WL#8241) — This work by Sergey Glukhov adds new hints that allow the user to influence the Optimizer as it decides whether to use join buffering or batched key access during the execution of the query against the given set of tables.
Index Level Hints for MySQL 5.7 (WL#8243) — This work by Sergey Glukhov adds new hints that allow the user to control which indexes should be candidates for index condition pushdown (ICP), multi-range read (MMR), and range optimization.
Server Defaults
Enable multiple page cleaners and purge threads by default (WL#8316) — This work by Bin Su changes the defaults values of innodb_page_cleaners to 4 (was: 1) and innodb_purge_threads to 4 (was: 1). This offers better “out-of-the-box” performance on modern systems.
Make innodb_checksum_algorithm=CRC32 the default (WL#8315) — This work by Vasil Dimov changes the default of innodb_checksum_algorithm to ‘CRC32’ (was: innodb). This offers better performance due to the commonly available hardware acceleration on modern systems.
Enable InnoDB Buffer Pool dumps by default (WL#8317) — This work by Shaohua Wang changes the server to use the buffer pool dump by default and changes the default percentage to 25%. This work changes the default values of innodb_buffer_pool_dump_at_shutdown to TRUE (was: FALSE), innodb_buffer_pool_dump_pct to 25 (was: 100), and innodb_buffer_pool_load_at_startup to ‘TRUE’ (was: FALSE). This offers a good default balance between 1. supporting a “hot” working data set and 2. shutdown and startup times.
Enable Simplified GTID recovery by default (WL#8318) — This work by Namit Sharma changes the default of binlog_gtid_simple_recovery to ‘ON’ (was: OFF). This offers improved recovery performance by default.
Make NO_AUTO_CREATE_USER sql_mode behavior the default (WL#8326) — This work by Marek Szymczak changes the default of sql_mode to include NO_AUTO_CREATE_USER. This is to prevent the GRANT statement from unintentionally and automatically creating new user accounts without any authentication information having been specified/provided. This is part of our larger effort around making MySQL safer by default (improved security and data safety), as well as offering more standards compliant behavior by default.
Set ROW based binary log format by default (WL#8313) — This work by Joao Gramacho changes the default of binlog-format to ‘ROW’ (was: STATEMENT). ROW format provides safe and reliable logging/replication in all cases, and it also allows for improved InnoDB locking semantics by safely allowing the optional use of the READ-COMMITTED isolation level and the interleaved auto increment mode ( innodb_autoinc_lock_mode=2 ).
Make binlog_error_action=ABORT_SERVER the default (WL#8314) — This work by Narendra Chauhan changes the default value of binlog_error_action to ‘ABORT_SERVER’ (was: IGNORE_ERROR). This makes data safety the default priority.
Enable crash safe binary logs by default (WL#8319) — This work by Joao Gramacho changes the default value of sync_binlog to 1 (was: 0). This enables crash safe replication by default, again making data safety the default priority.
Lower the default slave_net_timeout (WL#8320) — This work by Joao Gramacho changes the default value of slave_net_timeout to 60 (was: 3600). This avoids long replication delays due to periodic network failures. See also, Bug#74607.
Enable the statements_history and transactions_history consumers by default (WL#8321) — This work by Mayank Prasad changes the default values of performance-schema-consumer-events-statements-history and performance-schema-consumer-events-transactions-history to ‘ON’ (was: OFF). Together, these produce information that is extremely helpful in debugging a wide variety of query related issues.
Improve InnoDB defaults and deprecate settings that are no longer applicable (WL#7703) — This work by Marko Mäkelä changes the default value of innodb_strict_mode to ‘ON’ (was: OFF). This is to ensure that InnoDB returns errors rather than warnings for certain conditions (again, making data safety the default behavior). It also changes the default value of innodb_file_format to ‘Barracuda’ (was: Antelope). The Barracuda file format is required for support of the new DYNAMIC and COMPRESSED row formats (the Antelope based row formats of REDUNDANT and COMPACT are still supported). Lastly, it also changes the default value for innodb_large_prefix to ‘ON’ (was: OFF). This allows index key prefixes larger than 767 bytes (up to 3072 bytes) for InnoDB tables that use the DYNAMIC and COMPRESSED row formats.
Bug Fixes
We have received a lot of valuable feedback from the MySQL community throughout the 5.7 DMR cycle. This input is invaluable, and our community members deserve a large THANK YOU! Here are just a few highlights of some of the community reported bugs that are now fixed in 5.7.7 RC1:
Bug #76344: mysql_install_db does not wait for forked mysqld to finish bootstrap — reported by Roel Van de Paar
Bug #76262: Crash when running mysql_upgrade after binary upgrade — reported by Simon Mudd
Bug#34124: EXPLAIN EXTENDED shows bogus value for ‘filtered’ column for LIMIT query — reported by Sergey Petrunya
Bug#75833: InnoDB Failing assertion: found in buf0buf.cc line 3856 — reported by Roel Van de Paar
Bug#71892: Missing information in slow query log for slow HANDLER statements — reported by Davi Arnaut
Bug#74182: mysql --quick causes segmentation fault — reported by Bill Karwin
causes segmentation fault — reported by Bill Karwin Bug#68713: create_duplicate_weedout_tmp_table() leaves key_part_flag uninitialized — reported by Alexey Kopytov
leaves uninitialized — reported by Alexey Kopytov Bug#72829: LOCK_grant is major contention point, leaves 30-40% idle CPU — reported by Stewart Smith
Bug#60417: Slow VIEWS by using subselect as column — reported by Richard Teubel
Bug#12755: Subquery in FROM clause of views — reported by Kay Doebl
Bug#73008: “ check table.. for upgrade ” fails to report old datetime format — reported by Shane Bester
” fails to report old datetime format — reported by Shane Bester Bug#76509: Use atomics to avoid mutex contention on LOCK_plugin due to Query Rewrite framework — reported by Sergey Vojtovich
You can also learn about the work that we did in 5.7, leading up to this first release candidate, through this series of milestone blog posts: 5.7.1, 5.7.2, 5.7.3, 5.7.4, 5.7.5, 5.7.6.
That’s it
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on any car. But to Phil Dokas, it's a really good joke. And he's right. His "HTTP 418" vanity license plate is one of geekiest license plates ever attached to the back of a car -- and that's one of the highest compliments Wired could ever give. A couple of years ago, Dokas chose "HTTP 418" as the vanity plate for his Volkswagen Jetta. An HTTP 418 is an kind of internet status error, but it's not likely to turn up on your web browser. It was created as part of a 1998 April Fool's joke by those madcaps at the Internet Engineering Task Force, the people who define the internet's underlying protocols. More Geek Plates Live Free or Die: The Origins of the Geek License Plate Greatest Geek Plates: Readers' PicksHTTP 418 is part of the "Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol standard." It's the error you get when you try to make coffee in a teapot over the internet. According to a draft of the standard: "Any attempt to brew coffee with a teapot should result in the error code '418 I'm a teapot.' The resulting entity body MAY be short and stout." When the vanity plate arrived at his home, Dokas pulled out his camera. "I took a photo of it and put it online knowing full well that someone was going to eventually say: 'Hey, I get this. I think it's amazing." It took six months, Dokas says, but someone finally got the joke. Dokas eventually hung up the license plate when he sold his car and moved from Michigan to the Bay Area to take a job as a developer at Flickr. But if you pass by his cube, you can still see it on the wall. No license plate could ever match the genius of the HTTP 418. But many come close. Click through the images above to see them in all their splendor.... Photo: Phil Dokas/Flickr
This is the license plate that inspired Phil Dokas to get his "418" vanity plate. To most drivers, "CTHLHU" looks like some weird consonant-starved name, but to H.P. Lovecraft fans, this is a fiendishly funny plate. Lovecraft's Cthlhu is a scaly winged, tentacle-faced demon. In short, a completely evil creature with a whole different idea about "kids first." Photo: Pete Tosacano/Flickr
A great user error message, popular in tech support shops: "Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair." Photo: Jessamyn West/Flickr
You know you're a badass when you drive a Porsche with a Linux license plate command that could completely wipe all the files off that jerk who's tailgating you. Photo: Michael Ford/Flickr
Last spotted in May 2005. We think it is some sort of Google social network beloved by people in Brazil. Photo: Peter Kaminski/Flickr
A subtle hat-tip to trolling. In Windows, Alt-F4 closes the window you're typing in and is a favorite troll tech tip to knock newbies out of online games and chat rooms (i.e., having trouble with your computer? Try hitting Alt-F4). Photo: Brandon Debes/Flickr
If you think trigonometry on a license plate isn't cool, you are sadly mistaken. Photo: Mary MacTavish/Flickr
A beloved Unix command that somehow works perfectly on the back of a car. It means "file system check." Photo: Nathanael Burton/Flickr
A tip of the hat to the old syn-syn-ack three-way handshake that's used to set up a TCP/IP connection. Photo: Tim Vandegrift
Everyone will be wanting one of these babies... someday. Photo: Phil Hollenback/Flickr
Technically, it's an all-white license plate. This geek-joke license plate is the hexadecimal HTML color code for white. Photo: Jon Canady/Flickr
We spotted this Legomobile parked in Oracle's parking lot a few months back. Photo: Wired/Robert McMillan
There is a metaphor here. We're just not 100 percent sure we know what it is. Photo: J. Chris Vaughan/Flickr
No matter how hip Microsoft tells us that Windows 8 is going to be, a Microsoft license plate will always be geeky. Photo: Christina Dulude/Flickr
OK, "Dad of 3" is not a geeky license plate. But this license plate really does belong to Mr. Linux, the King of Geeks: Linus Torvalds Photo: Wired/Jon SnyderVANCOUVER, BC – Wondering who's heading to Tucson, Arizona with Vancouver Whitecaps FC for their upcoming training camp and friendlies?
We've got you covered.
Currently, there are 38 players on the travel roster. The roster features 26 first-team players, three unsigned MLS SuperDraft selections, seven WFC2 players, one Whitecaps FC Residency player, and one training camp invitee – additional invitees are expected to join the team in Tucson.
The 'Caps depart for Tucson on Sunday.
Note: The roster, and jersey numbers listed, are subject to change.
FIRST TEAM
# NAME POSITION 1 David Ousted GK 2 Jordan Harvey LB 3 Sam Adekugbe* LB 4 Kendall Waston** CB 6 Jordan Smith** RB 7 Christian Bolanos M 9 Nicolas Mezquida M 11 Darren Mattocks F 13 Cristian Techera M 15 Matias Laba M 19 Erik Hurtado F 20 Deybi Flores M 22 Christian Dean CB 23 Kekuta Manneh F 24 Marco Carducci GK 25 Fraser Aird D/M 26 Tim Parker* D 28 Gershon Koffie M 29 Octavio Rivero F 30 Ben McKendry M 31 Russell Teibert M 32 Marco Bustos* M 36 Masato Kudo F 38 Kianz Froese* M 44 Pa-Modou Kah CB 77 Pedro Morales M
* Will join camp following the friendly between Canada and the U.S. on Feb. 5
** Will join camp following the friendly between Costa Rica and Venezuela on Feb. 3
UNSIGNED MLS SUPERDRAFT SELECTIONS
# NAME POSITION 14 Cole Seiler CB 27 Christopher Hellmann F 33 Thomas Sanner F
WHITECAPS FC 2
# NAME POSITION 39 Spencer Richey GK 41 Jackson Farmer CB 45 Giuliano Frano D/M 46 Brett Levis M 48 Victor Blasco M 56 Daniel Haber F 63 Kadin Chung D
WHITECAPS FC RESIDENCY
# NAME POSITION 67 Alphonso Davies F
INVITEE
# NAME POSITION 40 Sean Melvin GK
Click here to find out how you can cheer on the ‘Caps, in person, at the 2016 Major League Soccer Preseason in Tucson.A former Coos County sheriff's deputy and his wife, a Romanian princess, were arrested Thursday as federal agents swept through eastern Oregon and southcentral Washington to upend a suspected cockfighting ring.
John Wesley Walker and
, staged at least 10 cockfighting derbies at their ranch near Irrigon between April 1, 2012, and last May 19, government prosecutors allege.
The accused cockfight hosts, with a supporting cast of 16 other suspects in Oregon and at least 10 in Washington, were charged in a conspiracy to violate the federal
.
The indictment alleges that the derbies featured dozens of cockfights in a ring, much like a fight card in a night of boxing. But the combatants were roosters, each with knives, gaffs or other cutting instruments attached to their legs, fighting to their deaths in a blood sport now outlawed in all 50 states.
John Wesley Walker
"Besides being a barbaric practice, cockfighting jeopardizes public health and safety and facilitates the commission of other criminal acts," said U.S. Attorney Amanda Marshall, Oregon's top federal prosecutor. The "fairly large-scale cockfighting venture" also supported illegal gambling, she said.
A referee supervised the fights as concessionaires sold beer and food, and those managing the action took a 10 percent "house" cut, prosecutors allege.
John and Irina Walker -- along with Irrigon neighbors David Sanchez, 29, and Aurelia Garcia Mendoza, 33, and Hermiston friends Mario "El Cuba" Perez, 62, and Jose Luis Virgen Ramirez, 48 -- were charged with operating an illegal gambling business and unlawful animal fighting ventures at the Walkers' Morrow County ranch.
Each of the charges carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Federal agents searched homes and arrested people accused of participating in the cockfighting in eastern Oregon and Yakima, Wash. Some of those rounded up in Oregon are scheduled for arraignment before a federal magistrate in Portland's U.S. District Court on Friday.
Ten other suspects, all men, were arrested in Washington's Yakima Valley, about 68 miles northwest of Irrigon. They will appear before a magistrate in the William O. Douglas U.S. Courthouse in Yakima.
The busts come five years after a massive federal crackdown on cockfighting in the
. The government accused 63 people of taking part in staging a dozen cockfight derbies that began in Molalla in March 2006 and stretched to Grand Ronde, Warm Springs, Woodburn and Sunny Valley in Oregon and up into the Washington towns of Wapato, Sunnyside and Prosser.
Top purses in the earlier cockfighting case sometimes reached into the tens of thousands of dollars, authorities said.
The government alleges that the Walkers' horse ranch, on a flat patch of irrigation circles about two miles south of Irrigon, is subject to federal forfeiture because it was used in a criminal enterprise. The ranch's dwellings were valued at $170,360 in 2011, according to public records.
John Walker, 67, served as a sergeant in the Myrtle Point Police Department before going to work on Aug. 1, 1998, with the Coos County Sheriff's Office. He left that job in June 30, 2003, according to the county's Department of Human Resources. It's unclear what kind of work Walker might have performed in the last 10 years.
Walker in 2007 married the former Irina Kreuger, the middle of five daughters born to King Michael I and Queen Anne of
. A published account says the Walkers married in the Heart of Reno Chapel, in Reno, Nev.
Princess Irina, 60, is fifth in line to the throne, following her older sisters, Margareta and Elena, and Elena's two children, Nicholas and Elisabeta Karina. She was born and raised in Switzerland and moved to Oregon in 1983.
Irina Walker has never been a visible member of the royal family, which owns four castles in Romania. She has visited the European nation only a handful of times, said historian Filip-Lucian Iorga. Her biography is largely unknown to the Romanian public, he said. The royal family is popular, but largely uninvolved in local politics.
In 1944, King Michael led a coup against a pro-Nazi government. His family lived in exile for more than four decades after the country fell under communism after World War II. The king was forced to abdicate in 1947 by communists threatening to kill more than 1,000 young Romanian prisoners. The king and queen have lived modestly in Switzerland and the United Kingdom, maintaining a chicken farm and a carpenter's shop.
-- Bryan Denson
-- Simina MistreanuBelow are photos from HK’s 5th and biggest ever gay pride gathering on Saturday. All are courtesy of AFP correspondent Jerome Taylor… He said: “Much less openly camp but no less radical, Hong Kong’s pride march is part celebration of all things LGBT, part two fingers up at the pro-Beijing establishment and social orthodoxy.” Follow Jerome’s photography on Flickr.
Organisers estimated that 5,200 people took part (police estimated 4,500). This is double the number of participants compared to two years ago. Click here to see the blog’s coverage of last year’s march.
There were a number of other, less happier, stories related to HK’s LGBT community making the headlines over the weekend…
News of a TVB actress’s love affair with a same-sex actor emerged – she was suspended by the broadcaster for 2 months (Apple Daily Chinese).
The Liberal (sic) Party collected signatures from the public to oppose marriage equality for LGBT people (Apple Daily Chinese).
A domestic helper employer attempted to “convert” their maid to be straight (Apple Daily Chinese).
Earlier in the week, a transgender woman accused immigration officials of behaving ‘like animals’ during a search at HK airport (SCMP).
Equal Opportunities Commission chairperson Dr York Chow Yat-ngok was joined by politicians, celebrities and key figures such as Tanya Chan, Michael Vidler, Charles Mok and Long Hair…
Corporate entities, such as JP Morgan, Citibank, Barclays, Goldman Sachs and Nomura sponsored and attended the event. Despite this, many of the financial institutions that were present remain oddly silent when it comes to LGBT rights in their other areas of operation, such as in sub-Saharan Africa.
HK remains years behind other ‘world cities’ with regards to LGBT rights. Homosexuality was only legalised in 1991 and the age of consent was only equalised for gay couples in 2006 (despite opposition from Donald Tsang). In 2008, a judge upheld a ruling against RTHK for broadcasting a programme about homosexuality which failed to give air-time to homophobic counter viewpoints. And until as recently as 2009, co-habiting gay couples were not recognised in the Domestic Violence Ordinance.
Meanwhile, anti-discrimination laws remain flimsy. Same-sex marriage and civil unions are illegal and sex changes are not recognised by the state. However, there was progress this year for marriage equality for trans-gendered people.
There are still no specific laws targeting hate crimes directed against the LGBT community in HK.
In 2012, legislators voted against a motion urging the government to consult the public on new laws to protect the rights of sexual minorities whilst 27% of citizens surveyed believed gays should “keep their views to themselves”.
Much of the local opposition to gay rights has been fanned by religious folk and the right-wing Society for Truth and Light (who have been quite rightly described as the SAR’s “moral Taliban”.) Earlier this year, thousands of bigots gathered at LEGCO, united in intolerance, demonstrating against homosexuality.
The ongoing debates still raging in Hong Kong plant our city firmly in the 1970s, whilst the rest of the world moves on at break neck speed.
At this year’s rally, ex-legistlator Tanya Chan told GayStar News that “You don’t have to be gay to support equal rights… I believe everyone who believes in justice should strive for equality.”
Upcoming LGBT events are listed on the Pink Alliance FB page.
Hong Kong’s LGBT community…Mitt Romney thinks you’re dumb. Maybe he’s sure of it.
He knows he doesn’t need to release his tax returns, as his father and every major presidential candidate have done for generations. He knows he didn’t need to release the names of the bundlers who have raised millions for his campaign as every candidate has done since the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform went into law. He’s sure he can propose trillions in new tax cuts, claim they’ll pay for themselves and never explain how.
So why wouldn’t Mitt Romney believe the American people are dumb?
From his business career to his life in politics, his life has been an endless process of running as a progressive savior and governing like a Fox News commentator.
Gene Lyons said it best,“Mitt’s less a flip-flopper than a particularly shameless opportunist.”
And Mitt has suffered zero consequences for shamelessly shifting on everything. He doesn’t just lie about what he will do and what he believes; he lies about what he’s done.
He rants against debt and government spending when his entire business career was built on leveraging debt, and he “saved” the Salt Lake City Olympics with government spending. He would be better for gay rights than Ted Kennedy and as governor waged a one-man war on gay couples being able to adopt. He passed a health care plan that he said would be a model for the nation and then ran against his health care plan being adopted by the nation.
In his lifelong quest to become president, Mitt Romney has been for and against nearly everything, including grits. His goal has been to make it perfectly impossible to attack him for what he believes because you can’t figure out what he believes. Sure he said spending federal money on disaster relief was immoral, but that was before disaster relief was popular.
Being for everything is kind of a politician’s dream. But even in a trade that depends on pleasing a majority of the people all of the time, no one would dare dream to dash from stance to stance as Romney has.
Thankfully, there’s one stance Mitt Romney has taken that he hasn’t been able to erase or cloud with lies—and when he tried, he only made it worse.
In November of 2008, Romney said “Let Detroit go bankrupt.” And he meant it.
To be clear, the auto industry would have crumbled without an immediate injection of cash. The CEO of General Motors says they needed cash ASAP to survive and none—zero—was available in the private sector, even from Bain Capital. Yes, Romney was proposing government help—but only after bankruptcy.
Why did Mitt Romney want Detroit to go straight into bankruptcy? He wasn’t trying to destroy the auto industry, though he was risking just that. He was trying to destroy the auto workers’ union.
716
0
0
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2
718It was expected that Vitesse would roll over their fourth-division opponents, Jodan Boys, in their Dutch Cup match on Wednesday. What wasn’t expected, however, was where the first goal would come from.
The scoring didn’t take long to open up, and it was U.S. Men’s National Team defender Matt Miazga who found the back of the net for the hosts in the 14th minute. Miazga found the ball at his feet in the center of the box, found his striking boots, and fired a left-footed shot into the bottom-right corner to give Vitesse the early 1-0 lead.
The goal is Miazga’s first with his loan club in 10 total matches, and first since transferring to Chelsea from the New York Red Bulls at the end of the 2015 season. The hosts would go on to roll over their opposition, scoring three more times en route to a 4-0 victory and advancement in the competition.
UPDATE
Video of the goal has emerged.Any price comparison is to a new, nonrefurbished product price.
Toshiba Encore 2 32GB 10.1” Windows Tablet (Manufacturer Refurbished)
LED backlighting gives bright color and crisp definition to both images and text on this tablet’s 10.1” display, and an Intel Atom processor keeps apps running smoothly.
Large HD Display
Larger than most tablet displays, the Encore 2’s 10.1” screen gives you a better view of websites and ebooks, and its sharp HD resolution makes movies and video games feel more immersive.
Plenty of Storage
The Encore’s 32GB of built-in storage gives you plenty of space to store your favorite playlists and download new apps, and a microSD card slot lets you expand your capacity to accommodate music libraries, photo albums, and documents.
All-Day Battery Life
Stream shows, conquer levels in games, or take copious notes on software user agreements without fear of running out of power. This tablet’s battery can last for up to 11 hours on a single charge, letting you work or play throughout the day.
Specifications
Model number: WT10-A32
10.1” LED-backlit touchscreen display
1280x800 resolution
1.83GHz Intel Atom Z3735G processor
32GB storage
1GB RAM
5MP rear camera
1.2MP front camera
802.11 b/g/n WiFi
Bluetooth 4.0
Micro HDMI port
microSD card slot
Micro-USB 2.0 port
Integrated speakers and microphone
Windows 8.1 OS with Bing
22.5Wh lithium-ion battery
Battery life: up to 11 hours
Weight: 19.4oz.
Dimensions: 10.2”x6.9”x0.35”
Condition: manufacturer refurbished
90-day warranty from Toshiba
About Toshiba
As a top-10 global electronics company, Toshiba manufactures a sweeping range of products, including TVs, medical imaging equipment, industrial motors, and HDTVs that are visible to ghosts. Though its production has become increasingly diversified, its corporate philosophy remains simple—Toshiba views itself as responsible for helping to create a safer, better world through innovation and technology. To this end, the company has launched its Toshiba Group Environmental Vision 2050, which has the primary goal of making the company 10 times more eco-efficient by the year 2050.
Tablet FAQ
Answers to common questions for first-time tablet buyers. Answers to common questions for first-time tablet buyers.
Tablet Buying Guide
A simplified look at the complex world of tablets. Find out which features are right for you. A simplified look at the complex world of tablets. Find out which features are right for you.
For questions pertaining to this deal, click the Ask a Question button below. For post-purchase inquiries, please contact Groupon customer support.
Goods sold by Groupon Goods. View the Groupon Goods FAQ to learn more.Sounds had become muted. Screaming. My vision was flooded. Screaming. I could only try, and fail, to stem an unbidden river flowing down my face. Screaming.
+ + +
I was about to learn what fear really was.
“Get her in surgery! Now, now!”
I thought I knew what it was to be scared. I have been in fights, car accidents, and have been told by doctors that I would die. But I was never scared before. Not really.
“Sir! You have to stay here, sir!”
The pregnancy had gone well so we expected the birth of our child to go smoothly. Robin ran marathons and triathlons. She was always running, biking, swimming, or climbing the Empire State Building every morning. She was in great shape, and it allowed her to carry the pregnancy well.
“Here’s a chair, sir. Sir, here’s a chair.”
We did everything right. We saw the doctor. We took birth classes. Robin would read aloud how the baby had developed every week, and recorded her progress with pictures. I wrote silly blogs about the classes.
“Just sit down, sir.”
The due date came and went but the baby was comfortably ensconced. About a week later, it was decided labor would be induced. We spent the night in the hospital, waiting for the labor process to run its course.
And then something went wrong.
Roxanne, our nurse, was standing by Robin with her hands on my wife’s belly when I returned with some ice. She turned to me and in an overly calm voice said, “Sweetie, I need you to go to the desk and get the residents.”
Years ago, delirious and woozy, I was brought to the Emergency Room by a friend who, as it turned out, was correct in his concern for me. What followed next was two solid months in the hospital.
I’d had no real idea how serious my condition was, but I was rushed in immediately by the triage nurse and the examination room filled up with doctors, all speaking in the same overly calm voice Roxanne had just used. I knew there was something seriously wrong then. Even through the thick delirium in my brain.
So when our delivery room began filling up with hospital staff early that morning I began to feel my first twinge of fear. Real fear.
“Not liking the readings.”
The stereotypes say you get a chill down your spine. Cold sweats. Numbness. Invisible icy fingers. Many allegories equate fear with frigid temperatures.
“Can someone page the doctor?”
The nice doctor who had been assigned to us came sprinting into the room right then, out of breath. She shouldered her way through the half dozen people surrounding my wife.
“Let me see, let me see!”
Fear feels like there is a bubble in the middle of your head that was not there before. It expands immediately, and it pushes all of your thoughts and emotions out of its way. It becomes difficult to think, and impossible to experience any other emotion.
“The baby’s heartbeat is down.”
It is as if you have a balloon in your head. Not light-headedness exactly, as I could imagine pressure pushing out from the inside of my skull. My body had gone numb insofar as I was no longer considering it at all.
“We need to go for a C-section right now.”
I began to lumber up from my seat but by the time I was standing, they had rushed Robin out of the room. I plodded after them to see them disappear through double doors and that’s when a nurse stopped me.
The balloon in my head was screaming. Incoherently. Unrelentingly. It was taking maximum effort to not lose it completely. Screaming in my head. Screaming. Screaming.
As the nurse led me to a chair I could see a group of young med students. In mid-tour, they had witnessed the whole thing. They were new at this and none of them had the practiced calm of the veterans. Some flushed red, some drained pale. All reflected how I felt.
Sounds had become muted. Screaming. My vision was flooded. Screaming. I could only try, and fail, to stem an unbidden river flowing down my face. Screaming.
A nurse had come out of the Operating Room and was telling me to follow her. She had scrubs for me. Before I could change into them, another nurse had appeared.
“Mr. MacDonald, the baby is out, everything is fine.”
This is where I felt the chill. The balloon in my head popped, and like a sudden rush of air, the screaming shot down through my body, dusting me with snow. I had to concentrate on keeping steady.
I wanted to ask if she was sure; if Robin was OK; can I see them; what happened; how does our son look? But my mouth wouldn’t work. Instead I made a vague twirling with my finger next to my head. She smiled and said the baby would be right out.
And then he was in front of me. Liam. Emotion flooded back into the shell that was my body. Another river. But no screaming, so that was OK.
The students were still standing there. All of them were beaming. I walked with Liam past them to their congratulations. Some of them were crying with me.
Robin is fine. When our doctor came to tell me the good news, we embraced long and hard. I made a point to find Roxanne later to thank her. Without her sharp eye, maybe I don’t have a son now, maybe not even a wife.
The whole incident from start to birth, took about five minutes. It turned out to not be that big a deal, actually. We were in the hospital in case anything went wrong, and the staff there reacted quickly and knew just what to do.
While it was natural to feel fear, it didn’t help the situation, and made the whole thing seem a lot worse than it was. And those feelings of fear were melted away by the love for our son. That was far stronger.
This morning, as I left for work, Robin was holding Liam gently. Our fat cat, Mickey, preened in the sunbeam that flooded them with gold.
It is a snapshot in my mind I will treasure forever.Feral bull in Sierra Nevada, Venezuela
A pair of feral mustangs in Oregon
A feral animal or plant (from Latin fera, "a wild beast") is one that lives in the wild but is descended from domesticated individuals.
As with an introduced species, the introduction of feral animals or plants to non-native regions may disrupt ecosystems and has, in some cases, contributed to extinction of indigenous species. The removal of feral species is a major focus of island restoration.
Animals [ edit ]
A feral animal is one that has escaped from a domestic or captive status and is living more or less as a wild animal, or one that is descended from such animals.[1] Other definitions[2] include animals that have changed from being domesticated to being wild, natural, or untamed. Some common examples of animals with feral populations are horses, dogs, goats, cats, and pigs. Zoologists generally exclude from the feral category animals that were genuinely wild before they escaped from captivity: neither lions escaped from a zoo nor the sea eagles recently re-introduced into the UK are regarded as feral.[3]
Plants [ edit ]
Domesticated plants that revert to wild are referred to as escaped, introduced, naturalized, or sometimes as feral crops. Individual plants are known as volunteers. Large numbers of escaped plants may become a noxious weed. The adaptive and ecological variables seen in plants that go wild closely resemble those of animals. Feral populations of crop plants, along with hybridization between crop plants and their wild relatives, brings a risk that genetically engineered characteristics such as pesticide resistance could be transferred to weed plants.[4] The unintended presence of genetically modified crop plants or of the modified traits in other plants as a result of cross-breeding is known as "adventitious presence (AP)".[5][6]
Variables [ edit ]
Certain familiar animals go feral easily and successfully, while others are much less inclined to wander and usually fail promptly outside domestication. Some species will detach readily from humans and pursue their own devices, but do not stray far or spread readily. Others depart and are gone, seeking out new territory or range to exploit and displaying active invasiveness. Whether they leave readily and venture far, the ultimate criterion for success is longevity. Persistence depends on their ability to establish themselves and reproduce reliably in the new environment. Neither the duration nor the intensity with which a species has been domesticated offers a useful correlation with its feral potential.[citation needed]
Species of feral animals [ edit ]
The cat returns readily to a feral state if it has not been socialized when young. These cats, especially if left to proliferate, are frequently considered to be pests in both rural and urban areas, and may be blamed for devastating the bird, reptile and mammal populations. A local population of feral cats living in an urban area and using a common food source is sometimes called a feral cat colony. As feral cats multiply quickly, it is difficult to control their populations. Animal shelters attempt to adopt out feral cats, especially kittens, but often are overwhelmed with sheer numbers and euthanasia is used. In rural areas, excessive numbers of feral cats are often shot. More recently, the "trap-neuter-return" method has been used in many locations as an alternative means of managing the feral cat population.
A feral goat in Cornwall
The goat is one of the oldest domesticated creatures, yet readily goes feral and does quite well on its own. Sheep are close contemporaries and cohorts of goats in the history of domestication, but the domestic sheep is quite vulnerable to predation and injury, and thus rarely seen in a feral state. However, in places where there are few predators, they get on well, for example in the case of the Soay sheep. Both goats and sheep were sometimes intentionally released and allowed to go feral on island waypoints frequented by mariners, to serve as a ready food source.
The dromedary camel, which has been domesticated for well over 3,000 years, will also readily go feral. A substantial population of feral dromedaries, descended from pack animals that escaped in the 19th and early 20th centuries, thrives in the Australian interior today.
Water buffalo run rampant in Western and Northern Australia. The Australian government encourages the hunting of feral water buffalo because of their large numbers.
Cattle have been domesticated since the neolithic era, but can do well enough on open range for months or even years with little or no supervision.[7] Their ancestors, the aurochs, were quite fierce, on par with the modern Cape buffalo. Modern cattle, especially those raised on open range, are generally more docile, but when threatened can display aggression. Cattle, particularly those raised for beef, are often allowed to roam quite freely and have established long term independence in Australia, New Zealand and several Pacific Islands along with small populations of semi-feral animals roaming the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. Such cattle are variously called mavericks, scrubbers or cleanskins. Most free roaming cattle, however untamed, are generally too valuable not to be eventually rounded up and recovered in closely settled regions.
Horses and donkeys, domesticated about 5000 BC, are feral in open grasslands worldwide. In Portugal, feral horses are called Sorraia; in Australia, they are called Brumbies; in the American west, they are called mustangs. Other isolated feral populations exist, including the Chincoteague Pony and the Banker horse. They are often referred to as "wild horses", but this is a misnomer. There are truly "wild" horses that have never been domesticated, most notably Przewalski's horse.[8] While the horse was originally indigenous to North America, the wild ancestor died out at the end of the last Ice Age. In both Australia and the Americas, modern "wild" horses descended from domesticated horses brought by European explorers and settlers that escaped, spread, and thrived. Australia hosts a feral donkey population, as do the Virgin Islands and the American southwest.
The pig (hog) has established feral populations worldwide, most notably in Australia, New Zealand, the United States, New Guinea and the Pacific Islands. Pigs were introduced to the Melanesian and Polynesian regions by humans from several thousand to five hundred years ago, and to the Americas within the past 500 years. In Australia, domesticated pigs escaped in the 18th century, and now cover 40 percent of Australia[9] with a population estimated at 30 million. While pigs were doubtlessly brought to New Zealand by the original Polynesian settlers, this population had become extinct by the time of European colonization, and all feral pigs in New Zealand today are descendants of European stock. Many European wild boar populations are also partially descended from escaped domestic pigs and are thus technically feral animals within the native range of the ancestral species.
feral animals who nonetheless live in close proximity to Rock doves, also known as pigeons:animals who nonetheless live in close proximity to humans
Streptopelia risoria) A feral Barbary dove in Tasmania Australia. Also known as a ringneck dove or ring dove (
Rock pigeons were formerly kept for their meat or more commonly as racing animals and have established feral populations in cities worldwide.
Colonies of honey bees often escape into the wild from managed apiaries when they swarm; their behavior, however, is no different from their behavior "in captivity", until and unless they breed with other feral honey bees of a different genetic stock, which may lead them to become more docile or more aggressive (see Africanized bees).
Large colonies of feral parrots are present in various parts of the world, with rose-ringed parakeets, monk parakeets and red-masked parakeets (the latter of which became the subject of the documentary film, The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill) being particularly successful outside of their native habitats and adapting well to suburban environments.
Wild cocks are derived from domestic chickens (Gallus gallus domesticus) who have returned to the wild. Like the red junglefowl (the closest wild relative of domestic chickens), wild cocks will take flight and roost in tall trees and bushes in order to avoid predators at night. Wild cocks typically form social groups composed of, a dominant cockerel, several hens, and subordinate cocks. Sometimes the dominant cockerel is designated by a fight between cocks.[10]
Effects of feralization [ edit ]
Ecological impact [ edit ]
A feral population can have a significant impact on an ecosystem by predation on vulnerable plants or animals, or by competition with indigenous species. Feral plants and animals constitute a significant share of invasive species, and can be a threat to endangered species. However, they may also replace species lost from an ecosystem on initial human arrival to an area, or increase the biodiversity of a human-altered area by being able to survive in it in ways local species cannot.
Genetic pollution [ edit ]
Animals of domestic origin sometimes can produce fertile hybrids with native, wild animals which leads to genetic pollution (not a clear term itself) in the naturally evolved wild gene pools, many times threatening rare species with extinction. Cases include the mallard duck, wild boar, the rock dove or pigeon, the red junglefowl (Gallus gallus) (ancestor of all chickens), carp, and more recently salmon.[11][full citation needed] Other examples of genetic swamping lie in the breeding history of dingoes. Dingoes are wild true dogs that will interbreed with dogs of other origins, thus leading to the proliferation of dingo hybrids and the possibility of the extinction of pure wild dingoes.[12] Researches in Scotland have remarked on a similar phenomenon of the genetic mixing of feral domestic cats and their wild counterparts.[13]
Economic harm [ edit ]
Feral animals compete with domestic livestock, and may degrade fences, water sources, and vegetation (by overgrazing or introducing seeds of invasive plants). Although hotly disputed, some cite as an example the competition between feral horses and cattle in the western United States. Another example is of goats competing with cattle in Australia, or goats that degrade trees and vegetation in environmentally-stressed regions of Africa. Accidental crossbreeding by feral animals may result in harm to breeding programs of pedigreed animals; their presence may also excite domestic animals and push them to escape. Feral populations can also pass on transmissible infections to domestic herds. Loss to farmers by aggressive feral dog population is common in India.
Economic benefits [ edit ]
Many feral animals can sometimes be captured at little cost and thus constitute a significant resource. Throughout most of Polynesia and Melanesia feral pigs constitute the primary sources of animal protein. Prior to the Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971, American mustangs were routinely captured and sold for horsemeat. In Australia feral goats, pigs and dromedaries are harvested for the export for their meat trade. At certain times, animals were sometimes deliberately left to go feral, typically on islands
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to fire up a crowd at one of Mr Trump’s rallies. Most of his supporters pay little attention to the New York Times or CNN, but these and other targets of his attacks air his complaints to viewers and readers across America. He has spent next to nothing on paid adverts, but the media has given the GOP nominee billions of dollars of free coverage.
The rising hostility of Mr Trump’s anti-media campaign—and his apparently desperate assertion that the election will be “rigged”—surely has something to do with the poor state of his presidential campaign (Nate Silver, prognosticator at FiveThirtyEight.com, gives him less than a 10% chance of winning—if the election were held today). But if Mr Trump rebounds from this hole and wins in November, would the press have cause to worry that he could use his bully pulpit to bully them into submission?
Not likely. America’s protection of press freedoms is strong and well entrenched and libel law makes it difficult to win a case against a journalist. As per New York Times v Sullivan, a landmark case from 1964, a person suing for libel must demonstrate not only that the journalist’s story contains falsehoods but also that the errors were motivated by “actual malice”. A few errors in an advert lamenting “an unprecedented wave of terror” against civil-rights protestors, the justices ruled unanimously, did not entitle an official in Montgomery, Alabama, to recover damages. “A rule compelling the critic of official conduct to guarantee the truth of all his factual assertions”, Justice William Brennan wrote, is a recipe for “self-censorship”. Potential critics “may be deterred from voicing their criticism” if they had to verify every claim before speaking up. Requiring such onerous diligence would “dampen the vigour and limit the variety of public debate”. In order to uphold the “profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust and wide-open”—including “vehement, caustic and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government...officials”—the justices crafted a robust wall of protection for speakers. Only errors committed with an evident “reckless disregard” for the truth—that is, knowing the statement is false or publishing it with little regard for whether it is true or false—could get a reporter into trouble.
Mr Trump’s comments suggest he might prefer to turn the clock back to the 18th century, when it was a crime to criticise the government: “The greater the truth”, the principle held, “the greater the libel”. But he will find no judges, or potential Supreme Court justices, to weaken the First Amendment in that direction. And he would have no authority as president to effect such changes himself.
Presidential candidates have railed against the press, and vice versa, since the dawn of the republic. Thomas Jefferson bore the brunt of brutal attacks when he ran for president in 1800. But Jefferson never responded to criticism by threatening to shut down dissent. “The people are the only censors of their governors”, he wrote, and “even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their institution”.
To punish these errors too severely would be to suppress the only safeguard of the public liberty. The way to prevent these irregular interpositions of the people is to give them full information of their affairs thro’ the channel of the public papers, & to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people. The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.
Mr Trump has turned his assault against the media into a campaign against the First Amendment. It is a fight he is destined to lose, no matter what happens in November.Soon after the First World War (WWI) began, efforts commenced to end it through negotiations. Peace initiatives came from neutral governments, private citizens, and the belligerents themselves. Some aimed at a separate peace between two of the contending states; some at a general settlement to end the war altogether; and some, confusingly, involved parties seeking both a separate and a general peace at the same time. With the exception of Russia and Romania, each concluding a separate peace with the Central Powers in spring 1918, none of the peace initiatives launched prior to late 1918 succeeded in limiting or ending the war. They failed because the minimum terms acceptable to each side were incompatible. Each side perceived embracing the other side’s minimum terms as a “defeat” threatening their nation’s existence as an independent power or their domestic political stability. Moreover, accepting defeat seemed unnecessary, because until late 1918, neither side calculated that the military balance had rendered victory out of reach; both sides consistently believed that they had a reasonably good chance of achieving a military victory in the war great enough to allow them to impose at least their minimum terms on their opponents. In such circumstances, the costs of fighting on appeared less onerous than the costs of accepting defeat, and so the war continued.
Explaining Peace Initiatives, 1914-1916 ↑
In analyzing why major peace initiatives occurred, it is best to consider them in two distinct time periods: those from 1914 through 1916 and, secondly, those from early 1917 through early 1918. In the first time frame, Germany and the United States were the chief actors in trying to get some kind of peace talks going. In Germany’s case, its chief efforts were initially directed at France and especially Russia. Driven by their failure to achieve a decisive military victory in the first few weeks of the war and their concern that they could not win a long war against a united Allied coalition, German officials made contact with various French dissident figures from late 1914 through 1916, suggesting that France could have peace in exchange for giving Germany a war indemnity and perhaps colonial concessions. They especially focused on politicians close to ex-Minister President Joseph Caillaux (1863-1944), who they thought opposed the war and the existing French political system. The initiative for a separate peace with Russia likewise began in late 1914 and continued into 1915, peaking in late June and July. German leaders sent out peace offers to Nicholas II, Emperor of Russia (1868-1918) through Hans Niels Andersen (1852-1937), a shipping magnate and confidant of Christian X, King of Denmark (1870-1947), as well as to Russian ex-Premier Count Sergei Witte (1849-1915), who was rumored to be pro-German. Germany’s Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg (1856-1921) assured the Russians that Germany wanted “only small concessions in order to protect our eastern border, as well as financial and commercial treaties.”[1] Germany pursued still other contacts through family connections of the Tsar, stating that the Central Powers would allow Russia free passage of the Straits in exchange for peace.[2]
Germany’s approach toward peace negotiations took a new turn in late 1916. On 12 December, declaring that the Central Powers “have given proof of their indestructible strength in winning considerable successes at war,” Germany and its allies publicly called for peace negotiations with their enemies, stating no specific conditions or demands.[3] On its surface, this peace note appeared based on Germany’s confidence in its military position. In reality, the calculations behind it were more complicated. Bethmann Hollweg, the chief proponent of the initiative in the German government, thought time was not on Germany’s side in the war. At home, Germany’s largest political party, the Social Democrats (SPD), broke apart over supporting war credits in late 1914, and its majority faction, while still behind the war effort, increasingly demanded assurances that Germany wanted peace and fought only in self-defense, not for conquest. Germany’s chief ally, Austria-Hungary, also seemed weak and demoralized and, while Germany’s armies occupied enemy territory in the east and west, the Reich faced an Allied coalition with superior resources and a naval blockade that was slowly strangling Germany’s economy. Desperate to break the military stalemate, German military and naval leaders were anxious to begin unrestricted submarine warfare, a course Bethmann Hollweg feared would bring the United States and possibly other neutrals into the war on the Allied side. Bethmann Hollweg’s peace initiative aimed to relieve all of these domestic and international pressures on the Reich. If the Allies accepted Germany’s peace offer, unrestricted submarine warfare could be averted and negotiations would be based on the existing status quo, which heavily favored Germany. If they refused, which was likely, the Allies would be responsible for prolonging the war, not Germany. This would rally leftist Germans to the war effort and invigorate Austria-Hungary’s determination to fight. By highlighting Germany’s desires for peace and Allied intransigence, an Allied rejection of Germany’s peace offer might also increase the chances of neutral nations, including the United States, tolerating Germany’s unleashing of its submarines. Finally, Bethmann Hollweg expected that a refusal by the Allies to negotiate would spur anti-war sentiment in France and Russia, which might advance another effort to convince one or both of those countries to sign a separate peace with the Reich.[4]
The United States ↑
Very different motives lay behind the other major peace efforts of 1914-1916, those of President Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) of the United States. The President early on saw himself as a potential mediator of the war. He repeatedly tried to prod the Germans and the British into a discussion of peace terms, usually on the basis of roughly the status quo ante bellum and post-war disarmament. On two occasions, in early 1915 and then again in early 1916, he sent his chief foreign policy advisor, Colonel Edward M. House (1858-1938) to Europe for face to face meetings with British, German, and French leaders, trying to find an avenue for wider talks or an opening for an American demand that hostilities cease. In May 1916, Wilson publicly endorsed U.S. participation in a post-war international security organization as a way to entice the belligerents into welcoming a U.S. mediation initiative. He followed this gambit up in December with a formal call for the belligerents to state the exact objects for which they fought and then, in January 1917, gave an impassioned plea that the war end with a “peace without victory” and the establishment of a “League of Peace” that would include the United States.[5]
Wilson’s desire to mediate an end to the war arose in part from his conception of America’s role in the world. The president deeply believed that the United States had a unique character among nations. Its exceptionalism, he argued, lay in the success of its democratic political system; its embracing of equality of opportunity for its citizens; its diverse population drawn from a wide variety of nations; and, lastly, its lack of territorial ambition and its detachment from the immediate causes of the war. These peculiarities, Wilson felt, made the United States a force for world progress; it had a “mission in the world...a mission of peace and goodwill.” If any country could and should bring the war to an end, it was the United States.[6]
Wilson’s view of U.S. national security also underlay his mediation efforts. He perceived that the longer the war went on, the more likely it was that the United States would get drawn into it, especially because of frictions with Germany over its submarine warfare. More basically, Wilson thought that balance-of-power politics had caused the war and that if power politics persisted after the war ended, eventually the United States would get caught up in its currents. The president was convinced that if either side of belligerents won a decisive victory, they would continue the arms races, alliances, and secret diplomacy that had fundamentally caused the war in the first place. Sooner or later, another global conflict would occur – and, Wilson warned his countrymen in October 1916, “this is the last war of the kind, or of any kind that involves the world, that the United States can keep out of.” By ending the war with the aims of each side frustrated. Wilson hoped the belligerents could be made to see that power politics had produced nothing but disaster and that the security of all nations, including the United States, would be best served through the creation of a new system of collective security, institutionalized in a league of nations.[7]
Explaining Peace Initiatives, 1917-1918 ↑
More so than during the first two and one half years of the war, the period from early 1917 to early 1918 saw a flurry of significant peace efforts as the stalemate in the west continued and war weariness intensified in all the European belligerents. Austria-Hungary stood at the center of many of these episodes. Just before the United States entered the war in April 1917, the newly appointed Austrian foreign minister, Count Ottokar Czernin (1872-1932), conveyed to the American government Austria’s readiness for peace negotiations on the basis of a return to the status quo ante bellum. He urged President Wilson “to use his influence with the powers of the Entente to make them accept that basis” as well. Around the same time, the Austrian government also sent out peace feelers to the British, who responded by sending Sir Francis Hopwood (1860-1947) to Scandinavia to meet with Austrian representatives. Neither of these initiatives lasted very long, as it became clear Austria would not make peace without Germany agreeing to a settlement as well.[8]
A more sustained Austro-Hungarian peace effort involved Sixtus, Prince of Parma Bourbon (1886-1934), a member of the former French royal family who was serving in the Belgian army in 1916. Through his sister, who was married to Austria’s Charles I, Emperor of Austria (1887-1922), Sixtus had access to the highest levels of the Austro-Hungarian government. Shortly after he took the throne in late 1916, Charles asked his mother-in-law to establish contact with the French government; she used Sixtus to do so. French leaders told Sixtus that their terms included Alsace Lorraine, part of the Saar, “reparations, indemnities, and guarantees on the left bank of the Rhine.” Armed with this information, Sixtus eventually made his way to Vienna, where he met Charles in late March 1917. The Emperor seemed open to France’s demands. In a letter of 24 March given to Sixtus for delivery to the French, Charles agreed to restore Serbia, which had been overrun by the Central Powers in 1915; accepted that Belgium should also be restored; and pledged to support France’s “just claims” to Alsace-Lorraine. When the French received this missive, they informed the British, greatly exciting David Lloyd George (1863-1945), the British Prime Minister, who believed the Austrians might break with Germany and sign a separate peace with the Allies. When the French and the British informed the Italian government of the possibility of a peace with Austria, however, the Italian foreign minister, Baron Sidney Sonnino (1847-1922), made it clear that Italy expected all of its claims on Austria-Hungary to be fulfilled. If they were not, Italy might break with the Allied coalition and, Sonnino warned, revolution might engulf Italy. The Italian position effectively ended the Sixtus initiative, although another exchange of messages occurred from May to June.[9]
As the Sixtus contacts ground to a halt, another Austrian channel to France opened up. Count Nikolaus Revertera (1866-1951), a former Austrian diplomat with connections to the Austrian court, reached out to Count Abel Armand (1863-1919), an army officer in the foreign intelligence section of the French General Staff, in June 1917. Both men received authorization from their governments to meet; they held conversations in Switzerland in August. In these talks, Armand, apparently with the approval of French War Minister Paul Painlevé (1863-1933) but not the rest of the French leadership, did more than simply feel out Revertera’s views: he tried to entice Austria into a separate peace structured in part around France receiving Alsace-Lorraine and guarantees in the Rhineland, with Austria gaining territory from Germany. Charles was encouraged by these talks but Czernin had no interest in a separate peace with France; Armand did not receive an answer to his proposals.[10]
Finally, in late 1917 and early 1918, Austrian leaders again tried to explore the possibility of a general peace by making formal and informal contact with the Allies. These involved soundings to the British via Count Albert Mensdorff (1861-1945), former ambassador to London, and an Austrian diplomat in Sweden, and a revived exchange between Armand and Revertera. More significantly, they included a lengthy dialogue with the United States carried on through public statements by Wilson and Czernin; unofficial meetings in Berne between Austrian intellectual Heinrich Lammasch (1853-1920) and an American expatriate with ties to the diplomatic community, George D. Herron (1862-1925); and private communications from Charles to Wilson. These talks got into specific ideas about terms, including the status of Austria-Hungary’s various nationalities and French and Italian territorial claims. The exchanges went nowhere, however, as, yet again the Austrians were interested in a general peace, not a separate one, while the Allies were intent upon detaching Austria from its alliance with Germany.[11]
All of these Austro-Hungarian peace initiatives stemmed, fundamentally, from Charles’ and Czernin’s perception that the war threatened the existence of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The war severely traumatized the Empire’s economy, producing catastrophic food and fuel shortages and inflation; devastated its manpower; exacerbated political tensions between Austria and Hungary; and stimulated the nationalist aspirations of the Empire’s ethnic groups. The weaker the Empire became, the more it depended upon Germany, to the point that Charles feared the Germans viewed Vienna as little more than a satellite of the Reich. “A smashing German victory,” Charles noted in a draft letter to Czernin in May 1917, “would be our ruin.” Czernin may not have gone as far as Charles in this view, but he certainly sensed that the war was eroding Austria-Hungary’s independence as a great power. To get peace, Czernin tried to convince Germany to moderate its aims in the war while at the same time seizing whatever chance he could to signal the Allies that Austria was open to a general peace settlement based upon the status quo ante bellum or minor frontier changes. Even more desperate to get out of the war than Czernin, Charles sometimes – as in the Sixtus affair – pursued contacts with the Allies more fervently than his foreign minister. This tended to give false encouragement to the Allies that Austria was interested in a separate peace, which helps to explain why the French, British, and Americans so readily responded to Austrian overtures. Ultimately, though, Charles deferred to Czernin’s commitment to pursuing peace only within the framework of maintaining the alliance with Germany.[12]
The Germans, for their part, continued to be open to the possibility of a separate peace with one or more of the Allies. Their most important initiative to the west occurred in the wake of Pope Benedict XV’s (1854-1922) peace appeal, published by the Vatican on 1 August 1917. Moved to act by some encouraging words from Bethmann Hollweg to Vatican diplomats about Belgium and Alsace-Lorraine, a sense of religious duty, and a fear that Europe was committing “suicide,” the Pope essentially called for a peace based upon a return to 1914 frontiers without annexations or indemnities. The leading belligerents either ignored the Pontiff or made negative replies, except for Great Britain. British leaders, increasingly pessimistic about their ability to win a decisive victory that would destroy Germany’s military autocracy, decided to use Benedict’s appeal to feel out Germany about its readiness to restore Belgium, a central British war aim. They sent a letter to London’s representative at the Vatican noting that Germany’s intentions with regard to Belgium were unclear; Vatican officials, in turn, forwarded this message to Berlin.[13]
Confronted with the British inquiry, Richard von Kühlmann (1873-1948), Germany’s recently installed foreign secretary, decided to act. He did so because of rising peace sentiment in Germany among the liberal and socialist parties; concern that the Austrians, then in the midst of the Armand-Revertera conversations, might pursue a separate peace of their own; and a belief that Britain wanted out of the war, even if it meant making major concessions to the Germans. On 11 September, German leaders agreed marginally to scale back the economic and strategic guarantees they wanted in Belgium, especially by giving up the German navy’s demands for permanent bases along the Flanders coastline. This stance gave Kühlmann something to offer the British; he proceeded to send a version of the new German position to the Spanish minister in Brussels, the Marquis de Villalobar (1864-1926), for transmission to London. Villalobar told his own superiors, who notified the British ambassador in Madrid that high-level German officials were interested in peace communications – a more ambiguous message than Kühlmann intended.[14]
British leaders divined that Germany seemed open to some sort of deal in the west, however, as they received Kühlmann’s initiative at the same time as they heard of another German peace feeler to the French. This contact involved Baron von der Lancken, chief of the political department of the German occupation administration in Belgium. Back in April 1917, when revolution in Russia appeared to weaken the Allied coalition, German leaders had authorized Lancken to renew Germany’s earlier attempts to talk to French politicians regarding peace. To entice them, Lancken was told to offer token concessions on Alsace-Lorraine. Once embarked on his mission, he exceeded his instructions and indicated Germany was ready to give up a lot more on issues in the west. Lancken eventually contacted Aristide Briand (1862-1932), a former French prime minister, who agreed in principle to meet in Switzerland in mid-September. French leaders were not entirely certain of Lancken’s legitimacy and in any case were wary of engaging in talks that might divide the Allied coalition. They therefore informed the British of the Lancken contact, leaving British foreign secretary Arthur Balfour (1848-1930) with the impression that Germany was interested in negotiations on Belgium and Alsace-Lorraine, as well as on its colonies and Serbia.[15]
Over the next three days, British leaders consulted with the French and with each other about the Lancken and the still-secret Villalobar initiatives. They perceived Germany’s soundings as essentially an offer to make concessions in the west in exchange for a free hand in Eastern Europe and Russia. In the deliberations, Lloyd George, concerned that the bloodbath of the war was sapping Britain’s strength, appeared tempted by such a deal, but his colleagues were not, for reasons discussed below. On 6 October the British told their allies, including Russia, of the Villalobar contact, and replied to Germany that they were willing to listen to peace communications, but any messages had to be discussed with their alliance partners. Kühlmann, who was only interested in splitting Britain from its coalition by offering minimal concessions in the west, then declared in public that Germany would never cede Alsace-Lorraine. With that, the “Kühlmann peace kite” fluttered to the ground.[16]
The collapse of Tsarist Russia loomed large over all the peace initiatives of 1917 and early 1918. It increased French and British interest in peace feelers from Germany and especially Austria-Hungary while heightening peace sentiment among socialists in all the European belligerent nations. Most significantly, the new Russian Provisional Government and the center of the revolution’s authority, the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, engaged in wide ranging peace efforts of their own. One channel involved contacts between the Provisional Government and Germany. In early 1917, Bethmann Hollweg saw Russia’s revolution as an opportunity to end the war in the east on terms favorable to Germany. To explore the possibility of a separate peace, he allowed talks to proceed between Matthias Erzberger (1875-1921), the leader of the left wing of the Center Party, and a Russian diplomat, Joseph von Kolyshko, in Stockholm in March-April 1917. The deal worked out between them in part called for restoring Russia’s pre-1914 border, perhaps with some frontier changes, and for creating a new Polish state that would hold a plebiscite to determine whether or not it would be under Russian sovereignty. Bethmann Hollweg had more demanding terms in mind, however. He and other civilian leaders in Germany wanted Poland and the Baltics to be “autonomous” – free from Russian control – and open to German economic influence and ethnically German settlement. Germany’s military leaders wanted the outright annexation of Courland and Lithuania as well as other frontier adjustments at Russia’s expense. With the Russians less eager for a separate peace than a general one and in any case hopeful of keeping their western borderlands in their sphere of influence, even Bethmann Hollweg’s more moderate terms doomed the Erzberger-Kolyshko talks as well as other German-Russian contacts.[17]
The Russians campaigned for a general peace along two separate but inter-related tracks. On one, the Provisional Government tried to convince the Allies to join in an inter-Allied conference to revise war aims. The Russians specifically wanted their partners to join them in working for an end to the war on the basis of the “Petrograd formula” – a peace “without annexations or indemnities...based on the rights of nations to decide their own affairs.” In addition to this governmental effort at war aims revision, the Petrograd Soviet on 15 May 1917 called for a negotiated peace and for socialists in the belligerent states to force their governments to end the war on the basis of the Petrograd formula. It urged all socialists to send representatives to Stockholm for a conference on how to achieve this goal.[18]
The calculations and relationship between these two tracks was complicated. Most basically, the Russian people’s desire for peace was a primary cause of the revolution; no revolutionary leadership could ignore that sentiment and expect to stay in power. At the same time, neither the Provisional Government nor the Soviet wanted peace at any price and all leading political parties opposed a separate peace with the Central Powers. Russian leaders thought that a separate settlement with Germany would have devastating results for their country. It would probably allow Germany to win the war in the west, leaving Russia with a powerful enemy right on its border; turn Russia into a virtual German colony; and perhaps lead to a restoration of the Tsar. The dual-track peace program, in contrast, maximized chances for a quick negotiated end to the entire war. The Stockholm conference would hopefully spur socialist and liberal elements in the Allied nations to pressure their governments into formally embracing the Petrograd formula. Once that happened, the governments of the Central Powers would see that negotiations were possible and, pressured by their own leftist groups at home, they would embrace talks to stop the fighting.[19]
Neither the Stockholm conference nor Allied war aims revision got very far. The Allies saw little reason to negotiate with the Provisional Government over war aims when Russia’s contribution to the Allied war effort was lagging. They also feared an open discussion of war aims would undermine their public’s will to fight. They therefore largely ignored the Provisional Government’s attempt to get them to hold an inter-Allied meeting on peace terms. The Allies also had little difficulty sabotaging the Stockholm conference. Even socialists within the Allied nations were divided over the wisdom of the conference and hesitated to endorse it. The British government was at first willing to allow Labour Party members to attend, but only as a gesture to encourage Russia to stay in the war. Once the United States, Italy, and France undercut Stockholm by refusing to issue passports to socialists who wanted to go, Britain did the same thing. As for Germany, Erzberger and the Center Party, the Progressives, and the SPD joined together to pass a “peace resolution” in the Reichstag in July 1917 that vaguely echoed the Petrograd formula. It sharpened Germany’s domestic political divisions over war aims, but it had little practical impact on German foreign policy. While German leaders did allow the SPD to go to Stockholm, they only did so to keep the party loyal to the war effort. Seeing their peace program in trouble, the Russians attempted a military offensive in early July 1917, hoping to enhance their diplomatic influence abroad. The offensive failed badly, however, fatally undermining the Russian peace effort.[20]
The Bolsheviks and Peace by Capitulation ↑
Within months of the collapse of the July 1917 offensive, the Bolsheviks led by Vladimir I. Lenin (1870-1924) took power in Russia. From November 1917 to early January 1918, they repudiated traditional diplomacy, concluded an armistice with the Central Powers, and tried to use peace negotiations at Brest-Litovsk as a propaganda platform to spark socialist revolutions in all the belligerents. No revolutions occurred, however. The Allies moderated their publicly stated war aims to a minimal degree to rally their publics to the war effort and refused to join in the peace talks between the Central Powers and the Russians. At the Brest-Litovsk negotiations, the Germans at first put forward a program designed to “stage-manage” the self-determination of Russia’s borderlands in a way that assured German domination of them. When the Bolsheviks balked at accepting these terms, the Germans resumed their military advance into Russia, which convinced the Bolshevik government to give up the war. Led by Lenin, the Bolsheviks decided that continued fighting was fruitless and would undermine their hold on power. On 3 March 1918, they signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Central Powers, yielding sovereignty over a vast area containing some 55 million people. A few weeks later, the Central Powers imposed a similarly onerous peace treaty on Romania.[21]
Explaining the Failure of Peace Initiatives: Perceptions of the Cost of Defeat ↑
The Allies ↑
Peace initiatives prior to the peace of conquest at Brest-Litovsk foundered in part because each of the chief belligerents perceived the stakes in the war as involving, in one way or another, their continued survival as independent great powers or the survival of their domestic political systems or both. To British leaders, German aggression, embodied in the Reich’s Prussian military caste, caused the war. Germany hoped to dominate Europe and, in British eyes, it could do so if it retained its control of Belgium and reduced France, though territorial and financial demands, to the status of a second rate power. If that happened, Britain would face a powerful enemy directly across from its coast; Britain would be vulnerable to German intimidation and unlikely to win another war with Germany should one break out. Indeed, most British leaders throughout the war believed that any increase in Germany’s pre-1914 power unacceptably increased these risks. Britain’s minimum terms for ending the war were therefore the restoration of the status quo ante bellum in the west and, for most British leaders, sharp limits to any German gains in the east.[22]
France had a similarly existential view of the war. The Reich’s early success on the western front, which left it in occupation of much of northern France, highlighted for French leaders a stark power imbalance between Germany and France. If France submitted to the Germans, they would enhance their power still more, by taking permanent control of French coal and iron fields in the north and by bankrupting it with a massive war indemnity. France might survive, but only as a satellite of Germany. Any compromise peace that left Prussian militarism intact and its power enhanced by gains in the east was little better in French eyes, as it left France ill-prepared to win any future war with the Reich. Hence, to preserve its existence as an independent great nation, French leaders believed they had to redress the balance of power against Germany by, at the very least, expelling the Germans from all of French territory and restoring Belgium; regaining some of Alsace-Lorraine; and attaining some sort of security guarantee in the Rhineland.[23]
In the United States, after Germany’s unrestricted submarine warfare in early 1917 led President Wilson to enter the war, U.S. leaders no longer saw a “peace without victory” as possible or desirable. Wilson now considered the Reich a dangerous, relentlessly ambitious enemy. In his view, Germany’s military masters aimed to dominate Europe and make Germany an armed power without peer. If they succeeded, the United States would have no choice but to arm itself as never before, to prepare for Germany’s next bid for conquests. In such an insecure environment, Wilson argued, America’s domestic political freedoms would never survive. He therefore demanded that Germany not only be denied any gains from the war, but also that its power be reduced to below its pre-1914 level.[24]
Italy and pre-Bolshevik Russia likewise perceived enormous stakes in the war. The Italians thought that Italy’s future security and the stability of its monarchy depended upon making territorial gains in the north and along the Adriatic coast. Tsarist Russia’s leaders made a similar calculation: failure to attain some tangible gains from the war in Poland and in the Ottoman Empire would result in a revolution fatal to autocratic rule. For the Provisional Government, salvation lay not in annexations but in preventing Germany from imposing its will upon Britain and France. The leaders of both the government and the Soviet perceived that if Germany defeated the Allies, the Reich would turn all of its power eastward and destroy the revolution, by turning Russia into a German satellite and restoring the Tsar. Making any peace with Germany that would allow it to focus on the western front was thus out of the question.[25]
The Central Powers ↑
Austria-Hungary wanted to get out of the war as much as revolutionary Russia. But it refused to break its alliance with Germany to accomplish this end. Czernin and, ultimately, Charles, considered the German alliance to be more crucial to Austria-Hungary’s survival than peace, however painful the war might be. If Austria abandoned Germany and the Allies won the war, Austrian leaders feared the Entente would break whatever promises it had made to get peace and would allow Romania, Italy, and Serbia to partition Austrian territory. Breaking the alliance could also lead to a German invasion or a destabilizing cut-off of German economic aid. With the tie to Berlin no longer buttressing the authority of the monarchy, Austria’s restive nationalities, if they did not simply revolt, would demand extensive autonomy and other political reforms. The ruling Austrian-German and Magyar groups might then find themselves at the mercy of a Slav majority. For Austria-Hungary’s leaders, this meant the end of their state as they knew it. However much staying in the war seemed to endanger Austria-Hungary, a separate peace appeared to be a riskier alternative to Czernin and Charles.[26]
For German leaders, the war represented an opportunity to achieve, in Bethmann Hollweg’s secretary’s words, “security for the German Reich in the west and east for all imaginable time.” Generals Erich Ludendorff (1865-1937) and Paul von Hindenburg (1847-1934), Germany’s predominant policymakers after August 1916, saw endless warfare as inevitable; Germany therefore had to be well positioned for the post-war period so that it could withstand any possible future attack. Germany’s authoritarian leaders also feared that if they did not deliver concrete territorial and economic rewards to the German people from the war, domestic support for Germany’s autocracy would collapse. A peace based upon the status quo ante bellum would not achieve these aims. To Germany’s leaders, only German dominance over Europe could achieve them. Civilians like Bethmann Hollweg and Kuhlmann and German military leaders disagreed over the exact form this dominance should take, but all of them agreed that preserving the Reich’s security and its domestic political system demanded nothing less than German hegemony over the continent. This view made them hostile to any peace initiative that did not in effect ratify a German victory in the war.[27]
Explaining the Failure of Peace Initiatives: The Expectation of Victory ↑
The existential political stakes that each side saw in the war were not the only reasons for the failure of compromise peace efforts. Peace initiatives also failed because until the last months of the war, neither side ever really lost confidence that they could prevail over their opponents by force. From late 1914 to early 1917, the Allies thought the balance of power favored them because they had access to greater resources than the Central Powers. Soon after the war started, Britain effectively limited Germany’s overseas trade with a naval blockade. Britain, in contrast, could draw not only on the resources of its empire, but also, because of President Wilson’s decision to allow supplies and loans to flow across the Atlantic, on the vast wealth of the United States. The Allies also got Italy to join their side in 1915. On the battlefield, French and British leaders were confident that while Germany held an existing advantage, they were slowly wearing Germany down; British leaders in particular looked forward to smashing Germany’s will to resist with a massive offensive in July 1916 at the Somme. With this outlook, they had no interest in peace talks in the first two years of the war.[28]
The Germans recognized that the Allies had a resource advantage over them; this was the primary reason they tried to split the Allied coalition with peace offers in 1915 and early 1916. But with its armies in possession of enemy territory in both the east and west, and the Allies evidently unable to push them out, German leaders saw no reason to offer extensive concessions to their enemies. In 1916, Germany suffered some setbacks in the war, as the Russians had some success in an offensive against Austria-Hungary and the Allies inflicted enormous losses on the Germans at Verdun and the Somme. Yet the Reich’s military situation never became desperate. It still occupied Belgium and northern France; it contained Russia’s advance in the east; and, late in the year, it occupied much of Romania, including Bucharest. Germany's hopes for victory were also fueled by its anticipation of launching a campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare. Naval leaders throughout 1916 promised that such a campaign could force Britain to negotiate on German terms within six months. They discounted the effect American entry could have on the war by arguing that Wilson’s trade policies made the United States anti-German in any case and predicting that the war would be over before the U.S. could make its weight felt on the Allied side. Not all German policymakers were as confident in these predictions as the Reich’s admirals. But they thought the submarine campaign might work as advertised. F
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but you cannot do that if they play two games every week. There's no recovery time. I'd like to have players for a week and train them properly – they would all gain the benefit – but we have to play games. I will have to rest people for some matches, like we did with Juan Mata on Wednesday. It's a risk but we are thinking about the bigger picture. You have to prepare the team for now while thinking in the long run so that at the end, when the trophies are being won, we can benefit."
Money will be available in January, though. With Benítez contracted until the summer, Emenalo and the board will direct transfer policy while seeking input from the Spaniard. There is interest in Radamel Falcao at Atlético Madrid but securing the Colombian would require a lavish outlay. The likes of Taison Freda, a Brazilian midfielder at Metalist Kharkiv who would cost around £9m, and Liverpool's Raheem Sterling, who has yet to agree a new contract at Anfield, are on the list together with the young Southampton left-back Luke Shaw, who has been earmarked as a long-term replacement for the Paris St-Germain-bound Ashley Cole.
"The board were asking me my opinion on what we need," said Benítez. "We spoke about the future but I said it's too soon for me. I'm pleased they're asking me but I want to see the team in a couple more games yet. We also analysed the players out on loan, how they are performing. We spoke about Romelu Lukaku and we know he's doing well [at West Bromwich Albion], and maybe it's better for his development to stay there, playing. We will see. It's too soon for me."
Benítez's presence is still unsettling Chelsea's support. The chairman, Bruce Buck, opted against addressing the club's annual lunch at Stamford Bridge on Friday, though it has emerged Abramovich and the director Eugene Tenenbaum did meet with a select group of seven fans ahead of the visit of Manchester City last Sunday to gauge the mood following a week of upheaval. The meeting, held in an office at Stamford Bridge, has been described as informal and "candid" with subjects covering everything from Di Matteo's sacking, the damage that has been done to the image of the club and last year's controversy around the Chelsea Pitch Owners and a potential move to a new stadium.The Wii U eShop has really punched above its weight during its short lifespan with many excellent Nindie games (and a few terrible ones) being made available for lucky gamers to download.
Some of our favourites are Shin'en Multimedia's FAST Racing NEO and Image & Form's SteamWorld Dig and SteamWorld Heist. We've always felt these games had such amazing production values that they could have been disc-based retail games from day one, and obviously someone at Nintendo has had the same idea as they will now be published as the inaugural 'Nintendo eShop Selects' titles for Wii U.
The retail version of FAST Racing NEO offers even more tracks to enjoy with the Nintendo eShop Selects version of this release, as the eight downloadable courses contained in the upcoming NEO Future Pack will be included on the disc.
SteamWorld Dig and SteamWorld Heist will be available in the same retail package which is lovingly entitled the SteamWorld Collection. SteamWorld Collection will also include the SteamWorld Heist add-on content The Outsider, providing a new ally with a past shrouded in mystery, as well as new missions with brand new weapons, gear, and snazzy new headwear.
Watch out for both of these games coming to retail on 30th September in Europe (US release is TBC). Do you plan to pick these disc based collectables up? Which other eShop games would you like to see arrive on retail in the future? Let us know by posting a comment.Using Tinder On Your Computer
Have you ever wanted to be able to swipe and message matches from your PC? There are many efficiency advantages to using Tinder on a PC including being able to message using your keyboard, not having to worry about battery life, the precision of a mouse, automation and faking your location. In this step by step guide you will learn how to do just that by using an android emulator known as “Blue Stacks”.
Step 1 – Download
Head over to www.bluestacks.com and download the free software by clicking the blue download button up top.
Step 2 – Installation
Now run the file that you downloaded and click next to install. Installation should take approximately five minutes to complete. Click finish and launch BlueStacks from the desktop icon.
Step 3 – Connect Your Google Account
As BlueStacks is an android emulator, having a Google account connected is required for downloading apps from the Google Play Store. Connect your account in the following screen and continue through the setup.
Step 4 – Download Tinder in the Google Play Store
Once your account is connected and you arrive at the home screen, tap the google play icon and search for and install tinder like you normally would on an android phone.
Step 5 – Launch Tinder
You’re nearly there, launch tinder and log in with your facebook account. You are now ready to use tinder on your PC. Congratulations.
BONUS – How to change your location on Tinder App for FREE
You may have noticed that Tinder offers a subscription service for over $10 per month which allows you to change your location to a different city. This bonus guide will walk you through the step by step process on how to spoof your location without buying into Tinder Plus. There are many benefits to this such as matching with girls in a different country before you land or being able to match with girls in the city if you live in the suburbs. I’ve used location switching in my First Tinder Hookup in Columbia post which you can read about here.
To begin, head over to the BlueStacks sidebar and click the marker icon shown below.
Zoom in on the map and click on your desired location. You will receive a confirmation that your location has been set. Before using tinder again, I recommend completely closing tinder and re-opening it.KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 14 — Putrajaya is considering toll charges for motorcyclists nationwide and studying the feasibility of constructing bike lanes on highways.
Nanyang Siang Pau quoted Works Minister Datuk Fadillah Yusof as saying that a special committee would study the proposal.
He said only a few highways nationwide had bike lanes.
“We will also study the feasibility of restricting the types of motorcycles that can use the highway based on their engine capacity.
“We will also study the width of the dedicated lanes to ensure they accommodate motorcycles of various sizes.”
He said the ministry would only make a decision after the committee completes the study.
Fadillah said at present toll charges were not determined according to engine capacity but based on the class or type of vehicle.
“High-powered motorcycles are exempted from toll charges because they fall under the category of two-wheeled vehicles,” he said, adding that motorcyclists had to pay toll at the Malaysia-Singapore Second Link Expressway (Tanjung Kupang Toll Plaza), as well as the Penang Bridge.Orchard Park, N.Y. — The Buffalo Bills have been here before. They are 5-3 heading into the bye week after a 43-23 win over the New York Jets, marking the fourth time since the year 2000 that they have started the season 5-3.
In fact, the last two times the Bills started 5-3, they finished those seasons 1-7 and 2-6 in the second half. It takes collapses like that for a franchise to have a 14-year playoff drought, and that's why coach Doug Marrone isn't particularly worried about the team becoming overconfident.
"I don't think that's the case at all when you haven't been to the playoffs in such a long time," Marrone said. "I think the one message that I tried to tell them today is that it doesn't get easier, it gets harder.
"You start competing against teams that are in the same position you are. When you're not, you're playing against teams that want to knock you off. We're not even in that position yet, so we've got a long way to go before we get into that type of position."
So can the Bills finish their strong start to the season? Games against the Broncos, Packers and Patriots in December loom large, but there are plenty of winnable games left on the schedule. What makes this team different enough that it will be able to finish the season strong? Here's how players answered that question Monday morning.
Safety Aaron Williams
"We know how to finish games. We're doing a lot better finishing games than we did in the past. I know my rookie year we started out 5-1 before the bye week and the second half was horrific. We went 1-7 or something like that. I feel like this team is just hungry. They know how good this team is and how good this team can get down the road. So as long as we keep preparing like we have been and keep pushing every week, it's going to be really hard to beat us.
"We have a lot to prove. We're never satisfied. 5-3 is a great start, but there's still (eight) more games left in the season. A lot of things can happen. In this league, crazy things can happen. I've seen it. We can become hot and go farther than 5-3 or we can slump and fall back and do what we did my rookie year and go 1-7 again. But I feel like this is the type of team that knows, they're hungry and they want to make the playoffs."
Tight end Scott Chandler
Defensive tackle Kyle Williams
"Nothing right now. We have to make it different. It feels a little different, but I don't know how much of that is my different perspective or if it's our team. I think it's our team. We still have a long ways to go. You know, 5-3 at the bye week, we're on track for where we want to be, but we're not there."
"Well, you know I think that we have leadership on this team that has been there, done that. That is going to kind of shepherd these guys and know that we have a long way to go. Yeah, it's a good feeling going into the bye beating a divisional team, being 5-3, but we're going to look at the second half of our season. We have a big stretch run coming up for us and that's all that's really going to matter."Thai EOD officers examine the wreckage of a pickup truck after a bomb hidden in it was detonated in Saiburi district of Pattani province, southern Thailand Friday, Sept. 21, 2012. Suspected Muslim insurgents have detonated a car bomb in Thailand's violence-prone south, killing five people and wounding a dozen others. (AP Photo/Sumeth Panpetch)
PATTANI, Thailand (AP) — Suspected Muslim insurgents detonated a car bomb in southern Thailand that killed five people Friday, police said, after businesses received warnings against opening on the Muslim holy day.
The suspects opened fire on a gold shop in Pattani province's Sai Buri district, hurting no one and fleeing, police Col. Asis U-mayee said. When security forces arrived at the scene, two bombs hidden in gas canisters in a nearby pickup truck went off, he said.
An administrative official and four civilians were killed. Several police officers were among the nearly 20 people wounded.
The explosion set fire to buildings on both sides of the road in the town's commercial area, damaging rows of wooden shop houses.
Authorities said insurgents had distributed flyers in the past two weeks to warn local traders against operating their businesses on Fridays.
The attack came after a recent high-profile surrender of nearly 100 Muslim militants to the Thai authorities.
Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat are the only Muslim-dominated provinces in the predominantly Buddhist country. More than 5,000 people have been killed in the region since an Islamist insurgency erupted in 2004.Is the cryptocurrency bitcoin the biggest bubble in the world today, or a great investment bet on the cutting edge of new-age financial technology? My best guess is that in the long run, the technology will thrive, but that the price of bitcoin will collapse.
If you haven’t been following the bitcoin story, its price is up 600% over the past 12 months, and 1,600% in the past 24 months. At over $4,200 (as of 5 October), a single unit of the virtual currency is now worth more than three times an ounce of gold. Some bitcoin evangelists see it going far higher in the next few years.
What happens from here will depend a lot on how governments react. Will they tolerate anonymous payment systems that facilitate tax evasion and crime? Will they create digital currencies of their own? Another key question is how successfully bitcoin’s numerous “alt-coin” competitors can penetrate the market.
Warnings grow louder over cryptocurrency as valuations soar Read more
In principle, it is supremely easy to clone or improve on bitcoin’s technology. What is not so easy is to duplicate bitcoin’s established lead in credibility and the large ecosystem of applications that have built up around it.
For now, the regulatory environment remains a free-for-all. China’s government, concerned about the use of bitcoin in capital flight and tax evasion, has recently banned bitcoin exchanges. Japan, on the other hand, has enshrined bitcoin as legal tender, in an apparent bid to become the global centre of fintech.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bitcoin price Photograph: Project Syndicate
The United States is taking tentative steps to follow Japan in regulating fintech, though the endgame is far from clear. Importantly, bitcoin does not need to win every battle to justify a sky-high price. Japan, the world’s third largest economy, has an extraordinarily high currency-to-income ratio (roughly 20%), so bitcoin’s success there is a major triumph.
In Silicon Valley, drooling executives are both investing in bitcoin and pouring money into competitors. After bitcoin, the most important is Ethereum. The sweeping, Amazon-like ambition of Ethereum is to allow its users to employ the same general technology to negotiate and write “smart contracts” for just about anything.
As of early October, Ethereum’s market capitalisation stood at $28bn, versus $72bn for bitcoin. Ripple, a platform championed by the banking sector to slash transaction costs for interbank and overseas transfers, is a distant third at $9bn. Behind the top three are dozens of fledgling competitors.
Most experts agree that the ingenious technology behind virtual currencies may have broad applications for cybersecurity, which currently poses one of the biggest challenges to the stability of the global financial system. For many developers, the goal of achieving a cheaper, more secure payments mechanism has supplanted bitcoin’s ambition of replacing dollars.
But it is folly to think that bitcoin will ever be allowed to supplant central-bank-issued money. It is one thing for governments to allow small anonymous transactions with virtual currencies; indeed, this would be desirable. But it is an entirely different matter for governments to allow large-scale anonymous payments, which would make it extremely difficult to collect taxes or counter criminal activity. Of course, as I note in my recent book on past, present, and future currencies, governments that issue large-denomination bills also risk aiding tax evasion and crime. But cash at least has bulk, unlike virtual currency.
Introducing the new celebrity accessory: bitcoin-style cryptocurrencies Read more
It will be interesting to see how the Japanese experiment evolves. The government has indicated that it will force bitcoin exchanges to be on the lookout for criminal activity and to collect information on deposit holders. Still, one can be sure that global tax evaders will seek ways to acquire bitcoin anonymously abroad and then launder their money through Japanese accounts. Carrying paper currency in and out of a country is a major cost for tax evaders and criminals; by embracing virtual currencies, Japan risks becoming a Switzerland-like tax haven – with the bank secrecy laws baked into the technology.
Were bitcoin stripped of its near-anonymity, it would be hard to justify its current price. Perhaps bitcoin speculators are betting that there will always be a consortium of rogue states allowing anonymous bitcoin usage, or even state actors such as North Korea that will exploit it.
Would the price of bitcoin drop to zero if governments could perfectly observe transactions? Perhaps not. Even though bitcoin transactions require an exorbitant amount of electricity, with some improvements, bitcoin might still beat the 2% fees the big banks charge on credit and debit cards.
Finally, it is hard to see what would stop central banks from creating their own digital currencies and using regulation to tilt the playing field until they win. The long history of currency tells us that what the private sector innovates, the state eventually regulates and appropriates. I have no idea where bitcoin’s price will go over the next couple years, but there is no reason to expect virtual currency to avoid a similar fate.
•Kenneth Rogoff is professor of economics and public policy at Harvard University. He was the chief economist of the IMF from 2001 to 2003.
© Project SyndicateObama also referred to slaves as 'immigrants'
CLOSE President Obama referred to slaves as "immigrants" long before Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson. USA TODAY NETWORK
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson caused a stir Monday when he referred to slaves as "immigrants" — but he wasn't the first person to do that.
In December 2015, then-President Obama made similar comments during a naturalization ceremony at the National Archives.
The president did not specifically say "slaves" during his speech, but instead mentioned "those of African heritage who had not come here voluntarily" who "in their own way were immigrants themselves."
The full quote, per the Obama administration's archives:
"And perhaps, like some of you, these new arrivals might have had some moments of doubt, wondering if they had made a mistake in leaving everything and everyone they ever knew behind. So life in America was not always easy. It wasn’t always easy for new immigrants. Certainly it wasn’t easy for those of African heritage who had not come here voluntarily, and yet in their own way were immigrants themselves. There was discrimination and hardship and poverty. But, like you, they no doubt found inspiration in all those who had come before them. And they were able to muster faith that, here in America, they might build a better life and give their children something more."
The similarities between Carson's comments and Obama's speech were first reported by Breitbart News.
Lots of nastiness directed @RealBenCarson - but in 2015 President Obama also referred to the slaves as immigrants https://t.co/0sinrwgQs3pic.twitter.com/OSzfbrweHb — Charlie Spiering (@charliespiering) March 7, 2017
Watch Obama's speech here. The section mentioned above begins at 5:56:
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2nc8OTgMcCulloch confirms what everyone pretty much already knew
It’s been about a month since Robert McCulloch made the announcement that would change this country forever: Darren Wilson would not be indicted for the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, a bitter ending to a case that gripped the nation for 4 months, and whose implications will be felt for years to come.
There were already murmurs of just how vast the different accounts given by witnesses of what happened that fateful day (August 9) were, and some “witnesses” were bold enough to admit they were nowhere near the actual site of the shooting on the day in question, but what’s worse, the Ferguson District Attorney, McCulloch, knew this, and still allowed their testimonies.
McCulloch was the guest on 550 KTRS with McGraw Milhaven recently, and he divulged a bit of information that will be disturbing to scores of people once they learn of it.
One of the most glaring examples of fake witness testimony was Witness number 40, who supported Darern Wilson’s version of events, but it was later found out that she more than likely was not present when Darren Wilson shot Michael Brown. McCulloch’s response to this?
I’m sure she was nowhere near the place. She recounted a statement that was right out of the newspapers.
The following is an excerpt from the transcript of the interview, which you can watch in its entirety above, or read here.
KTRS (McGraw Millhaven): Why did you allow people to testify in front of the grand jury in which you knew their information was either flat-out wrong, or flat-out lying, or just weren’t telling the truth?
McCulloch: Well, early on, I decided that anyone who claimed to have witnessed anything was going to be presented to the grand jury. And I knew that no matter how I handled it, there would be criticism of it. So if I didn’t put those witnesses on, then we’d be discussing now why I didn’t put those witnesses on. Even though their statements were not accurate.Al Avila and Brad Ausmus (Photo: Robin Buckson, Detroit News)
Chicago – It’s fluid, of course. Until the Aug. 1 trade deadline passes, anything can happen.
Or, as is most likely the case for the Tigers, nothing can happen.
General manager Al Avila made it clear before the game Saturday that all signs are pointing to the Tigers standing pat at the deadline.
“I'm not going to be real sexy at the trade deadline,” he said. “Obviously you guys want to write something sexy and something really exciting. You're looking for a big trade. But I am not anticipating that this year.”
He’s been consistent on that point all season. This team was put together in the offseason with a $200 million payroll to compete and get into the playoffs this season. Despite the injuries and inconsistencies, Avila has not wavered in his commitment to this team.
“I don't foresee us adding another starting pitcher or reliever at this point,” he said. “We have one of the highest payrolls in baseball and we put this team together in the wintertime thinking this is the team that's going to compete and get us into the playoffs. And we're going to stay the course.”
That’s not to say there won’t be additions to the roster come August. You already know their names.
“Right now, what we're really focusing on is trying to get the guys who are injured back and playing; those are going to be our major acquisitions,” he said. “There's nobody out there better than Jordan Zimmermann if he comes back healthy. Obviously J.D. Martinez and Daniel Norris – those are three guys we are focusing on getting back healthy and they will be big acquisitions shortly.”
J.D. Martinez (Photo: Robin Buckson, Detroit News)
All three could be back by early August. Norris pitched his rehab assignment with Toledo Saturday night in Norfolk. Zimmermann will make what could be the first of two rehab starts on Sunday.
Martinez is taking batting practice and throwing every day. He could start his rehab assignment within the next week to 10 days.
“In addition to that, we don't want to trade away our good young prospects for a two-month rental,” Avila said. “We think right now we have the team that can take us into the playoffs barring any other injuries. We are looking at winning right now, but we are also looking toward the future. We have to make both work.”
Avila said his phone lines were still wide open. If there is a suitable deal to be made, without having to give up top prospects, he will make it.
“I'm not saying we're not going to be open-minded to anything that might make sense,” he said. “Because coming closer to the Aug. 1 deadline, there may be something out there that makes sense. I can't rule it completely out. But I would say right now it's not a probable thing.”
He’s already looked into an upgrade for the back end of the team’s rotation. Nothing happening there.
“I have actually been in contact with several GMs that are in sell mode about their pitching and the asking price is to too high – even for a fifth starter,” he said. “I looked at some teams where we could maybe upgrade and in taking to our scouts and our staff, the quality of pitcher available doesn't really put us over the top, over the edge that much to say it warranted a big payback in a trade.”
As for being sellers at the deadline, Avila nixed that, too. He’s put it on the players to keep that from changing in the next week or so.
“I think this team is going to continue to win,” he said. “Obviously, we've got to keep playing well. We have two tough games left here and we've got Boston in Boston. They are tough over there. They can hit and it's a great team. It's a tough task ahead of us.
“These guys have to step up to the challenge and play well and win some games. If they do, we will continue to move forward and get into the playoffs with this team.”
Avila said teams have inquired about the availability of several of the Tigers’ players, but he’s told them what he’s telling everybody – he’s not in sell mode.
“I’m not going to mention names, but yeah, there’s guys that might be attractive to other teams,” he said. “But, like I said, we’re trying to win.”
He was asked if there was any scenario where he’d be selling.
“I do not see that scenario right now, not today,” he said. “I can’t say it can’t change between now and Aug. 1. But sitting here today, I’m hoping that that doesn’t happen.”
It may not sell newspapers or get ratings on talk radio, but it’s exactly what the players and manager Brad Ausmus have been campaigning for – to stand pat and make a playoff run.
“I would say (standing pat) is the most realistic option sitting here today,” Avila said. “Which is probably what’s best for the team this year and moving forward in the future. It might not be the sexiest thing, but it is what it is.”
Twitter @cmccoskyAfter voting for a supreme individual achievement last week, this week you fans have decided that teamwork was the way to go. Choosing from a group that featured a collection of both incredible individual feats and great team efforts, you crowned the most candles lit simultaneously as your Fan Choice Record of the Week!
Congratulations go to the Art of Living Foundation in Ahmedabad, India, for their record, garnering just more than half of all votes. This achievement will now be entered in our list of contenders for a year-end showdown in which we'll ask you fans to vote for your favorite record of the year at the end of 2013.
This week, we noticed that long was strong in our latest batch of candidates. Four of the five records involved some form of an astonishing feat of length. Plus, a few odd hundred Gokus. Get familiar with the candidates and learn how to share your vote below!
Longest eyelash on a dog (see image above)
Record: 15 centimeters (5.9 inches)
Holder: Ranmaru the dog
Location: Chuo, Tokyo, Japan
That's not all: Before Ranmaru, an Australian Labradoodle, came around, this record had stood unbroken for more than 8 years. Ranmaru's lenghty lash beat the previous record by more than half an inch.
Longest chocolate sculpture
Record: 34.05 meters (111 feet, 8 inches)
Holder: Andrew Farrugia (of Malta)
Location: Brussels, Belgium
That's not all: The sculpture depicted a train with a steam locomotive front and modern locomotive end. It took 1,285 kg (2,755 lbs) of dark Belgian chocolate to complete the sculpture, which was unveiled at Brussels South Station.
Largest gathering of people dressed as Dragon Ball characters
Record: 307
Holder: Saló de Manga festival
Location: Barcelona, Spain
That's not all: Kamehameha! Saló de Manga is the largest Manga festival in Spain and the attempt was undertaken to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Dragon Ball's first publication in the country.
Longest sawdust carpet
Record: 1,278 meters (4,192 feet, 10 inches)
Holder: Municipality of Guatemala
Location: Guatemala City, Guatemala
That's not all: Approximately 1,300 volunteers helped assemble the carpet, a traditional feature of Guatemalan Easter celebrations. This particular carpet was designed as an invitation for newly chosen Pope Francis I to visit the city.
Longest line of toy cars
Record: 9,007 toy cars
Holder: Gemeinde Anger
Location: Anger, Germany
That's not all: End to end, the cars measured 959.3 meters (3,147 feet, 4 inches) long. The record was attempted on the heels of news that Hans-Peter Porsche of the famous Porsche family announced plans to invest in a new toy museum in Anger for 2014.
There you have it - now it's time for you to cast your vote! There are a number of ways to do this, including right here by choosing in our poll:
&lt;a href="http://polldaddy.com/poll/7032754/"&gt;What is your pick for this week's Fan Choice Record?&lt;/a&gt;
You can also leave your choice in the comment section below, or tweet your choice to us on Twitter ( @GWR) with the hashtag #GWRFanChoice.
Then check back here next week to see who's been crowned the latest fan favorite.Have you ever gone to a stadium concert and wondered just how many people were responsible in putting the show on and making it run smoothly? Thanks to a new letter from Bruce Springsteen's tour director, we've learned that it's a lot more complex than Jackson Browne described in'The Load Out.'
With Springsteen's 'Wrecking Ball' tour finishing its European leg on Tuesday (July 31), George Travis, Springsteen's longtime tour director, wrote to the tour crew thanking them for their work throughout the summer. He also broke down the tour in terms of the sheer manpower involved every night. The letter has been excerpted and published on Springsteen's website.
We are heading home with 51 shows behind us; 11 states, 15 countries, 33 stadium shows and festivals and over 1,650,000 people. And now our US/Canadian outdoor stadium run is about to kick-off… This is a note of acknowledgement to all the men and women that are or have been a part of this UK/European leg of our tour.
A huge thank you to the bus and rig drivers, the caterers, the shops and offices of our vendors … you’ve gotten us everywhere on time, while feeding us incredibly delicious food and keeping us afloat. Thank you for being some of the best we’ve ever had!
We are over 100 people working and traveling together on this tour, as well as the hundreds more we deal with in venues from every city we travel to. We are all part of what may be the biggest and best group of musicians traveling on the road today, and we end each night knowing there are a lot of fans going home with memories they’ll talk about for the rest of their lives. So, thank you to Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band and to all the fans who are responsible for us to have this great job. The bar has always been set pretty high and we’re hoping to push it even higher.
Talking about what it takes to run a tour, this is what we’re made of … everyone can count how many people are up on the stage, but how many others are involved with running this tour?
Our base story starts with 22 trailers for band gear, sound, lights, video, wardrobe, dressing room needs, and our traveling stage. There is 1 catering trailer, 2 generator trailers, 1 power trailer of cabling and 12 to 17 mainstage, mix and delay tower trailers for each city. In Europe, we have 4 main systems based out of Belgium, 2 Spanish systems and 3 different systems for our Nordic region. At each stadium we have between 6 and 9 trailers of field cover, 3 trailers of barricades, and 3 to 5 trailers of temporary chain link sections, bike rack, and other panels. Adding to that is at least 3 more for golf carts, canopy tents, turnstiles, safety mats and other security items we need for the site. Not included in this is what comes in to the stadium with concessions and BEER. And, add to all this 10 to 12 trailers of Port-o-potties. A lot to wrangle during the load-in days and a mass exodus starting about 10 minutes after the show ends.
We utilize the largest video screen system on the road today. In addition to our camera positions (that everyone can see) we also have robo-cameras controlled by 2 crew personnel from our switching tent and server box. We have 21st century lighting which still enables us to have the ability to make things feel like a club setting. Our traveling mainstage is state-of-the-art utilizing a magnet system that helps make the connections quicker and safer for the team assembling with an air conditioning system placed under the stage.
Now to the actual people: we start with a core of 25 people comprising management, band, road logistics, production management, security coordination, hotel and site coordination. Now add-in 3 riggers, 4 carpenters, 2 barricade handlers, 5 for wardrobe, hair & makeup, dressing rooms and catering direction, 10 band technicians, 9 audio, 9 electricians, 9 video crew and 4 generator master electricians, and 10 catering crew to get all these people fed. Add to that the 25 plus truck drivers and 6 bus drivers!
At each venue, we interact with 30 or so promoter personnel who help with venue management, ticketing, runners and local drivers. Add to that the traveling main stage crew of 15 plus and a local crew of 100 plus to get the venue up and running for the show. We use 20 crew for “show call” which includes many of our truck drivers on spotlights and a security force of 120 plus, with 80 or more venue ushers and ticket takers. There are 50 or more venue clean-up people, over 50 local police and other authorities and over 25 EMT/medical personnel. We then add even more local crew to load-out based on venue size and distance from the trucks. Of course, a quiz will follow!
Thank you to everyone who has worked on this tour and all the fans for joining us!Mark Hanretty skates and flies at the same time! He is a Scottish-born ice skater who represented Great Britain at the World and European championships. We saw him performing aerial act while ice skating. It was breathtaking and somehow risky. We wanted to learn more so here he is to answer our questions.
Feel free to ask your question as well at the end of the interview in our comments section.
Mark give us a description of what an “aerialist skater” is.
Aerialist skater is a performer who combines figure skating and aerial arts.
What’s the most difficult aspect of combining ice skating and aerial arts?
One of the most difficult aspects of combining the two disciplines is the danger of using sharp blades on the silks. Also, it can be really challenging to climb the silks with the increased weight of the heavy skates!
How did the idea of combining both come about?
I have performed and competed as a skater for my whole life. In 2013 my wife gave birth to our son and since then we have had a second child, a baby girl earlier this year. As a family man, I do not want to be away from my family for a prolonged period and therefore long contracts as a skater are not possible. It was suggested that having an act may attract some shorter performance opportunities or even one-off performances. I am reluctant to stop performing altogether but hopeful that being an aerialist skater combines my desire to be a good husband and father as well as a performer!
What makes you want to combine them both and not to do them separately?
Having skated for my entire life, it was exciting to learn a new skill and combining my favourite passion of ice skating with the new world of aerial is both exciting and thrilling!
If you had to come up with a name for this art what would it be?
Aerial Ice.
Can someone who knows just how to ice skate or just how to use the aerial silks try this out?
I have seen some less experienced skaters perform with silks. It is possible to do, but I think it makes the transition from ice to air more sticky. Being able to transition seamlessly is obviously a plus for any performer and particularly between the ice and the silks.
What are the most important tips someone has to know so as to skate and fly at the same time?
When transitioning from ice to air, the skater must be incredibly aware of the relationship between their blades and the apparatus!
Have you ever had any thoughts or concerns about your safety or the safety of others around you?
I was very fortunate to attend a reading course held by the high-performance company run by Bryan Donaldson. Theoretically, I am better educated now to rig my own equipment, however, I would still continue to feel far more comfortable with a more experienced rigger!
Are there any individuals who oppose what you do?
My mum hates to see any videos or footage of me on the silks, now as a parent myself, I can understand her concerns. However, I feel comfortable with the training that has been given and I hope to always be safe!
Thank you, Mark!
Learn more about Mark Hanretty: Following nine years as a successful singles skater, I found my most suited discipline in ice dance at the age of 19. Beyond my amateur career, I enjoyed multiple seasons as a professional skater in Torvill and Dean’s hit TV show, Dancing on Ice.
Amidst many exciting performing opportunities, I am lucky enough to have carved a successful career as a coach and choreographer. Most notably, I won the Young Artist Showcase competition in 2012; a worldwide choreography competition for figure skaters. This accolade paved the way for work as the principal choreographer for numerous skaters from Sweden, Germany, America, Japan and the UK.
My choreography was performed at the Sochi 2014 Olympics by British champions, Matt Parr and Jenna McCorkell. This season, alongside many British international competitors, I am working closely with the German junior ice dance champions, Katharina Muller and Tim Dieck.
With my wife, Kathy, we run “Hanretty Skate Camps”, a series of skate camps for all ages of competitive skaters. This fuels our passionate desire to
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. Factoring in the load shedding would raise the daily cost for the AC microgrid to 28.9 rupees (42 U.S. cents), while the DC grid’s cost would go up only slightly, to 7.3 rupees (11 U.S. cents). Over a month’s time, the potential savings from the DC system could amount to more than 400 rupees ($5.90). That may not sound like a lot of money to an affluent resident of a developed country. But in many parts of India, it is. It could mean the difference between keeping the lights on or sitting in the dark, between having a working fan or sweating in one’s bed.
Solar DC microgrids are also starting to have an impact in Indian villages that have never had grid-provided electricity. Our largest installation to date involves 71 villages in the western state of Rajasthan, where we have been working with the utility company Jodhpur Vidyut Vitran Nigam to electrify some 4,000 homes for the Ministry of Power. [For another example of electrification of a remote Indian village in the Himalayas, see “Lights for the Enlightened,” IEEE Spectrum, December 2016.]
A grid-connected home where power is unreliable can benefit from having a separate DC line, which provides about 10 percent of the usual household load during brownouts.
Before the project began, the villagers basically lived in darkness at night. Rajasthan actually has enough power to meet the needs of its entire population; the problem is delivering that power to every household.
Our first village was Bhom Ji ka Gaon, a community of 120 households that lies among the mighty sand dunes of Rajasthan. The village is 90 kilometers from the nearest town and 300 km from the nearest city, Jodhpur. The homes are spread out over an area of about 10 square kilometers. With no paved roads, crossing the sand dunes is best done by camel cart, tractor, or four-wheel drive. The people collect rainwater to irrigate their crops and raise their livestock. Most residents don’t venture out of the village except when they need to grind wheat or millet.
For the conventional power grid to reach this remote site would require building substations and power lines—a difficult and economically unfeasible proposition given the uneven terrain, long distances, and occasional severe sandstorms. What’s more, the chances of recovering such an investment would be slim at best: Although the villagers are self-sufficient, they don’t earn much money and so wouldn’t be able to buy a lot of electricity even if it were available.
What Rajasthan does have are clear skies and abundant sunlight for most of the year. So it’s ideal for solar power and indeed has already attracted several large PV power plants, most notably a proposed 4,000-MW facility near Sambhar Lake that would be the world’s largest. But these plants have many of the same problems of a traditional grid connection: They require transmission and distribution infrastructure to channel the captured power to nearby villages, and they suffer conversion losses when the DC power generated by the solar panels is converted to AC power.
In our deployments in Rajasthan, each home is given a 125-W solar panel, a specially designed 1-kWh lead-acid battery with an expected life span of 1,600 cycles (compared to about 800 cycles for a normal battery), and an inverterless controller box. Each house also gets a complement of devices: a full-size DC fan, a dimmable LED tube light, a remote for controlling the fan and tube light, an LED lightbulb, and a cellphone charger. The homeowner can add extra lights or a TV set, as long as the overall load doesn’t exceed 125 W. The entire system is being manufactured and installed for a fraction of the cost of traditional grid electrification.
We’ve also done installations outside of Rajasthan in which groups of two to four houses share a single 500-W microgrid and one installation in which about 30 houses now share a 7,500-W microgrid. With these larger networks, the amount of electricity allotted to each household can be remotely varied, to accommodate different-size households, via a wireless connection to the UDC meter in each home. The shared equipment reduces the installation and operating costs for each household.
Photo: Abhinav Ram Aluka/IITM After the sun goes down, the solar DC microgrid’s batteries power an efficient LED streetlamp, which provides plenty of illumination for cooking, conversing, and moving about.
For villages like Bhom Ji ka Gaon, conventional electrification is many years away, at best. In the meantime, DC appliances will keep getting better and a wider range of products will come to market, including evaporative coolers, small DC refrigerators, and solar stoves. At the same time, solar panels, batteries, and other microgrid components will continue to become cheaper and more efficient. In the end, the villagers may find that their off-grid systems provide all that they need.
India’s power problems are deep and pervasive. And yet the country’s experience with telephony offers a glimmer of hope. Until the mid-1990s, not even 5 percent of Indian homes had a phone, and in many places you’d wait for years just to get a landline installed. The main problem was the cost of copper cable, which made such connections prohibitively expensive for most people.
Then came cellphones and the rapid expansion of the cellular network. Today, nearly every adult in India has a mobile phone, which provides so much more functionality than a landline phone ever could. And the number and range of mobile services continue to grow all the time.
So too could India’s electrification follow an unconventional, disruptive path. We hope that solar DC microgrids paired with UDC meters evolve like India’s cellular network, leapfrogging over traditional infrastructure. Introducing DC lines into the home will naturally boost the market for DC appliances, which in turn will begin to edge out more power-hungry AC alternatives. Over time, those appliances as well as the microgrid equipment will become more affordable, even for rural villagers with little income. And as households consume far less energy and generate that energy right where it’s used, their utility bills will drop. As homes become less dependent on the traditional grid, they’ll be less affected by power cuts; eventually, such outages will disappear, as gaps between supply and demand go away.
We know that this technology can transform lives. We’ve seen what even a modest level of access to electricity can do, and we’ve heard many moving and inspiring stories from villagers who now enjoy comforts, conveniences, and security that they never thought they’d have. This is one of those rare moments when technological breakthroughs can come together to make it possible to do good on a massive scale. For the 1.2 billion people in this world who still live without electricity, it cannot happen soon enough.
This article appears in the February 2017 print issue as “The People’s Grid.”
About the Author
Ashok Jhunjhunwala is an electrical engineering professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, in Chennai, and founder of the Telecommunications and Computer Networks group (TeNeT), which has worked closely with industry to develop products for the Indian telecom, banking, and power industries. IEEE Spectrum featured Jhunjhunwala in its Engineering Heroes special report in 2015.MEPs have voted for a resolution that effectively legalises prostitution, but bans people from soliciting it.
British Labour MEP Mary Honeyball proposed that European parliamentarians endorse a report recommending the adoption of the so-called “Nordic model”, where the selling of sex is made legal, but buying it becomes illegal.
Supporters of the model say that by criminalising the buying of sex, it puts men off soliciting prostitution, thus causing the market to crash, while protecting women who are being exploited.
It was first adopted in Sweden in 1999, with Norway and Iceland following suit 10 years later. France also adopted it a few months ago.
Speaking after the vote, Ms Honeyball said: “Today’s outcome represents a vital signal from MEPs that we cannot continue to tolerate the exploitation of women.
“Rather than blanket legalisation, parliament has backed the more nuanced approach already practised in Sweden as a means of tackling prostitution.
“This punishes men who treat women’s bodies as a commodity, without criminalising women who are driven into sex work.
“The idea that prostitution is the oldest profession leads some to think we should accept it as a fact of life, that all we can do is regulate it a little better. This course of action leads to an increase in prostitution levels, normalising the purchase of sex and ingraining the inequalities which sustain the sex industry.”
The issue of prostitution is dividing the left. While some see it as an integral part of sexual liberation, others, especially a large number of feminists, think it is inherently exploitative and would like to end it permanently.
Honeyball and her supporters maintain that most women who enter prostitution have been trafficked or coerced. She says that “very few women work in prostitution completely of their own free will, and choices made in conditions of being unequal cannot be considered free.”Youtube CEO Susan Wojcicki speak onstage during 'Who Owns Your Screen?' at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on October 9, 2014 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Kimberly White/Getty Images for Vanity Fair) Kimberly White/Getty YouTube will launch a subscription-based, ad-free music service by the end of this year, CEO Susan Wojcicki confirmed earlier this week during an interview at Fortune's Brainstorm conference. The service, which has been in beta testing since last November, may allow YouTube to cement its video dominance and stave off competition from other digital media platforms, namely Facebook, which has reportedly been pursuing partnerships with music labels.
This story was originally sent to thousands of professionals in the digital media industry in this morning's DIGITAL MEDIA INSIDER newsletter. You can join them -- sign up for a RISK FREE trial now »
YouTube's new subscription music streaming service illustrates the video giant's strong competitive positioning in the digital video industry.
YouTube is already a popular destination for music listeners. The video site is the world's leading music streaming service. In the first half of 2015, the site accounted for 57% of the world's 135.2 billion music streams, including music videos, according to Nielsen data cited by Music Business WorldWide. Additionally, competitors like Facebook are only now establishing relationships with music video publishers. YouTube, one the other hand, has longstanding relationships with record labels and an extensive library of music videos.
Plus, YouTube's users come to the site to watch videos. Unlike other social platforms that are looking to segue into the video streaming industry, YouTube's estimated 1 billion users are loyal video viewers and access the site exclusively for its video content. YouTube and other Google-owned properties accounted for nearly double as many unique US online video views on desktop computers as Facebook in May 2015, according to comScore. Facebook, however, has claimed that their global views including mobile are on par with YouTube's.Guests from at least eight rooms have been evacuated. NBC 7’s Astrid Solorzano reports on this breaking story. (Published Sunday, March 5, 2017)
The driver who crashed into the Bay Inn and Suites Motel in Midway Sunday evening has been identified, with a prior DUI conviction on his record.
Christopher Paul Cater, age 25, was taken into police custody on a suspected DUI charge and for driving on a suspended drivers license, according to San Diego Police.
Police say this would not be Cater's first DUI conviction. He was booked into San Diego Central Jail just after 4 a.m. Monday and held on a bail amount of $15,000.
His arraignment is scheduled in April.
The owner of the motels, Luis Parra, told NBC 7 that he has called his insurance and hopes to get the place up and running again as soon as possible. Parra said that six rooms were evacuated due to the damage.
Guests were evacuated from the Bay Inn and Suites Motel in Midway after a driver crashed into the side of the building, said police.
Carter was leaving a nearby strip club when he slammed into an SUV in the parking lot before hitting the back of the motel's parking garage.
Speed was a factor in the crash, police said. The driver took out a support beam when he crashed, compromising the structural integrity of the building. He fled but officers arrested him soon after.
The motel is located at Midway Drive and Wing Street. The crash happened around 9:30 p.m. Sunday.A disappointing shower is no way to start your day. Luckily, there may be a quick fix to pump up the water pressure in your shower. The DIY mavens at Stack Exchange tell you how.
I recently purchased my first home. It has two bathrooms and the water pressure in both is less than ideal. What are some steps I can take to increase the pressure?
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See the original question.
This is an effective trick a plumbing contractor once told me.
Go to your local home improvement store and buy a cheap shower head (the one I picked up cost $1.50). If you look down inside of the showerhead you'll see a washer which constricts the water flow. If you take a drill and enlarge the hole, thereby increasing flow, the water pressure will increase. I didn't think it would work but it did!!
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In the U.S., shower heads are required by government regulation to restrict water flow in order to save water and energy. By law, they must deliver less than 2.5 gallons per minute. For this reason, many shower heads will deliver less than ideal flow and/or pressure. To get around the law, and benefit those with less-than-stellar water pressure, many showerheads (e.g., the Waterpik I recently bought) come with instructions for removing the flow regulator. If you've discarded those instructions, a quick Google search should be all you need to figure out how to remove the flow regulator in your shower head.
And even if there are no specific instructions, I've found that the regulator is often made of brightly-colored plastic that looks sort of "out of place." It's almost like it's begging to be removed. :)
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Low pressure can be caused by old galvanized pipe, which often build up deposits causing the water to be restricted.
Another cause of low pressure can be incorrect pipe size. I like to run a 3/4" trunk line with 1/2" legs to fixtures (which I think is pretty common).
Some houses have pressure reducing valves on the supply line, which are used to control the water pressure inside the house. Here is a video explaining how to adjust this valve.
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1. Start by loosening the lock nut.
2. Next, turn the adjustment screw. Turn the screw clockwise to increase pressure. Turn the screw counterclockwise to decrease the pressure.
3. Once the proper pressure is set, tighten the lock nut.
These answers all assume the pressure is low in the whole house. If it's just the shower see the other answers.
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Illustration by Sean Gallagher.
Find more answers at the original post here. See more questions like this at Home Improvement, the DIY site at Stack Exchange. And of course, feel free to ask a question yourself.During its Build 2015 keynote, Microsoft just unveiled a new Windows 10 feature it's calling Continuum for Phones. It allows smartphones running Microsoft's latest OS to transform into desktop PCs — or at least an experience that's very close — when connected to larger screens. We've already seen Continuum help ease the transition for users switching between tablet and PC modes, and this is an even better example of what's possible when developers go along with Microsoft's universal apps plan.
Read next: Our Microsoft Windows 10 review.
The company is giving developers the tools to create software that runs across PCs, tablets, convertibles, smartphones, and Xbox. Apps can automatically adapt to the screen size they're running on, and Continuum for Phones is a showcase of that unity. Microsoft's Joe Belfiore demonstrated apps like Excel and Photos running in a traditional desktop view with the Windows 10 smartphone hooked up to a monitor. He also showed that content can be copied from phone-centric apps like Messaging and pasted into desktop apps.
Everything basically looks like the full version of Windows 10, but the phone is powering everything. "What we're trying to show here today, is our unique vision for phones and enabling them to scale up to a full PC-like experience," said Joe Belfiore. Continuum for Phones won't be something you'll find on existing Windows Phone devices. Belfiore was quick to note that the feature will require new devices capable of driving this dual-screen feature. Microsoft plans to share more on that soon.
Developing. Check out our Microsoft Build 2015 Live Blog for the latest updates
★★★
Microsoft Build 2015: Keynote speech in nine minutesTheresa May was in Rome to meet Matteo Renzi, the Italian prime minister. She played down the idea of Britain adopting a Norweigan-model relationship with the EU Franco Origlia/Getty Images
Theresa May has demanded a Brexit deal tailor-made for Britain, warning that she would not accept an agreement already “on the shelf”.
The prime minister appeared to play down the chances of Britain adopting the so-called Norway model that would keep it in the single market, but also force it to pay in to the EU budget and accept its free movement rules.
Standing alongside Matteo Renzi, the Italian prime minister, in Rome, she said: “I think we should be developing the model that suits the United Kingdom and the European Union, not adopting necessarily a model that’s on the shelf already.”
She also said that the rights of European citizens living in the UK to remain would depend on giving the same rights to…British creatives in Berlin at M&C Saatchi and M&C Saatchi Sports & Entertainment use an alternative advent calendar to raise money for charity
Real talk - 2016 has been pretty pants. Wars and terrorism raged, we lost Prince and David Bowie (to name just two of the many cultural giants who passed) and some of the tightest political battles of our time ensued. Two British creatives working in Berlin, Rob Hall (M&C Saatchi) and Tim Cook (M&C Saatchi Sports & Entertainment), are counting down the end of “the shittest year ever” with the #BadventCalendar. The #BadventCalendar is, as the name suggests, just like an advent calendar, except it reveals information about some of the worst events that have unfolded in 2016. We’ll admit, it’s not the most festive of Christmas initiatives - but as each day of advent passes, viewers are presented with a self-produced piece of content about a specific event, before being asked to donate to Educaid Sierra Leone, a charity which helps gives kids free education where it isn’t a possibility. LBB’s Addison Capper chatted with Rob and Tim to find out more.
Check out some of the already released content within the interview below, but be sure to head to the dedicated Tumblr for more.
To donate, please click here.
LBB> What inspired the Badvent Calendar? (Apart from the awful events featured within it.)
Rob & Tim> We think it’s fair to say that 2016 has been a pretty shite year. The whole world knows it and we all want it to be over. So our first thought was to create a countdown to 2017 during the month of December. Now, you don’t have to be Einstein to see how we made the leap to an advent calendar from that! Especially when you consider that it was mid-November when we first came up with the idea and every shop in Berlin was stocked with the bloody things! Nobody does Christmas quite like the Germans!
LBB> All of the content is pretty dark, but you’ve put a humorous spin on it. Why?
Rob & Tim> We didn’t want to make tragedies out of tragedies. Especially at Christmas – as the lyrics of ‘Deck the Halls’ say, “’tis the season to be jolly”. And since we’re heavily reliant on word of mouth, we knew from experience that it's a lot harder to talk through tears. Plus, nothing spreads faster than a good joke. So we fully embraced our shared dark taste of humour and had a lot of fun creating the project.
LBB> How tricky was it to tow that line between dark humour, but also still respecting the events you’re talking about?
Rob & Tim> Not that tricky at all to be honest. We believe that no subject should be off-limits in comedy. Period. There was only one piece of content that we ended up killing, simply because the gags made your stomach churn. And that would be a waste of Christmas dinner, right?
LBB> What kind of research did you have to undertake for this project?
Rob & Tim> All of the tragedies are well-known events, so we really didn’t have to research much. They just rolled off the tongue like projectile vomit. Only when it came to the specifics, like dates and the total number of deaths, did we actually have to go online and get the facts right. That’s a must when you’re talking about such serious events.
LBB> Who did you work with on the production of the content? How did you get it off the ground around your day jobs at M&C?
Rob & Tim> Everything you see, hear and read is done by us. Those are our voices and those are our words. And we created it all in our free time (this is a side project, after all). It's taken quite a lot of late nights and weekends just to get all the content together, obviously due to our daily business taking priority. But when you're doing something you really love, it doesn’t really feel like work at all. We’re used to taking our creativity outside the office. Rob recently directed a short film that’s playing at a few festivals and Tim makes music and occasionally DJs.
LBB> Tell us about the events you’ve featured… you weren’t short on things to choose from. How did you narrow them down? Are they more a reflection on the things that affected you both?
Rob & Tim> We wanted to find a balance between all of the different types of events i.e. political, natural disasters, celebrity deaths and terrorist attacks. So expect to see a mixture. Most of the tragedies received a lot of publicity, while some didn’t get as much press as they should have. So hopefully this helps even the balance a little! We were very subjective with our choices, but ultimately they are all chosen to hammer home the message that 2016 was the ‘Year of Shite’ and we really don’t want a repeat. Pretty please.
LBB> The main aim of this is to raise money for Educaid Sierra Leone - how are you feeding it for maximum exposure?
Rob & Tim> Besides the website on tumblr, we’ve got a Twitter account and Facebook page, where we share our content and always aim to bring attention to this remarkable charity.
LBB> And why that charity?
Rob & Tim> Our first thought was to do #BadventCalendar for good, especially since Christmas is the time for giving. So we decided to raise money for Educaid Sierra Leone - a remarkable charity, which helps kids get the education they need to have a better future. The charity appealed to us especially because education has played a big part in our lives, and we believe that education should be a right not a privilege. Perhaps if people were a bit more educated, some events in 2016 wouldn’t have happened!
LBB> What are your end goals?
Rob & Tim> Well we are really hoping to end 2016 on a high and raise £1000 by Christmas day, so that we can give the kids of Sierra Leone a present they’ll never forget. If we can raise more than that figure, maybe we’ll have to rethink how bad 2016 actually was!
Here’s a handy breakdown of what a donation gets you:
£ 195.00 - Education, food, medical care for 1 pupil for 1 year
£ 50.00 - Feeds a child for a year
£ 25.00 - Keeps a girl in our safe house for 3 months
£ 10.00 - Education, food, medical care for 1 pupil for 2 weeks
Follow #BadventCalendar on Facebook and Twitter.June 17, 2014
Written By Timothy Nguyen
I met Andrew through Levi mid 2013 when I was invited to a Mortar sale here in Houston. He’s the kind of guy who when you look at him, you know he has style and presence. I was really looking forward to this interview because I have never worked in a high end boutique, so it was definitely an eye opener for me. Andrew delivers an interesting outlook on what his journey through menswear has been like as well as his experiences working at Billy Reid/Mortar. He also takes us behinds the scenes of how an upscale men’s clothing boutique operates.
Can you go over your background and how you got into fashion?
I grew up in a farm town called Richmond, Texas, and fashion was never on the radar. I went to a public middle school out there and it was always Hollister/American Eagle, cowboy boots, and rhinestones on the belts. After that, I went to Strake Prep School in Houston where the uniform was essentially khakis and polos.I met my girlfriend Fatima in 2009 and she got me into I guess “fashion”. She took me to buy my first Banana Republic v-neck and me being, for lack of a better term a pedantic, I got into materials and different design aspects of things. I’m also very meticulous and I love intricacies, so that really sparked my interest in fashion and it just snowballed from there.
After my freshman year of college I needed a job to basically make the bills meet. I walked into a place called Billy Reid and there I had my first experience with more “expensive” fashion.
I got introduced to Mortar around late 2011 and got into raw denim, Rag & Bone, Our Legacy and things of the sort. From there I started visiting online communities and it got me heavily into fashion. Mortar started to take a turn, and just me being thirsty for that knowledge, I dove head in and its been like that ever since.
What is your favorite aesthetic and is there anything you wish you could pull off but can’t?
I don’t like to pigeon hole myself and/or subscribe to very certain aesthetics. We are talking about all different types of the spectrum, I have friends dress in strictly Plokhov and Rick Owens, there is Thom Browne, and then the whole menswear/ sprezzatura. You can also digress and talk about minimalism and things like that.
I find that style for myself is just an expression of my mood for the day. So if its hot I wanna be wearing something that I am comfortable in both outside and personally.
It’s a negative connotation, but I am a narcissist and a little bit arrogant. I like to hear myself talk and I wanna look good. That’s the thing.
That being said, I really appreciate people who can pull off all Rick everything and be total street goth with layers upon layers. Although I don’t find it that functional in the Houston heat, where its ungodly hot. It would be horrendous and you would have swamp pits and you would look like those dogs over there *points to two black dogs behind us panting and super hot*. I definitely can’t pull that off and I don’t have the body type because I am more athletically built, but that’s being polite to my own figure as I am less athletic now then I used to be. I would like to be able to pull that off every now and then but I can’t do it all that often.
Can you describe what Mortar was so we can get a full picture?
Mortar was a multi-brand store that offered what we considered “#menswear”. So basically brands like Rag & Bone, and a lot of good fitting collared shirts. For example we carried Hamilton 1883, which just started budding as a ready-to-wear line. I mean GQ just picked them up and put them on a lot of features, so it was readily available to wear in Houston and any market. Nothing was too print heavy, nothing had aggressive cuts, and nothing was too directional. Looking back at it, it’s kind of funny. I grew with mortar and that’s how my aesthetic started. I mean it was Hill-Side tie, 1883 shirt, and some slim fit chinos or a pair of raw jeans for me.
What was boutique life like?
First of all, it definitely wasn’t monotonous. Folding clothes was almost non-existent which was great because everything was hung. I also made a lot of great relationships through that and it actually helped my personality grow tremendously. I got into the whole food industry and scene through Billy Reid and through this boutique life by meeting people like restaurant owners and entrepreneurs. It also helped being out in the communities of Montrose and Upper Kirby (trendier areas in Houston). I am kind of tooting my own horn here, but I am amiable and talkative so the boutique life grew personal relationships with generally interesting people. I met an ER doctor, for example, who is also a restaurant owner and a sailor. I had pockets of genuinely interesting conversations and experiences which are memorable and cherishable.
Day to day life wasn’t that exciting and it was a lot of waiting around. For Billy Reid you are more or less a pawn/peon, which is fine because you have to have that to make the structure work. A non-commission environment also made it a lot more friendly, which was a good thing. It was genuinely fun because you got to sit down and have a drink and just hang out with the customer. It was beneficial for your own personal and store’s relationships. For Mortar it was all that, but also the analysis of margins, events, or sales schedules. Basically asking, “What do we need to bring in or what do we need to re-up on any sizing?”
That’s basically where my boutique life ended and when Mortar closed more design stuff started.
Having worked in different stores with different concepts, do you feel like that traditions retail concept is still viable for the modern market? Will it still be viable in the future?
Concept wise, Billy Reid is a single brand store. It was formerly located in the [Houston] Galleria before moving out to it’s stand alone storefront today. It is Houston’s premier shopping district because you have hundreds of thousands of people that go through these stores and walk through the mall each day. The Galleria is important to retailers because Houston is so expansive that it’s hard to capture an audience that’s viable to what you are looking for. It can be exhausting to sit there and sell things you don’t necessarily believe in. I have pieces I love from Billy Reid. The retail concept of a single brand store may still be viable, but I think the multi-brand stores will be dead very soon, unless you are working with lots and lots of capital.
Using that to segue into the Mortar that we all grew to know and love. I believed in the concept but you can’t compete with the Mr. Porters. Men don’t necessarily try stuff on which helps them shop online and it’s too convenient. It’s hard to compete with something that has a lot more brands/options because they have that much more capital to work with. At the same time, they also get spring/summer and fall/winter shipments sooner than you do and they can discount sooner than you do. They can also take more hits on their margin because they can get a cheaper wholesale price because they buy in bulk. Basically you are playing loaded game and your bound to lose. The only thing that you can offer that an online retailer can’t offer is customer service and even then, the gap is slowly closing. So, with that being said, I don’t think a traditional retail concept is viable. Maybe right at this moment, sure, you can survive andI wish the best of luck to retailers that are hoping to survive and hoping to open up. But in the foreseeable future, you have to have a lot of capital behind you and personal relationships with distributors otherwise you are not getting exclusivity, which is the biggest driver in men’s retail.
You have already touched on this a little bit but have you ever been included in the buy process?
Yes, I had a little bit of input. For the record, I never traveled for buys I only saw sheets and pictures. I was offered to travel, but I wasn’t able to. Buying was difficult because you want to snatch everything up. When you see these margins you want capitalize on this as much as possible. You see Rick pieces that you get 70% off on its hard not to pick it up. Another thing that was hard was not buying for yourself and only buying for your customer.
Things like that don’t really register when you are putting together certain things and you really have to keep a cohesive buy in mind. What you buy needs to look good in your store and somewhat directional. It really doesn’t look good if you have Rag & Bone next to Rick Owens because it doesn’t make sense.
Buying for Houston really sucks for fall/winter because we have a three month fall winter and it also discounts faster. We have a nine month of spring/summer and by the time we get our first shipment of say, parkas, its already 65 degrees outside and rising. For example, I love SNS Herning. It has to be one of my absolute favorite brands. But you can’t buy heavy knits because its just not viable here. Things like that make it really difficult.
What struggles did you have developing your style?
Man, I’m so ballin’ I had no struggles. I am just so stylish. *laughs*
I see this a lot too so its not just me, it is a common mistake. You try to dress like models or go peacocking like street style shots. I found myself peacocking or doing things that really weren’t applicable to my lifestyle. For example, mixing too many patterns and wearing a bow tie when I didn’t need to. I was most definitely, and we can put this on the record, a casual bow tie guy. Yes, we all live with our mistakes. I am glad that it was that and not something else. Honestly, I wouldn’t get caught dead in a bow tie now except for maybe weddings right? I guess that’s okay. I have like seven, so you guys need to invite me to some weddings or something so I can wear all these bow ties.
I tried to tow the party line of menswear too much instead of dressing how I should’ve. Now definitely leaning towards utilitarianism. On the flip side of things, I think things like aren’t Rick are very utilitarian. Obviously its not really meant to be, so that’s why I love brands like White Mountaineering or Engineered Garments which are strictly to the point. There are not too many frills and it just works.
That took me awhile to come around to, but at the same time, we will kind of flip the question on it’s head. I grew up in a farm town where fashion wasn’t a big deal and I went to Texas A&M where its even less of a big deal. It was super conformist where 80% of the men there are dressed in khaki shorts and polos which is an acceptable traditional look. You break necks if you are wearing a slim fitting chino and a tee. I was looked down on because of my shoes were said to look like Keebler Elf shoes. I was called a “fag” because of my tight pants, or literally people wondering what the heck I was wearing. It was okay for me because I am comfortable in my own skin but it’s not easy. I would chalk that up to a struggle. There was a stigma towards the way I dressed both at home with my friends as well as at school. It wasn’t like persecution or anything like that. I am not trying to martyr myself for menswear or anything like that. The Menswear Martyr, that’s me. *laughs*
To be honest, I like being the big fish in a small pond. I like being different and that’s why I do a lot of what I do.
Do you have any final thoughts for the readers?
Just do you. This is so cliché. Don’t do you. Just learn from your mistakes. Fashion and style is an outward expression of yourself so if you have any personal experiences that you can express through clothing, you should. If you grew up in Cut and Shoot, Texas, shout out to Chris McGee, it’s okay to rock dirty cowboy boots and you will be as “#menswear” as anyone else. Portrayal is everything. You can see Ann D, Rick, and look super cool and confident and at the same time if you’re wearing Hollister shirt and J.Crew and you are confident it doesn’t matter. I worked in high end retail stores, but I’m not about to despise anyone that can’t afford anything or can’t rationalize spending money like that.
With me right now, It’s all about utilitarianism. I always loved the mantra of White Mountaineering guys, design, utility, and technology. So, if you can have something that you are comfortable wearing, it works to your lifestyle, and if you want to spend a little bit money because it’s made out of PerTex or GoreTex or some performance wear, why not? It’s about feeling good.
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Photo Credits: Levi LemasterFinland, January 29, 2015: After a succesful tablet campaign back in 2014, Jolla reopens it on Indiegogo. Those who already financed the 32Gb tablet last year are offered an option to upgrade to 64Gb with just $25 extra investment
[News] Jolla Tablet 64Gb now crowdfunding
Changes
There are some upgrades and some downgrades to the previous information, mostly complying with user feedback shared at
Instead of microSDXC support, the Jolla tablet will support 128Gb memory cards with Open Source formats. This means that if the card is formatted to any other formats than SDHC (max 32Gb), Microsoft Windows devices or other SDXC marked devices are not able to read the content of the card. Users who financed the campaign have had their word on this, and they didn't want their money to be directed to Microsoft in a form of licencing of the SDXC (What really happened):
"We apologise for the lack of full Windows support here, but we feel that this suits best with our community's wishes and the Jolla values."
Proximity sensor, which is more common in mobile phones (shutting down the screen when it's close to the ear), is dropped from the plans, and instead 2 other sensors are added. Jolla tablet
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East Melody, Barberry, Larkspur, Tumbleweed, Kelvere, Snowberry, Marfield, Woodland, Birchton, Carlsbrook, Colchester, Green Forest, Kaylin, Leslee, Redstock, Sherry, Starbrook and Tamfield.
Taken off the surplus funding list is a proposed appearance next February of the Morehouse College Glee Club. Shaffer had suggested using $30,000 for that event as part of Martin Luther King Day, but said the city will instead focus on a possible event that features local choirs and glee clubs. The Morehouse College group, he said, might come to the city in 2017 if private funding is secured.
What is also uncertain is the proposed $300,000 for a new budget stabilization fund that would be used in the case of emergencies or budget deficits. Spending money in that fund would have to be approved by the council in a two-thirds vote.
Shaffer and William Furry, Portage finance director, walked the council through that option Tuesday in a committee of the whole meeting. Both budget stabilization and debt reduction, they said, are among the elements Standard & Poor's considers in determining a municipality's bond rating. Portage currently has a AA rating, but would like to boost that to a AAA.
For the city to set up a budget stabilization fund, city ordinances would have to be amended. The council is set to further discuss the fund at its Nov. 17 meeting.
While some council members seem to favor the "rainy day" fund, others are still uncertain. Questions seem to be whether to include that fund within the 24 percent unfunded balance or make it separate, if it will have much impact on the city's bond rating, should the 24 percent be changed or should more of its funds be used for services and projects and is there a goal or certain level for the budget stabilization fund.
Tom Haroldson covers Portage, Vicksburg and Schoolcraft for MLive/Kalamazoo Gazette. Contact him at [email protected] 1938, on his return to England from crisis talks in Germany, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain proclaimed “Peace for our time,” as he waved aloft a piece of paper which contained a signature from the German Chancellor Adolf Hitler, “symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again.”
“Go home and get a nice quiet sleep,” he willed his people.
Less than a year later, the world was at war.
Chamberlain’s speech has since become one of the most studied and infamous pieces of political naivety. In over-estimating his counterpart’s good will and similarly under-estimating his counterpart’s political savvy, Chamberlain’s promise of peace wasn’t worth the paper upon which it was written. A lesson for all. And a lesson for us.
Anyone who believes that the recent capitulation of Jean Todt and Bernie Ecclestone is a sign of the ending of hostilities in the fractured world of Formula 1 politics is gravely mistaken.
The qualifying argument was never supposed to get this big. I firmly believe that the resolve of the teams to stay united took everyone by surprise. Perhaps even the teams themselves. But they must be careful neither to judge this success too positively nor to take from it excessive confidence or bravado. It was simply one small battle at the start of a far larger war.
What we must never lose sight of, is that Bernie doesn’t give up a fight when he already has the advantage of the political high ground. Not without a damn good reason. Not without an alternative advantage being won by doing so. And so I simply can’t bring myself to believe that Todt and Ecclestone backing down on this subject can be viewed in the simplistic narrative of an overwhelming victory for the teams. Indeed, in the long run the supposed weakness of Ecclestone and Todt and their apparent capitulation could come to be seen as a quite brilliant masterstroke of political manoeuvring.
The stakes have not changed. This is still about the controlling rights of the governance of the sport. The teams want a greater say and after this success will feel emboldened. But by showing their strength and playing their hand so strongly and so soon, there is a bitterly ironic twist that they may just have laid the foundations for their own defeat.
To find out why, we must start in the South East of England. It is this part of the world that Anneliese Dodds, a British Labour politician, represents at the European Parliament. Having received representations over anti-competition from numerous engineering firms within her constituency, she made a complaint to the European Union Commission (EC) over the governance structure of Formula 1, the position and authority of the Strategy Group, and the role of the FIA.
The roots of Europe’s involvement in Formula 1 go back a decade and a half. In 2001, an EC investigation into the dual regulatory and commercial role of the FIA concluded that the FIA had abused its position and had acted in an anti-competitive manner. A resulting EU Directive meant the FIA had to modify its position within the sport to become concerned solely with a role “limited to that of a sports regulator, with no commercial conflicts of interest.”
As such, the commercial rights of the sport were sold by Max Mosley’s FIA to a Commercial Rights Holder, Bernie Ecclestone, for a period of 100 years. The payment was a one-off figure of $313 million. The FIA thus withdrew from the business side of the sport in order to ensure its own independence from any commercial aspects of Formula 1. At the same time Ecclestone, as the Commercial Rights Holder, had to give up any positions he held at the FIA.
In short, the Directive forced upon Formula 1’s governance a complete Separation of Powers. Today, however, the governance structure of Formula 1 lies in a convoluted mess. The clear lines prescribed by European law have been blurred. The Separation of Powers has turned into a Fusion of Powers.
If one starts with the Strategy Group, Ecclestone as Commercial Rights Holder holds six votes, the same number as the FIA President, with a further six votes divided between the represented Formula 1 teams. The F1 Commission then sees every Formula 1 team represented, along with some circuit promoters, sponsors and suppliers. Bernie Ecclestone sits on the World Motor Sport Council, the most powerful rule-making body in the FIA’s system of governance.
The current Concorde Agreement lasts until 2020. Ecclestone has individual contracts with the teams, as part of Concorde, that last until then. Contracts with which he is no longer pleased. A Concorde Agreement with which Todt is also unhappy.
Three years ago, in a move to ensure a new Concorde Agreement was signed, the FIA accepted a yearly payment from the Commercial Rights Holder of $40m. It is said this is why the teams were invited to the table through the Strategy Group. At the same time, the FIA was offered a 1% equity stake in Formula 1 on the occasion of its flotation on the stock market. But while that flotation did not take place, the 1% equity shareholding did go ahead as the FIA purchased the stake for a reported $400,000. This 1% of F1 adds an estimated $120 million per annum to the governing body’s coffers.
As Dodds has argued to the EC, “It is very unusual for a regulator to have a financial stake in what it is regulating. Recent developments are akin to the Food Standards Authority taking a stake in McDonalds.”
A tangled web indeed.
And so we move to the complaint raised at the EC. In the first instance it was responded to with a letter tantamount to a brush off, but last year Force India, Lotus (now Renault) and Sauber followed up Dodds’ complaint with one of their own.
“We submitted our complaint,” Force India’s Bob Fernley recently told Reuters. “The complaint has then gone to CVC. CVC have responded back, which we have a copy of, and then we have to reply again to that final part of it. Then they’ll look at it. It’s going through the process.”
In the meantime, the Sauber Formula 1 team lies in desperate financial straights. With question marks over its continued participation in the sport, one might assume Formula 1 would leap to the aid of a team which had asked the EC to investigate anti-competitive practices within the sport, a distribution of funds it claimed was unfair, and a cartel-style system of governance in which the richest teams had all the power. And at any other point it might have done.
But what if Formula 1 does not come to the aid of Sauber? What if allowing the team to fail promotes the EC to look far deeper into the manner in which Formula 1 is run? What if that’s precisely what those we think have lost the qualifying battle want the EC to do?
Because if the EC takes even a cursory glance at the events of the last few weeks it will see that the supposed “sole regulator” of the sport has been over-ruled by its own competitors. It will find a sport in which the governing body with which it imbued the sole responsibility of governance, cannot govern. It will find a system of law making in which the commercial interests it decreed must be separated from governance have become inextricably entwined.
Dodds has already requested that the EC front a deep and thorough investigation into the governance structure of Formula 1, calling on Europe to not allow itself to be left behind as it was by Switzerland and the USA in their investigations of FIFA.
Given the EU Directive, it seems entirely possible that the result of a new European investigation could be for the EC to tear up every shred of the governance structure that we know and force the sport to rewrite it all. Bernie would get to erase the deals he’s done with the teams and come up with new, more favourable terms under a new Concorde. The FIA would have to give up its $40 million sweetener and 1% equity stake, thus putting $160 million a year back in the pockets of the Commercial Rights Holder and CVC. Little wonder Ecclestone has always stated he has no issues with the EC taking a deeper look at the sport’s governance.
While financially the FIA would take a hit, procedurally an EC investigation might also benefit the governing body. Because if the decisions taken 15 years ago are upheld, the FIA would once again become sole regulator and absolute authority in the sport. All legislative power would return to the Place de la Concorde.
What happens to Todt would be less clear. While there is no suggestion of any FIFA-style misdemeanour in terms of personal financial gain, the two deals that most brazenly contravened the EU Directive, in that they merged commercial and governing interests in F1 bringing $160 million to the FIA annually along with them, were both signed by the FIA President. While Max Mosley wasn’t forced to stand aside after the last investigation, any suggestion of the incumbent FIA President essentially selling the independent status of the Association might not play out so well for a man with ambitions of landing a prominent role at the UN.
When it comes down to basics, an EC investigation could see the sport forced to return to a point at which the FIA concerns itself solely with making the rules, the teams bite their lips and go racing, and the Commercial Rights Holder promotes the product and makes the money. As was ever the case in Formula 1 politics, when the guns stop firing and the smoke clears the air, it is Ecclestone who is left standing. It is Bernie who wins.
Far from the teams holding the balance of political power their small victory might suggest, their very show of strength in recent weeks might yet come to form the basis from which they have it all taken away.
This fight was always about far more than just qualifying.
The teams might have won the battle. But did they just lose the war?
AdvertisementsI love me the Avatar of Menoth. I shake my fist at the Deathjack. I frown meaningfully at the Thunderhead, and the Behemoth makes me wish I had some industrial strength corks to plug those cannon barrels. The four core factions have long had that one character warjack that’s embodied an aspect of their factions, now it’s time for the Iosans to grab their piece of the pie. Ladies and Gentlemen, Imperatus has landed.
Ah, there’s nothing quite like a fresh pile of bits. This is the first time we’re seeing a Retribution heavy myrmidon with metal components, though we’ve also got some crisp resin components as well.
Laying them all out reveals an 18 piece part count.
Shaped pegs on the hips will help align the legs properly, though it should be noted that the right leg (on the left in this pic) is two pieces, and I’d strongly suggest pinning it. The contact point isn’t enormous, because of high falutin’ Iosan technology that the nations of man wish they could master.
The two… well, loin banners, I guess, attach on either side of the traditional Iosan myrmidon codpiece. There are shaped grooves for them to slot into, no worries.
The resin chestpiece does wonders to lighten the final weight of the model, though as with every myrmidon I do generally advise pinning the head in place.
I’ve been referring to them alternately as both fins and wings. Once you’ve clipped off the resin flashing the two struts will align nicely into the back grooves, though I did shave mine down a little further to allow for a more snug fit across the back.
The upper and lower arms are clearly identified, so as to ensure you end up with arms at the right angles and with the correct side of the armour plating facing outwards.
For the swords, though, you’re going to have to rely on the traditional method of looking to see where the thumbs are. I must say, having blades in this style in metal is pretty sweet.
Finally, the shoulderpads. After years of smooth curvature, Imperatus breaks the Iosan shoulder mold with layered bands and nodes all over the place. If these every become available on the parts store I can envision redoing my entire heavy myrmidon arsenal…
Who’s got the turkey? I’ve got the carving knives! While I wanted Imperatus to share the oranges that are dominant on my other myrmidons, I wanted to try something different, make it a little less prominent, ramp up the malevolence of Imperatus. at the same time, I also thought it’d be neat if his twin swords weren’t just two more metal constructs, but rather were made out of some mysterious material known only to the forgemasters of House Shyeel. Either way he looks pretty darn choppy, and I look forward to putting him on the table with Incissar Vyros.
Imperatus releases this month, joining the Retribution of Scyrah and ready to wreak all sorts of destruction on the round-ears. Call your FLGS and make sure yours is put aside for you.SOMERVILLE, MA—According to the residents of 117 Maple St., Unit No. 2, literally every appliance, fixture, surface, and structural feature in their apartment is defective to some degree.
Tenants Justin Kelly and Luke Epting told reporters Wednesday that the two-bedroom apartment's myriad flaws range from cosmetic issues such as uneven floorboards and ceiling stains, to slightly more bothersome problems like the poor cell phone reception in the bedrooms and the fact that the electrical sockets only have two prongs.
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"The walls have a few nicks on them, and you have to pry open the tray on the DVD player with your fingers if you want to watch a movie," said Kelly, 27, adding that during winter months they have to put a bowl under the radiator to collect water that leaks from the supply pipe. "And sometimes the living room light doesn't work, but not because the bulb is burnt out. You just have to flick the switch on and off a few times real quick and wait for the pop sound before the light turns on."
"It's weird, but that's what you have to do," Kelly continued.
The two roommates told reporters the vast majority of the flaws are easily worked around, explaining that over the course of their 22-month occupancy they've gradually gotten used to the shrieking hot-water pipes and having to plug the drafty windows with bath towels. Kelly and Epting added that only a few items are considered completely unusable, including the entryway intercom, two of the four stove-top burners, both residents' printers, and most of the lamps.
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"There are a few issues, but it's not like we won't be getting our security deposit back or anything," Kelly said. "So long as we don't burn the place down, anyway."
None of the apartment's three smoke alarms was fully functional at press time.
While noting that each of the rooms possesses its own array of unique imperfections, Epting suggested that the bathroom likely contains the most defects.
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"Some of the tiles are missing, and you can see the showerhead is rubber-banded on," said the 26-year-old paralegal, noting that the thick layer of condensation on the toilet was "pretty normal," and that sometimes the bathroom sink has really low water pressure even if you turn the hot and cold water up all the way. "Also, you have to grab the doorknob and lift it up to close the door. Otherwise it will open up on you while you're in there."
"The thing that's kind of annoying is that it's really hot in there all the time," added Epting, raising his voice above the buzz of the overhead lighting. "But luckily it's right off the kitchen, which is always freezing, so it balances out."
Although Kelly and Epting admitted that the discoloration behind the kitchen sink was spreading and that the lock on the apartment's front door had grown increasingly "temperamental," they said that the apartment was in a great location and well worth the $1,400 rent.
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"None of it's so bad that we need to call somebody to get it fixed," Kelly said. "It's just small stuff. Like there's this one nail in the hallway that keeps coming back up every couple weeks, and sometimes I'll stub my toe or tear a sock on it. I tried to knock it back in, but the hammer's a piece of shit and the head keeps coming off."
Unlike the apartment's two primary residents, Epting's girlfriend of five months, Liz Fehrenbach, 25, admitted that she remains unsettled by the problems.
"The apartment really doesn't get any natural light, but when it does, it's so bright that you can't watch the TV because of all the glare, and the entire apartment just feels like an oven," said Fehrenbach, adding that the wireless Internet the residents steal from their downstairs neighbors only seems to work in the living room and hallway. "I still always forget that you can't use the toaster and microwave at the same time or else the power goes out."
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"But at least I barely ever notice that weird garbage smell anymore," Fehrenbach continued.
When asked for comment, landlord Frank Czerniak stated that he planned to raise the rent by $250 a month when the current lease expires in May.Often I'm asked to cite my "Top Ten" from the classic film noir era, so I figured it was about time to post something "definitive."
Take this with a grain of salt, because I am not one to apply academic criteria to art, popular or otherwise. These are simply films that I have viewed and enjoyed multiple times, and expect to appreciate even more as time goes on. A "classic" is in the eye of the beholder anyway; to me there's only one way to assess a film's greatnessis it still engrossing the sixth time you've seen it? Because our goofy culture loves to see everything ranked, I'm even putting them in order of preference, although it's ridiculous to think that Night and the City is somehow 2.6% better than Out of the Past. Consider the listing a sort of carnival barometer, ranging from INFATUATED to PASSIONATE.
RAW DEAL
Eagle-Lion, 1948.
Rambunctious pulp made transcendent through Anthony Mann's direction, John Alton's lighting, and a satisfying gender switch in which the Angel and the Tramp duke it out over the guy. CITY THAT NEVER SLEEPS
Republic, 1952.
Any movie that is narrated by the city itself earns special honors for cinematic chutzpah. Plus, its got Marie Windsor and William Tallman as lovers. That's noir.
TOUCH OF EVIL
Universal, 1958.
Under all the visual razzle-dazzle there's a genuinely moving story: Pete Menzies turning Judas on Hank Quinlan, the mentor who's become a monster. Just imagine Ricardo Montalban instead of Heston. SCARLET STREET
Universal, 1945.
Deeply perverse, and immensely enjoyable for the ways writer Dudley Nichols and Fritz Lang run circles around the Production Code. Were the three leads ever any better?
DETOUR
PRC, 1945.
You'd have thought it would lose the mystique, being liberated from the limbo of "Movies Till Dawn" and mass-distributed on DVD. Incredibly, it still casts its fetid, doom-laden spell, every time. TOMORROW IS ANOTHER DAY
Warner Bros., 1951.
If WB had gone with a tragic finishimagine Cochran throttling Roman only to learn he wasn't guilty in the first placethis hard-as-nails road picture would be a classic.
THE PROWLER
United Artists, 1950.
Silent producer John Huston's goodbye gift to wife Evelyn Keyes: a terrific role in a truly weird film. Dated by the pregnancy angle, but relentlessly compelling. GUN CRAZY
United Artists, 1950.
No picture before or since has more deliriously used side arms as sexual symbols. Loopy, corny, overheated, but one big adrenaline rush of creative moviemaking from start to finish.
ACT OF VIOLENCE
MGM, 1949.
It directly confronts lingering WWII nightmares, mixes up the "good" guy versus "bad" guy premise to stunning effect, is beautifully directed and shot, and features great work from the four leads. Damn near perfect. ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW
United Artists, 1959.
Abraham Polonsky had always wanted to make a film about the African-American experience, but ghostwriting this was as close as he got. Robert Wise's best noir, hands up.
THE KILLING
United Artists, 1956.
If you believe that a good script is a succession of great scenes, you can't do better than this. Hey, that scene was so good, let's do it again from somebody else's perspective. THEY LIVE BY NIGHT
RKO, 1949.
Film noir's version of Romeo and Juliet, made with amazing conviction by Nicholas Ray. A smart, soulful film full of evocative details, including a wonderfully intricate soundtrack.
THIEVES' HIGHWAY
20th Century-Fox, 1949.
Not nearly as uncompromising as the original novel, but a wonderful, politically-charged melodrama in its own right. This is the film that got me hooked on noir. SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS
United Artists, 1958.
Almost improvisational in the making, with the palpable hostility of the filmmakers seeping into every shot. All captured brilliantly by his serene highness, James Wong Howe.
THE KILLERS
Universal, 1946.
Hemingway's short story is fleshed out into an incredibly involuted screenplay, which Siodmak renders as the ultimate noir dreamscape. The Citizen Kane of crime movies. MOONRISE
Republic, 1948.
Relentlessly romantic optimistic Frank Borzage is the last guy you'd expect to turn out an effective film noir, but this was his sound era masterpiece, redemptive ending and all.
OUT OF THE PAST
RKO, 1947.
Face it, the meandering script is saved by Frank Fenton's dialogue. But this is how we want noir to look and sound, so it gets cut lots of slack. Mitchum is great, Douglas never better, and Jane Greer is 22 years old. NIGHT AND THE CITY
20th Century-Fox, 1950.
Even more baroque than Touch of Evil, the greatness of this film is its stubborn refusal to allow the tiniest ray of light into Harry Fabian's headlong descent in hell. Is this the ultimate noir ending?
NIGHTMARE ALLEY
20th Century-Fox, 1947.
Little by little, as this film resurfaces in the mainstream, it will come to be seen as Tyrone Power's greatest contribution to the movies. "Pffft-Every boy had a dog!" THE MALTESE FALCON
Warner Bros., 1941.
Okay, it's talky, set-bound and not all that exceptional to look at. But it's the most brilliantly self-contained detective story ever written, perfectly cast. It never gets stale.
DOUBLE INDEMNITY
Paramount, 1944.
Cain's basic blueprint has served as foundation for most of the unhappy homes in Dark City; but for that sloppy subplot with Nino Sachetti this would be #1. Too bad Wilder didn't make Postman, too. THE ASPHALT JUNGLE
MGM, 1950.
"I wouldn't cross the street to see garbage like that," said the head of the studio that made this, the granddaddy of all caper films. A pure "crime" film, with every character indelible.
SUNSET BOULEVARD
Paramount, 1950.
To those who think this isn't noir: Man uses woman. Woman uses man. Queasy sex. Betrayal. Madness. Gunshots. He's face down in the pool he always wanted. Case closed. CRISS CROSS
Universal, 1949.
Stupidly, I used to think there was something missing at the core. But it keeps getting better ever time I see it. De Carlo in the parking lot pleading straight to the camera might be noir's defining moment.DEC. 15: Barnette’s contract guarantees him $3.5MM over the next two years, reports Wilson (links to Twitter). Barnette will earn $1.5MM in 2016 and $1.75MM in 2017. His club option is valued at $4MM and comes with a $250K buyout, but the option’s value could escalate based on games finished, per Wilson. The Rangers also formally announced the signing today.
DEC. 10, 10:30am: Barnette’s deal also contains a club option for 2018, tweets Jeff Wilson of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
9:17am: The Rangers and right-handed reliever Tony Barnette are in agreement on a two-year contract, reports Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News. Barnette, 32, is a former D-backs farmhand that never broke into the Majors before heading over to Japan and establishing himself as a dominant closer. He is represented by the Wasserman Media Group.
The Rangers will owe a $500K posting fee to Nippon Professional Baseball’s Yakult Swallows as compensation for losing Barnette, which will be in addition to the value of the contract actually issued by Texas. Barnette has a career 3.58 ERA with the Swallows in Japan but is coming off a season in which he posted a pristine 1.29 ERA with 8.0 K/9 against 2.7 BB/9 in 62 2/3 innings of work.If anyone can pull off a remake script for a classic '80s werewolf flick, it's probably Max Landis. He's currently hard at work writing a new screenplay that will bring his father's An American Werewolf In London back to theaters in a new retrofitted version of the movie. However, the question remains. Do we really need this and will people pay good money to see a do over of a classic that still holds up to this very day.
Dude, they're remaking us.
The original movie came out in 1981 and truly pushed the envelope for practical effects. Starring David Naughton and Griffin Dunne, it remains one of the best werewolf movies ever made. Featuring phenomenal makeup effects and visuals by Rick Baker and his team of artists, it'll be hard seeing this turned into a computer generated debacle that won't be able to recapture the glory of the first movie.
But, Max Landis..........1. That people are talking about Downtown Las Vegas. Even if they’re talking about it too much.
2. Those little green stoppers at Starbucks. Sometimes it’s the small things that get us through the day. Like not having our coffee splash all over us on the way to work.
3. The desert. Sure, we have sloppy, ugly sprawl, but you can still see for miles and forge your life amid some of the most peculiar flora above the sea.
4. The Hard Rock Hotel’s Harmon garage, because getting out of the one on Paradise after concerts used to be ridiculous.
5. The $7.99 Feast buffet across from our office. In fact, we’re eating there right now.
6. Prince Harry’s bits. The ginger one went gloriously, nakedly rogue in Vegas this summer, and the world gawked at the crappy tabloid photos (gold-digging skanks should invest in better smart phones) and the cheeky (ha!) response cooked up by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. All those eyes equated to $23 million in publicity. So cheers, Harry, for the monster free press, and for reminding the world that our city is the capital of the naughty empire.
7. That we can count on Cirque du Soleil and Blue Man Group to keep freshening up their presence on the Strip.
8. That the Mob Museum doesn’t suck. If it had just not sucked, that would have been enough. But the Mob Museum, which opened on Valentine’s Day, is as engaging and exciting as museums come. And it’s all ours. 300 Stewart Ave., 229-2734.
9. Barnes & Noble. The scent of so many pages should be turned into an incense, and when that happens, we’ll be thankful for that, too. Multiple locations.
10. Late-night noodles. During fall and winter, big bowls of hot noodles are comforting, nourishing and best in the wee, dark hours. In Chinatown: sukiyaki (Krung Siam Thai); pho (Pho Kim Long); and ramen (Anime Ramen, Ichiza and Monta). Special mention: laksa (Satay on Paradise, in the same strip mall as Firefly). In fact, we’re eating noodles right now.
11. That our homes are actually getting some of their value back. Sure, they’ll never be worth the gazillions they were before 2006, but it could be far worse, right? Right?
12. The Smith Center. Duh. Orchestral concerts, dance performances, musicals, lectures, rock and jazz shows … 361 Symphony Park, 749-2000.
13. Electric Daisy Carnival. Double duh. Simply put, EDC is EDM heaven on earth. Plus, we’re the only city that gets it for three full nights, because Vegas is always up for more partying.
14. That something’s finally happening at Neonopolis. A drag queen-staffed bowling alley. A museum of Nike sneakers. An eatery famous for its 9,982-calorie bacon burger. And still to come: the world’s largest gay nightclub, a local brewery and a Denny’s … complete with its own wedding chapel.
15. Vegas Traffic. If you’ve ever complained about the traffic in Las Vegas, you need to spend a week in LA, Chicago, New York or Metro Detroit. Believe us, we’ve got it good.
16. Self-serve coffee in the Sands Poker Room (at Venetian). Cocktail waitresses always put in too much cream. Or not enough. And by the time they get you your coffee, it’s cold. So Venetian lets you do it yourself—and save a buck on the tip.
17. Le Thai. You already know the story: Empty storefront becomes locally owned Thai restaurant becomes Downtown hot spot, late-night craving, weekday power lunch and takeout king. What you don’t know: The guy sitting at the bar and wearing a towel as a headband is responsible for all this spicy deliciousness. Say thanks next time you stop by for Waterfall Beef. In fact, we’re eating that right now. 523 Fremont St., 778-0888.
18. Shade Tree, Safe Nest and CASA volunteers. They fight tirelessly to help our community’s children and families get through times of crisis.
19. That there is construction on the Strip, even if it’s based around two giant Ferris wheels.
20. That we live in a state where our presidential vote really matters. Even if it means enduring months of robocalls, campaign ads, door droppings and mailbox scum.
21. Burlesque. Every year the Burlesque Hall of Fame Museum brings in performers from all over the world to compete and dazzle us with a truly American art form. And thanks to Weekly cover girl Cha Cha Velour for keeping it going year-round through local classes and performances.
22. Shelby Museum. Because American muscle is forever. The priceless cars on display are still inspiring custom beasts being built in the factory next door, where tour-goers are invited to autograph the walls. Let’s hope they’re forever, too. 6755 Speedway Blvd., 942-7325.
23. That odd billboard off the 15 (you know which one). Because sometimes you just need a random religious representation to put things in perspective during your morning commute.
24. Las Vegas Pride. The annual gay pride festival is always a blast, but SNAPI (Southern Nevada Association of Pride, Inc.) raised the bar this year with A-list celebrities, new events and a celebration that went down entirely Downtown. We can’t wait for next year’s 30th anniversary!
25. Knit bombs and yarnstorms. Obviously.
26. That Vegas nightlife continues to set the standard. It’s easy to take for granted the A-list DJs, awe-inspiring spaces and epic parties that are par for the course at Vegas clubs, but, hey, they don’t do it like this in Iowa (or most anywhere else for that matter). Having a front-row seat for the spectacle is pretty damn cool.
27. That all the hipster foodies are crowding into Kabuto, Monta and Raku, those jewels of Japanese eating on Spring Mountain Road, and leaving the deliciously addictive New Yorky Chinese food at neighboring Big Wong to me. Out! Mine! My Wong! 5040 Spring Mountain Road, 368-6808. –Brock Radke
28. Fab.com. Oh, you don’t know Fab? The online flash sale site is the source of witty gifts—and destination of way too many Weekly paychecks. Explore at your own risk.
29. That obstacle races are finally here—with more on the way. If scaling walls, running through live wires and wading into mud pits is your idea of a good time, 2012 has been sweet indeed. Tough Mudder, Devil Dash and Warrior Dash all held races in Southern Nevada, and Spartan arrives in April. It’s never too early to start working on your greased monkey bar skills.
30. Chandelier Bar’s effect on our relatives. Even if the drinks were mediocre, we would still take every out-of-town guest to lounge in delighted astonishment inside the chandelier. But the drinks are on point, and the spectacle is on another planet. Cosmopolitan, 698-7000.
31. Noah’s Animal House. There are people who support good causes, and there are people who are good causes. The staff at Noah’s in North Las Vegas works tirelessly to protect and rehabilitate the helpless and often battered pets of battered women. They inspire us. Give at 385-0072 or noahsanimalhouse.org.
32. Pinkberry. The Valley finally has an outlet from the tart frozen yogurt legend, on the Strip near Mandarin Oriental. The fro-yo family in Las Vegas is now complete. In fact, we’re eating there right now. 3752 Las Vegas Blvd S., 895-7003.
33. The Griffin’s jukebox. A well-curated jukebox is hard to find, but the Griffin’s provides refuge, whether you want to dance to Cut Copy, kick back to Pavement or pound shots to T. Rex. 511 Fremont St., 382-0577.
34. The Onyx Theatre. Every city needs a theater willing to take risks, and we have the Onyx, a cozy black box in the back of a sex shop just around the corner from Lotus of Siam. It doesn’t get more Vegas than that, or than the Onyx’s entertainment lineup, from a play about a “casual encounter” in a subterranean biology lab (Boom, November 23-24, November 30-December 1) to a “historically accurate Christmas pageant” (The Apple Sisters, December 16). 953 E. Sahara Ave., 732-7225.
35. The Walgreens on Charleston and Las Vegas Boulevard. It’s our top-secret First Friday parking location. Easy to access and totally free. Spots are limited, so keep it to yourself.
36. Brookings Mountain West. The D.C.-based think tank partners with UNLV to present public lectures from prestigious scholars and interact with the school’s students and faculty. In short, it brings a whole lot of cred to our local U.
37. The artists who choose to live here. Las Vegas might not resonate in the art world, but that doesn’t mean it lives without art. This city is filled with independent-minded artists working quietly in vast suburban houses or Downtown apartments and studios. Their work—whether inspired by Vegas or specific to studies of line, color and space—finds its way to local, national and international galleries.
38. The galleries that display their work. Nothing feeds your mind like a great exhibit. Even better: returning at the end of the month to pick up the piece you bought opening night.
39. George Takei’s Facebook posts. Subscribe and see.
40. That Brian Sandoval hasn’t totally embarrassed Nevada. He might operate below the radar, but after the scandal-riddled governorship of predecessor Jim Gibbons, that’s actually a good thing.
41. The
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three separate subsystems, but since you're only ever using one at a time, the risk is that your robot ends up being three times as bulky as is strictly necessary. And in small robots, efficiency is everything.
EPFL's locust-inspired jumping robot solves one of these problems with a weighted roll cage that helps the bot passively return to an upright position whenever it lands. A second motor then allows the robot to rotate within the cage to change its jumping direction. This works quite well, but it adds bulk plus another motor to the whole system.
Jianguo Zhao and a team from Michigan State University have created a jumping robot that somehow manages to do everything that it needs to do with just one single motor. It can change its orientation, right itself, and then jump (really freakin' high) with one motor and some clever mechanical engineering. Check it out:
The actual jumping mechanism was directly inspired by the legs of a frog, but it's really the rest of the robot that's so cool. Everything is driven by one tiny pager motor, and here's how it works:
To jump, the pager motor engages a gear which pulls the robot's body down towards its legs, slowly charging four torsional springs. The gearing and springs help keep the power requirements low without sacrificing jumping energy. When the springs are fully charged up, the gear trips a little lever, and the legs are released. Boing!
After re-entry, the robot inevitably finds itself lying prone. By driving the pager motor backwards, the same gear that charges the springs instead spins against the ground without engaging anything, allowing the body of the robot to rotate to a new position.
To get up, as the robot's body is pulled down towards its legs, little arms deploy outwards, driven by that same downward motion. These arms push the robot up into a standing position, and keep it there until liftoff.
I really love how simple and clever this all is. It's efficient, too: the robot is 8 centimeters tall and only weighs 20 grams, including the motor and a 50 mAh battery, but it can make approximately 285 jumps without needing to be recharged.
The designers think that it should be possible to make the robot jump even higher and farther, and of course at some point they're going to want to stick some sensors on there or something to move it from just being awesome to being awesome and useful at the same time.
This robot was presented at ICRA in a paper entitled "Development of a Controllable and Continuous Jumping Robot" by Jianguo Zhao, Ning Xi, Bingtuan Gao, Matt W. Mutka, and Li Xiao, all from Michigan State University.
[ MSU ]Weapon sales are soaring in Austria as citizens of the small Alpine nation become paranoid over the numbers of refugees crowding into their country.
In a country of 8.5 million people, there are now an estimated 900,000 firearms in homes.
And gun dealers report that it is women driving the sales rush. This year alone, police say 70,000 guns have been sold.
'Virtually all shotguns are currently sold out, because you need no permit for them', said Thomas Ortner, spokesman for an arms dealer in Upper Austria.
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Migrants wait for buses after crossing the border between Slovenian and Austria in Spielfeld, Austria. Weapon sales have reportedly soared in Austria as citizens of the small Alpine nation become paranoid over the numbers of refugees crowding into their country
For every other type of weapon, a licence is required.
Licence courses, in which applicants must demonstrate knowledge of firearms, used to take place every five weeks but they are now held weekly because of spiking demand.
In cities like Salzburg, a line of people outside the necessary government office to get the paperwork to buy a gun is now an everyday sight.
Broadcasters and local media say the numbers of refugees - coupled with a fear of break-ins as a result - is fuelling the arms race.
'Because of the social change, people want to protect themselves,' one arms dealer told the broadcaster oe.24. He said'many women' were among his customers.
The flood of'refugees' into Austria is continuing without interruption.
The Hungarian route has become less active, and traffic is now flowing at a rapid rate through Slovenia instead.
Hundreds of migrants wait to enter a camp in Spielfeld, Austria. Thousands of people trying to reach central and northern Europe via the Balkans often have to wait for days in the cold rain and mud at the borders
Czech Independent TV also reported on the arms upsurge. As of Monday most rifles in the country are out of stock.
The daily paper Heute reported recently: 'The cash registers are currently ringing loud at local gun dealers.
'Figures of the Ministry of the Interior prove it: more and more people are buying guns and rifles.'
A Central weapon register was introduced in June 2014 to record all legal firearm sales.
This year over 14,000 new weapons have been purchased.
Dealers reported that women are also driving up sales of pepper spray because of their fears for personal security in the midst of the great migration of refugees heading to Germany.
'We cannot complain about a lack of demand,' said Stephan Mayer, a gun merchant.
'People want to protect themselves.
'The most common purchasers of arms are primarily Austrian women who are also buying tear [pepper] sprays, which are much in demand.'
The new trend is in stark contrast to previous business which was driven by the hunting brigade.
A Viennese sociologist, Roland Girtler, said: 'Migration, in all of human history, comes with many worries.Ukip is closing in on the Conservatives in Scotland and could take the only Scottish European Parliament seat held by David Cameron’s party in elections next month, according to a new poll.
Nigel Farage’s party is widely tipped to make gains at the expense of the Tories in the European Parliament elections on 22 May, although Ukip has previously struggled to make a breakthrough in Scotland.
However, a poll for The Scotsman showed Ukip is set to win 10 per cent of the vote north of the Border and is trailing the Conservatives by just one point as the European election campaign enters its final month.
Ukip support in the ICM poll was up by four points to 14 per cent on findings from last month, while backing for the Tories dipped by two per cent to 11 per cent.
The poll findings may lead to fears among Conservatives that the party could lose its only Scottish MEP.
The Liberal Democrats are on course to lose their only MEP in Scotland, with the SNP expected to seize a European seat from the party.
The Lib Dems have the backing of just seven per cent of Scots ahead of the European elections, with a 2 per cent rise on a survey carried out last month by the same pollsters. However, the party faces further electoral meltdown with the loss of its only Scottish MEP George Lyon, as it trails Ukip and the Tories as well as only being 3 per cent ahead of the Greens.
The SNP’s lead over Labour has been cut by three points to 9 per cent with the Nationalists on 37 per cent compared to the 28 per cent backing for Johann Lamont’s party, ahead of the last Scotland-wide electoral contest before the referendum on 18 September.
Labour would keep its two Scottish MEPs if the latest poll of voting intentions were replicated on 22 May, with an additional SNP Euro MP returned on top of the two the party secured at the last European Parliament elections in 2009.The Vegas Golden Knights just played one of their more dominant games of this young season. Seeing as about one-fifth of the campaign is over, there is less we are learning about the team on a game-by-game basis, but a few things do pop into the forefront.
Deryk Engelland: Offensive Juggernaut
If you had told me before the season that Engelland would be tied for the team lead in 5-on-5 points through 16 games, well, I don’t know quite what I’d do, but it would most likely be problematic. But here we are. The Vegas Golden Knights are 10-5-1 and Engelland is tied with David Perron with nine even strength points, and is certainly no ‘team mascot.’ Nor is he a seventh defenseman, which myself and many onlookers felt was a role suitable for his talent level and age. Because it is almost certain he will regress, now is the perfect time to bask in the fact that his 5v5 points per 60 minutes (min. 150 mins) is better than every player in the NHL not named Mikhail Sergachev or Erik Karlsson. No, really:
Home is where the heart is wins are
The ‘Vegas Flu’ may be real after all. The Knights improved to 7-1-0 at home with last night’s win over the Winnipeg Jets. Whether their opponents are dealing with fallout from the previous night’s debauchery is unclear, the fact of the matter is that the Knights are outscoring their adversaries by a 16-goal margin (35-19) at T-Mobile Arena, the best such differential in the NHL. Not to be a Negative Nosek here, but it bears mentioning that the Knights are riding a 109.0 PDO, meaning that they are riding some of the best luck the Silver City has seen in a long time.
This power play needs work again
Sure, they went 1-for-4 with the man advantage, and a 25 percent success rate would end the season as a top-three mark in the league. But watching the Vegas power play go to “work,” a term I use quite loosely here, was difficult. They mustered just four shots on the power play and looked thoroughly incapable of creating offense during their 54 seconds of 5-on-3 play. Brad Hunt and Colin Miller have looked tremendous up until this point leading a power play, and although Hunt has been quite good offensively this year, I would be surprised to see him start over Shea Theodore in their next game. Passing has appeared careless and despite having solid zone entries, the team has a lot of difficulty setting up once in the zone. Now, games are won and lost at 5-on-5, but a strong power play can pay dividends as well.
Even Alex Tuch has off games
Tuch has not only been one of the best young players on the Knights, but also one of the best rookies in the league this season. He has routinely displayed extraordinary finesse for a power forward, while also playing a solid 200-foot game, the latter of which is often hard to come by in a 21-year-old. However, he looked a step slow against the Jets, as did he in Tuesday’s tangle with the Montreal Canadiens, a game in which he failed to put a single shot on goal. While he has showcased his ability to make something out of nothing, he needs — like all power forwards do — a playmaker on his line and Cody Eakin and Oscar Lindberg do not quite fit that role. I stumped for the return of Brendan Leipsic to the lineup a few days ago, and it stands to reason a player with that particular skill set could help Tuch thrive.
One final note: the playoff cut-off line for a team in the Western Conference is likely to be about 88 points this season, according to Hockey Viz’s Micah Blake McCurdy. Vegas currently has 21 points through 16 games, meaning they need to pick up just about one point per game (67 in 66 games) the rest of the way to make the playoffs. Whether that looks like 33-32-1 or 27-26-13, it is well within the realm of possibility.
This season is a win-win for Vegas. Either they defy history and make a playoff bid in their nascent season, or they sell around the deadline and pick up some prospects or picks along the way. The only thing that could really hurt this team is if they are on the playoff bubble and make win-now trades. Whichever ends up happening, it is an exciting time to follow and cover this team.You don’t see this very often!
Gesturing sharply with his hand, Pope Francis sternly corrected a group of overeager young people after they pulled him down on top of a boy with disabilities. His rebuke was caught on video that was also being displayed live on screens throughout the stadium in Morelia, Mexico.
“What’s going on with you?” Francis said sternly to the people who had pulled him down as he regained his balance and checked to see if the boy with disabilities was okay. “Don’t be selfish! Don’t be selfish!”
The 79-year-old pontiff is finishing up a nearly week-long visit of the country.
You can see the unusual encounter for yourself:
First, they pulled him down on top of a boy with disabilities:
Then they got called out by the Pope:
Here’s the video:
[See also: “Brother, Finally!”: Pope Meets Orthodox Patriarch of Moscow for First Time in 1000 Years]
[See also: See Pope Francis’ Crazy Mega-Welcome at the Airport in Mexico]Jim Hall, one of the leading jazz guitarists of the modern era, whose subtle technique, lyrical sound and introspective approach strongly influenced younger proteges such as Pat Metheny and Bill Frisell, died early Tuesday at age 83, his wife said.
Hall died in his sleep after a short illness at his Greenwich Village apartment in Manhattan, said Jane Hall, his wife of 48 years who described her husband as “truly beloved by everybody who ever met him.”
Hall, who led his own trio since the mid-1960s, remained active until shortly before his death. Last month, his trio performed a concert at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Allen Room with guest guitarists John Abercrombie and Peter Bernstein. He had been planning a duo tour in Japan in January with bassist Ron Carter, a longtime partner.
In 2004, Hall became the first of the modern jazz guitarists to be named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master, the nation’s highest jazz honor.
“Jim was one of the most important improvising guitarists in jazz history. His musical generosity was an exact reflection of his deep humanity,” guitarist Metheny, who performed and recorded in a duo with Hall, said in an email to The Associated Press.
In the mid-1950s, as a member of pianist Jimmy Giuffre’s innovative trio and drummer Chico Hamilton’s chamber jazz quartet, Hall transformed the role of the guitar in jazz with his understated melodic and minimalist approach.
“What seems kind of frivolous and doesn’t really impress me is guys, people, women... who have amazing technique but everything sounds worked out,” Hall said in a 2003 interview for the National Endowment for the Arts. “They go through these chord changes with all these chops.
Hall, pictured in 1975, was known for his improvisational skills. (GAB Archive/Redferns)
“Usually I wish I had the kind of technique to do that and then not do it, sort of. I like to make some kind of composition happen while I’m playing. That involves motive development.... I also love melodies. So I try to play melodies over tunes — have it go someplace and then come back.”
The noted German jazz writer Joachim-Ernst Berendt once described Hall as “the perfect musical partner.” The guitarist was known for his duo and small group recordings with some of the greatest names in jazz during the past 60 years, including saxophonists Sonny Rollins, Gerry Mulligan, Ornette Coleman and Paul Desmond, pianist Bill Evans, bassist Red Mitchell and singer Ella Fitzgerald.
As a member of Rollins’ quartet in the early 1960s, Hall appeared on the landmark 1962 album, “The Bridge,” which was the tenor saxophonist’s first recording after a three-year hiatus during which he practiced his chops on the Williamsburg Bridge. The saxophonist’s fiery playing contrasted with Hall’s subdued guitar lines.
“Jim was an essentially beautiful human being,” Rollins said in an email. “I don’t know anybody who didn’t love him, including myself. He was the consummate musician and it was a privilege to work with him.”
Hall was born on Dec. 4, 1930, in Buffalo, New York, and his family later moved to Cleveland. He picked up the guitar at age 10, and became interested in jazz as a 13-year-old when he went to the store to buy a Benny Goodman record and first heard Charlie Christian playing guitar on the tune “Grand Slam.”
“I was awe-struck at his choice of notes and the space that he left,” Hall told the NEA.
Hall performs on stage at Queen Elizabeth Hall during the London Jazz Festival last year. (Andy Sheppard/Redferns via Getty Images)
After graduating from the Cleveland Institute of Music, Hall moved to Los Angeles where he became a charter member of Hamilton’s quintet, which was among the originators of the laid-back West Coast cool style, and later joined Giuffre’s trio.
His first album as a leader was the 1957 session “Jazz Guitar” for Pacific Jazz. He later moved to New York where he performed as a sideman with Evans, Fitzgerald, Ben Webster, Lee Konitz and Art Farmer, among others. He co-led a quartet with trumpeter Art Farmer and also formed his own trio with pianist Tommy Flanagan and bassist Carter.
Hall began recording extensively as a leader starting in the 1970s in an assortment of duos, trios and small combos for such labels as Milestone, Concord, Music Masters and Telarc. Earlier this year, he released several CDs of live recordings from his combo’s sessions at New York’s Birdland jazz club on ArtistShare, a platform that allows fans to finance recordings.
His daughter and manager, Devra Hall Levy, said her father’s prowess as a jazz guitarist overshadowed his skills as an arranger and composer, reflected on such albums in the mid-1990s as “Textures” and “By Arrangement.”
“Those albums opened my eyes to a whole other dimension of his musical gifts,” Levy said in a telephone interview. “Jim would like to be most known as a forward-seeker. He was always looking to push musical boundaries and never wanting to repeat something that he had done before. That made him quite a risk-taker.”
Hall is survived by his wife, a psychoanalyst, and his daughter, who was married to the late NEA Jazz Master John Levy, a bassist who is credited as the first African-American personal manager in jazz.
Sign up for BREAKING NEWS Emails privacy policy Thanks for subscribing!Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressing the gathering during foundation stone laying ceremony of Greenfield Airport in Mopa, Goa on Sunday. (Source: PTI)
PRIME MINISTER Narendra Modi on Sunday appealed to the people to support the demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, asking them to bear the “pain” for “50 days” to help him deliver the “India of your dreams”. He also reiterated his warning that several other “projects” were in the pipeline to check corruption, including action against benami property.
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“Maine sirf pachas din mange hai… December 30 tak mujhe mauka dijiye… Agar December 30 ke baad, koi meri kami rehjaye, koi meri galti nikal jaye, koi meri galat irada nikal jaye, aap jis chaurahe main mujhe khada karenge, main khada hokarke desh jo saza karega, wo saza bhugatne ke liye taiyyar hoon (I have only asked for 50 days. Give me time till December 30. After that, if any fault is found in my intentions or my actions, I am willing to suffer any punishment given by the country),” he said, speaking at the foundation stone laying ceremony of the Mopa airport in Goa.
WATCH VIDEO: PM Modi Reveals How He Planned Demonetisation Gradually In 10 Months
Modi said he was ready to face the consequences of his decision. “I know that I have taken up a fight with some forces… They may not spare me, they may ruin me because their loot of 70 years is in trouble. But it does not bother me,” he said.
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“I was not born to occupy the high chair,” he said. At this point, he was visibly emotional, and paused for a while before continuing. “I have left my home, my family for the sake of the country,” he said.
“I promise you I will give you the India of your dreams… If someone faces a problem, I also feel the pain. I understand their problem but this is only for 50 days,” he said.
Later in the day, addressing an event to mark the 100th anniversary of the Karnataka Lingayat Education Society in Belgaum, he reiterated: “I have not hidden anything from the country… If I had lied, you would have the right to be angry. On the first day itself, I said there will be problems till December 30, to give me 50 days… Crores of honest people have been standing in line. Is it not the government’s duty to protect the honest? If we have to struggle for 50 days to punish the corrupt, should we not do it… There is pain due to my decision, but there is more gain… I will stand with you.”
Targeting the Opposition parties, he said: “On November 8, at 8 pm, you saw a step being taken to end the corruption scams you saw in 2012, 2013, 2014. There used to be news about the coal scam, 2G scam… After the November 8 announcement, you saw what happened. Those involved in corruption had to stand in line for Rs 4,000… On November 8, when the poor were sleeping peacefully, the rich were searching for sleeping pills.”
“I pray to you that if you trust me, then give me your blessings for the auspicious work (pavitra kaam) I have set out to do. Please stand up and clap, and give me your blessings,’’ he appealed.
WATCH VIDEO: Demonetisation: Arvind Kejriwal, Kapil Sibal, Akhilesh Yadav Slam Modi Govt
He warned that he would not stop after December 30. “This is not the end… There are many other projects in my mind to stop corruption… I will expose corruption since the time of independence,” he said. “This government will not harass the honest, but will not allow the dishonest to go scot free. Has the country not been looted for the last 70 years,’’ he asked.
“The Congress is asking why we have stopped Rs 500, Rs 1,000 notes… When the Congress stopped 25 paise, did we say anything? You dared to stop only 25 paise, that’s what your power was limited to. But you did not make higher denomination currency notes illegal… We did it… People have chosen our government and they expect so much from it,” he said.
Modi claimed that over half the Members of Parliament approached him when his government made it compulsory to declare PAN card numbers for purchase of gold worth over Rs 2 lakh.
Saying the demontisation move took 10 months, he said it had to be kept a secret because the dishonest would have otherwise been able to convert their black money. “Those who have heard my speeches know that I have said that high value notes will be curbed,’’ he said.
“In my Mann ki Baat, I have spoken about the need for a cashless society, that credit and debit card transactions are needed. The Government of India has removed taxes on cashless transactions. We did it because we wanted to implement this current policy. With Jan Dhan, we have given 20 crore people RuPay cards. We did it two years ago, so people can use it now,’’ said Modi.
“The malaise of black money runs very deep and is very serious, because the country has been afflicted by this malaise for 70 years. All are afflicted. I have been giving small dosages of medicine to cure this malaise. Now I have given a strong dosage,’’ he said. “People keep asking the question ‘what has Modi done’. Now you know what I did on November 8,’’ he added.
The Prime Minister compared the demonitisation process to the pre-poll process, when the entire government machinery gets ready for smooth conduct of elections.
“During elections, all government resources are focussed on conducting the elections. For nearly 90 days, the government is engaged in this and nearly 70 to 80 per cent vote in the end. When the election process of 90 days can be endured, what we are asking for is only 50 days of inconvenience for the sake of the country,’’ he said.
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Thanking people for their support, he said, “Even Ganga Ma is surprised… people who did not spare a paise are throwing lakhs of rupees in the river. A widowed mother who complained that her son and daughter-in-law never visited her is now blessing me, as her children are pursuing her to deposit lakhs of rupees in her name,” said Modi.Seniors and the disabled would pay sharply more for their Medicare coverage under a new plan by House Republicans aimed at curbing the nation’s growing deficit, a Congressional Budget Office analysis shows.
For example, by 2030, under the plan, typical 65 year olds would be required to pay 68 percent of the total cost of their coverage, which includes premiums, deductibles, and other out-of-pocket costs, according to CBO. That compares with the 25 percent they would pay under current law, CBO said.
The GOP budget proposal also would raise the eligibility age for the politically popular program and repeal big chunks of the health care overhaul law approved by Congress last year.
Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin unveiled the fiscal 2012 budget at a packed press conference where he was flanked by Republican members of the budget panel. The proposal comes amid growing concern over the federal budget deficit and is part of an overall GOP effort to reduce federal spending by at least $5 trillion over the coming decade.
“Washington has been making empty promises to Americans from a government that is going broke,” Ryan said. Unless something is done, “the red ink is going to destroy our economy.”
Besides overhauling Medicare, his 10-year budget proposal also would give states more control over Medicaid, the state-federal program for the poor, but cut the amount states would receive for the program from federal coffers by hundreds of billions of dollars over a decade.
Americans would not be required to buy health insurance, under the proposal and employers would not have to offer it either. States would not be on the hook to set up new insurance marketplaces.
The changes immediately drew criticism from Democrats and advocates for the elderly and the poor. Many zeroed in on proposed changes to the Medicare program. The Ryan proposal would do away with the traditional Medicare program and shift beneficiaries into private insurance plans in 2022, under a model called “premium support.”
Medicare enrollees would be given a set amount from the government to purchase private plans. Those plans would cost considerably more than traditional Medicare, the CBO says, partly because private plans pay hospitals, doctors and other providers more and have higher administrative costs. At the same time, enrollees would also pay a higher percentage of the overall cost of their coverage.
“What CBO is saying is beneficiaries would pay much less under traditional Medicare for two reasons. The overall cost of the plan would be much cheaper and they would pay a lesser share of that less costly plan,” said Edwin Park of the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Ryan’s proposal also would scrap the health care law’s Medicaid expansion and repeal a voluntary long-term care insurance program as well as cancel an advisory board created in the law to recommend changes to Medicare spending.
Ryan appears to have retained the health law’s Medicare payment cuts to hospitals and Medicare Advantage plans.
Chip Kahn, president and chief executive officer of the Federation of American Hospitals, said that Ryan’s plan to repeal the law’s coverage expansions but keep the provider cuts “will severely impact access to essential medical care for seniors, as well as the lowest income Americans.” In last November’s elections, Republicans criticized the Democrats for the Medicare provider cuts, saying they would jeopardize seniors’ access to care.
“They’ve taken those savings — the same ones that they’ve criticized — in their plan,” Budget Committee ranking member Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D.- Md. said, adding that “the health care reforms enacted in the Affordable Care Act, which they say they’re repealing, they’re not repealing at all.”
The CBO highlighted key features of the proposal, based on information from Ryan’s staff and its own analysis, including:
— Starting in 2022, the eligibility age for Medicare would increase by two months per year until it reached 67 in 2033.
— The so-called “doughnut hole” in the Medicare prescription drug benefit in which beneficiaries pay 100 percent of drug costs would continue under the Ryan plan. The health law passed last year calls for the coverage gap to be ended by 2020.
— The private plans offered to Medicare enrollees starting in 2022 would have to comply with a standard for benefits set by the Office of Personnel Management, and would have to charge the same premiums for all enrollees of the same age.
— The premium support payments would vary depending on the health status and the incomes of the beneficiaries.
The CBO report also said that in 2022 the average government payment for a 65 year old in Medicare would be $8,000. In each successive year, it would increase to reflect inflation and the enrollee’s age. Patients’ share would rise sharply. Higher-income beneficiaries would get a lower premium support payment.DON'T MISS ANY PERSONAL FINANCE COVERAGE DON'T MISS ANY PERSONAL FINANCE COVERAGE prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" / Sign up for prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" / USA TODAY's Personal Finance e-mail newsletter. Every Friday, you'll get a week's worth of USA TODAY's personal finance news and columns. The experienced columnists and reporters at USA TODAY give you the news you need and advice you trust. SIGN UP NOW. IT'S FREE Relax, motorists. The big run-up in gasoline prices at the pump, 45 cents a gallon in the past month, may soon ease, many oil and gas analysts say. "Most of the increase has been taken," says Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at the Oil Price Information Service. FUEL FORUM: Discuss the prices in your area with other readers The rapid rise — which has surpassed earlier predictions — has been driven by expectations of a global economic recovery later this year and seasonal increases from Memorial Day to the summer driving season, industry analysts say. The national average price for a gallon of regular gasoline was $2.50 Sunday, auto club AAA says. That's up 55% for the year and higher than the average $2.23 a gallon that the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) had projected for the summer. But it's far below the $4 a gallon of last summer. Oil prices have likewise jumped. They hit $66.31 a barrel on Friday, up 30% in May. They've similarly been driven higher by expectations of an economic recovery. Benchmark crude for July delivery rose $2.27 Monday to settle at $68.58 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the highest close since early November. Brokerage CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets said its purchasing managers index rose to 51.2 from April's 50.1 on a 100-point scale, indicating that the world's third-largest economy might be recovering from a slump. Numbers above 50 show an expansion. The state-sanctioned China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing reported that its index had eased, but that manufacturing was still expanding somewhat. When crude prices were heading toward $150 per barrel last year, many energy analysts believed the booming economies of China and India would support energy prices globally. That did not turn out to be the case and there is little tangible evidence to suggest that the rapid rise in energy prices can be sustained for long this summer. Also affecting prices: The EIA, which is the Energy Department's statistical arm, said last week that U.S. crude oil stocks fell 5.4 million barrels in the week ended May 22. Refineries increased gasoline production to 85% of their capacity during the same time, the EIA says, though that's still down from a more normal rate of 91%. The increase in production may signal a bottoming of weak demand for gasoline, says Phil Flynn, energy analyst at Alaron Trading. Still, he says, gasoline prices are "close to the peak." Gas prices could stabilize even if oil rises because refineries could continue to kick up production, he says. Prices could start to fall this month — though not by as much as they rose in May — if expectations for a rebound in demand for gasoline prove too rosy, says Jim Ritterbusch, president of oil trading advisory firm Ritterbusch and Associates. Others aren't so sure. Oil companies will parlay rising crude oil prices into higher pump prices no matter the demand, says Michael Fox, executive director of the Gasoline & Automotive Service Dealers of America, which represents 450 gas retailers in Connecticut. "There's nothing going on but pure gouging by oil companies," Fox says. "There's no rational reason for gas prices to go up." Guidelines: You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. Read moreTheoretical anarchy is not enough for real-world change. The DIYL mindset calls for realism in anarchy. Seasteading has been touted as one possible route to anarchy.
Seasteading fills the bill of a possible route to anarchy, but hardly an ideal one. In fact it is fraught with problems. Despite the fact that I love the idea, my realistic mindset calls for me to point out the following 5 large problems with seasteading:
1) Barrier to Entry
The point of seasteading is to create an anarchic nation. Anarchy only functions positively as a political system in conjunction with a relatively pure free market economic system. The barrier to entry for seasteading, however, is huge. Barriers to entry destroy free markets. For a person to live on the water requires the purchase of a large yacht at a minimum. This issue can be addressed in part by people pooling money to buy larger ships and other accommodations. By creating a large pool of money to buy a larger ship the per person cost can be minimized. Here is one source of cruise ship prices. Factors influencing price include size, age, any damage and number of passengers accommodated. For ships built after 1980 and in good condition reasonable prices seem to begin around $15M for around 100 passengers and increase from there. Options for more than 1000 passengers seem to get as low as $50k per person. Technology will lower this price over time but at a presently unclear rate.
2) Cost of Living
Let’s say we all live on a ship. Getting groceries and other such things will be dramatically more expensive due to the logistical costs of many kinds of goods. Many industries such as large-scale agriculture, energy, manufacture and others will be limited and consequently these kinds of societies will be import dependent in the near future. Importing can be costly. Other factors such as the deregulation of society may lead to an offsetting decrease to cost of living in other ways. The key is not that cost of living will certainly rise, but that cost of living will be uncertain. The uncertainty itself is a drawback.
3) Opportunity Cost
Alternatives to seasteading such as cryptoanarchy exist and opportunity costs must be considered when evaluating costs. Cryptoanarchy, for example, presents a significantly lessened cost of failure. If a seasteading society collapses you and the rest of society are abandoned in the middle of the ocean. If a cryptoanarchic society collapses it is possible to have lead a double-life in the middle of traditional society and simply return to that society without need of relocation costs or many other costs.
4) Lack of Infrastructure and Other Transitional Costs
Developing infrastructure is a costly and time-consuming enterprise which will function as an economy-wide barrier to entry for seasteading. Other transitional costs will occur as well.
5) Legal and Diplomatic Issues
Seasteading hasn’t been tried before on a wide scale. Societies will of course need to develop internal legal systems, but that is the relatively easy part. The hard part will be development of foreign policies and diplomatic relationships and recognition including development of a precedent of international law for seasteading. This is one area where seasteading’s emphasis on anarchy and decentralization may come to haunt it as it may be the case that some people do not want to engage in an international discussion while others do. International law will develop with those who engage globally but may be applied to those who do not, create an unfortunate circumstance which is essentially another kind of transitional cost.
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AdvertisementsBryan Cranston brings his Tony Award-winning interpretation of President Lyndon B. Johnson to television on Saturday night in an adaptation of the Robert Schenkkan play “All the Way,” and it’s still quite a sight to behold, just as it was on Broadway in 2014.
Nothing beats witnessing this kind of larger-than-life portrayal onstage, of course. But the television version, presented by HBO, offers plenty of rewards, allowing Mr. Cranston to work the close-ups and liberating him from the confines of a theater set. In his hands, this accidental president comes across as an amazing bundle of contradictions, someone who seems at once too vulgar for the job and just right for it.
Mr. Schenkkan adapted his own play (which also won a Tony) for HBO, and he and the director, Jay Roach, have quickened the pace a bit. The slice of history, though, remains the same: Johnson’s pivotal first year in office, from his swearing in after John F. Kennedy’s assassination through his 1964 campaign for election to a full term.
The first half of the film, its most compelling stretch, focuses on Johnson’s wheeling and dealing to get the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed. Other prominent figures of the era are manipulated by this master of political hardball: senators like Hubert H. Humphrey (Bradley Whit
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focus on trying to reestablish himself in Forest's starting line-up.
He told nottinghamforest.co.uk: "I’m delighted. As predictable as it may sound, since I first started playing football I always wanted to stay at a club for ten years. I wanted to have a testimonial somewhere.
"Having been at West Ham as a kid, I thought I might do it there but obviously things didn’t work out. As much as I loved my time at Yeovil, the club’s aspirations didn’t match my own. Then I signed for a wonderful, wonderful football club.
"It’s been a crazy journey. We've come so close to the Premier League a couple of times and I've had to come back from injuries. The amount of support I’ve had from the club, the chairman especially, has made me desperate to stay.
"As I'm sure the club will agree, these negotiations were very easy. I came on my own to one meeting with a realistic idea of what I wanted. I've been very injury prone over the years so the terms of the deal are more based on me playing football, which is only right.
"It’s not a sympathy year from the club. The chairman and manager see me as being a part of the team, which is important for me. I’m here to play games.
"I feel like I’m training really well, getting stronger every week and I’m waiting for my opportunity, after the boys have been doing so well, to get back into the team.
"I really couldn’t be happier and tonight I’ll celebrate with my wife and little boy."A major garda operation has been launched over fears Islamic State could use our ports to begin an attack.
A major garda operation has been launched over fears Islamic State could use our ports to begin an attack.
Security at Dublin and Rosslare was deemed to be "weak" and armed officers are now patrolling the ports in a bid to stop Islamic State (IS) suspects from using Ireland as easy access to the UK.
The Herald can today reveal the investigation - codenamed Operation Mutiny - has resulted in garda activity at Dublin and Rosslare being massively stepped up in recent weeks.
Sources revealed that the operation was put in place after high-level meetings between senior garda detectives and their UK counterparts after the summer Brexit referendum in which the UK voted to withdraw from the European Union.
Garda management decided to offer vast amounts of overtime to officers who were willing to work extra hours in the capital's port as well as at Rosslare in Co Wexford.
It is understood that in Rosslare alone, garda management have sanctioned 100 hours of overtime a day as part of the ongoing investigation.
Members of the Garda Regional Support Unit – seen in action during a recent training exercise – have been deployed as part of Operation Mutiny
"Security at our ports was found to be porous and weak. The UK authorities were very concerned that IS terrorists could use these ports to get into Britain to launch a terrorist attack so Operation Mutiny was put in place," a source told the Herald.
Forces
"There were a number of meetings held between representatives of the different forces and these ultimately led to the drawing up of a policing plan which has been successful so far," the source added.
"This has been a sustained and massive operation which has meant that gardai have been checking virtually every vehicle coming into and out of these ports," a source said.
"Overtime for officers is being offered on a daily basis and there can be no doubt that these ports are far more secure than they were even a couple of months ago," the source added.
Apart from regular garda units, the policing of the ports has led to a significant heavily armed garda presence from the Garda Regional Support Unit (RSU). The RSU, based in the Southern Region, has even been deployed in Rosslare when armed officers from the South East have been unavailable.
While no IS terrorists have yet been intercepted, gardai have made a number of "significant seizures" of stolen property.
In particular, members of Romanian and other Eastern European organised crime gangs have been arrested on a number of occasions with vehicles full of stolen goods suspected to have been taken in burglaries across Ireland.
Port searches of vehicles as part of Operation Mutiny have also led to the seizure of "numerous" stolen car parts which were being smuggled out of the country.
Despite its successes, it is understood Operation Mutiny is due to be "wound down" before the end of the year.
HeraldA seven-person team of paleontologists from the University of Kansas is hoping to recover additional remains of a Tyrannosaurus rex this summer in Montana and is turning to an online platform to raise funds for its dig.
As of 2:30 p.m. Friday, a crowdfunding page sponsored by the KU Endowment Association had generated contributions of $10,785 — which is 64 percent of the overall goal of $16,700.
The expedition will be led by David Burnham, a paleontologist with the Biodiversity Institute & Natural History Museum at KU.
Six paleontology graduate students from KU also are expected to take part in the four-week excavation, which will be located in the Hell Creek area near Jordan, Mont., located in the northeastern part of the Big Sky state.
The group is seeking to locate additional remains of a Tyrannosaurus rex at the site, which is under the jurisdiction of the federal Bureau of Land Management.
An earlier dig at the same site resulted in about 15 percent of a T.rex being found, including fossils from its nose to tail.
Another group previously dug at the same site, but no longer wanted to obtain additional fossils, said Jen Humphrey, director of external affairs at the Biodiversity Institute & Natural History Museum at KU.
That group "wanted to make sure they were being put to good use, so it turned over the fossils it had found to KU," which has them on display at its Natural History Museum.
Last summer, a team from KU went to the Hell Creek area in Montana, where heavy equipment was used to excavate part of the hillside where the T.rex specimen was found.
This summer, the seven-person KU team is planning to visit the same area, hoping to find additional pieces of the gigantic dinosaur.
The crowdfunding effort will help raise money to provide for nearly every aspect of the trip, including transportation, lodging, food and supplies ranging from glue to hammers to work gloves, Humphrey said.
This isn’t the first crowdfunding project that has been launched through KU Endowment, Humphrey said.
"The background for that is that KU started doing crowdfunding in response to changes in patterns in fundraising globally," Humphrey said. "KU Endowment offered to launch a crowdfunding platform to do small-scale fundraising in this way."
Humphrey said "one of the great advantages" of KU Endowment sponsoring the crowdfunding platform is that all money that is donated will go toward the intended recipient — in this case the project titled "Bring the T.rex home to KU" — regardless of the $16,700 goal is reached by the cutoff date of July 15.
"All of those gifts will go to that purpose," she said, "even if we fall short of our goal."
Some crowdfunding platforms, Humphrey said, "require that you reach your goal or you don’t get the money."
A large gift of $10,000 got the "Bring the T.rex home to KU" crowdfunding project off to a rousing start.
The crowdfunding page has a variety of levels of giving, including $5, $15, $25, $75 and $100. "Every little bit helps," Humphrey said.
Should the crowdfunding effort generate funds in excess of the $16,700 goal, the additional proceeds will be used for exhibiting the materials at the Natural History Museum and for research.
Humphrey noted the first paleontologist to discover a T.rex fossil was Barnum Brown, a native of Carbondale and a KU alumnus, who discovered the giant dinosaur’s remains in 1902 in the Hell Creek Formation in Montana.
Humphrey said that in light of Brown’s discovery more than a century ago, this summer’s dig brings the hunt for T.rex fossils "full circle" for KU paleontology students.
Updates on the fundraising effort will be posted on Twitter with the hashtag #TeamTrexKU, as well as on the KU Natural History Museum’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/kunaturalhistory/?fref=nf.
To find out more about the crowdfunding page or to make donations, visit www.launchku.org/project/2312.BRIDGEWATER, N.S. — It had all the trappings of a typical teen romance, until it became part of a high-profile case that shines a light on the consequences of mixing digital images and sexuality.
The 14-year-old girl had known the boy since they were young. When they talked in class, he would compliment her looks and tell her that he liked her.
The boy would talk about how they could trust each other, according to court documents, then asked her for photos, including full nudes.
“He asked her repeatedly and explained that it was ‘no big deal,'” the documents said.
The boy is one of six male teenagers in Bridgewater, N.S., who have admitted to distributing intimate images of at least 20 girls between the ages of 13 and 17 without their consent. They will be sentenced in Bridgewater provincial court Monday.
When the six were charged in July 2016, four of the accused were 15 years old and the other two were 18. However, all were under 18 when the offences were committed, which means their identities are protected from publication under the Youth Criminal Justice Act. The victims’ identities are also protected.
The case is one of Canada’s largest involving a relatively untested law designed to combat the non-consensual sharing of intimate images.
A Crown attorney said in March that he hopes the case raises awareness about the criminal consequences of this kind of behaviour, but experts say the law may do little to deter teenage sexuality.
“It’s not clear that the law will be deterrent one way or the other, especially in the world of teenage hormones and sexuality run amok,” said Wayne MacKay, a law professor at Dalhousie University.
Documents submitted in court said two Dropbox accounts were created for the purpose of sharing dozens of intimate images of girls in various states of undress, including fully nude.
An agreed statement of facts said everyone who uploaded photos either knew outright or were “wilfully blind” to the fact that the subjects didn’t consent to their distribution.
In the statement, the photos’ subjects cited a variety of motivations for sending the images.
Some young women felt pressured by what they described as persistent requests for intimate images, while others said they were vying for boys’ affections or just joking around, the statement said.
The document said one 13-year-old girl was repeatedly asked for sexual photos by one of the accused over the course of several days, despite persistent rejection.
“The next day at school (the boy) and his friends were clustered near her locker and gave her the impression that they were talking about her. She felt pressured,” the document said, noting that she ended up sending the photos out of fear that he would spread a rumour about her.
McKay said it can be hard to draw the line between flirtation and coercion in intimate images cases, particularly when they involve young people.
He said the Bridgewater case shows the digital distribution of such images can reinforce high school social dynamics — like boys bragging about their sexual conquests, while girls are shamed for theirs — but said technology poses new potential for harm.
“I still think it’s important that we not minimize too much because that does send the wrong message that this is just boys being boys,” he said. “Some of these things have gone on forever, but because of the nature of social media and technology, the images and the damage is ongoing forever, potentially.”
The intimate images bill, which became law in 2015, was introduced after the death of Nova Scotia teen Rehtaeh Parsons, which captured national attention.
The 17-year-old died by suicide in 2013 after a photo — of what her family says was a sexual assault — was circulated among students at her school in Cole Harbour, N.S.
Lara Karaian, a criminology professor at Carleton University, said in the age of “sexual romance 2.0,” the circulation of intimate images has become the norm, and teens’ attitudes have shifted accordingly.
“This is not a trend that is going away. This is a new mode of sexual expression for young people,” Karaian said in an interview. “How much are we willing to use the law against so many young people who are doing this?”
McKay agreed that the legislation on intimate images has lagged behind the pace of technology and said we have to look outside the courtroom to address this growing phenomenon.
In the Bridgewater case, McKay said the distribution of images appeared to be so “systematic” that he thinks legal consequences could be appropriate.
He said the six accused could face court-ordered restrictions at the sentencing hearing Monday, including a prohibition on access to the Internet.
“For young people in the modern world, limiting their social media is what they’ll take note of,” he said. “For some, it may even be a bigger deterrent than time in custody.”Learn how to set up a Hadoop cluster in a way that maximizes successful production-ization of Hadoop and minimizes ongoing, long-term adjustments.
Previously, we published some recommendations on selecting new hardware for Apache Hadoop deployments. That post covered some important ideas regarding cluster planning and deployment such as workload profiling and general recommendations for CPU, disk, and memory allocations. In this post, we’ll provide some best practices and guidelines for the next part of the implementation process: configuring the machines once they arrive. Between the two posts, you’ll have a great head start toward production-izing Hadoop.
Specifically, we’ll cover some important decisions you must make to ensure network, disks, and hosts are configured correctly. We’ll also explain how disks and services should be laid out to be utilized efficiently and minimize problems as your data sets scale.
Networking: May All Your SYNs Be Forgiven
Hostname Resolution, DNS and FQDNs
A Hadoop Java process such as the DataNode gets the hostname of the host on which it is running and then does a lookup to determine the IP address. It then uses this IP to determine the canonical name as stored in DNS or /etc/hosts. Each host must be able to perform a forward lookup on its own hostname and a reverse lookup using its own IP address. Furthermore, all hosts in the cluster need to resolve other hosts. You can verify that forward and reverse lookups are configured correctly using the Linux host command.
$ host `hostname` bp101.cloudera.com has address 10.20.195.121 $ host 10.20.195.121 121.195.20.10.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer bp101.cloudera.com 1 2 3 4 $ host ` hostname ` bp101. cloudera. com has address 10.20.195.121 $ host 10.20.195.121 121.195.20.10.in - addr. arpa domain name pointer bp101. cloudera. com
Cloudera Manager uses a quick Python command to test proper resolution.
$ python -c 'import socket; print socket.getfqdn(), socket.gethostbyname(socket.getfqdn())' 1 $ python - c 'import socket; print socket.getfqdn(), socket.gethostbyname(socket.getfqdn())'
While it is tempting to rely on /etc/hosts for this step, we recommend using DNS instead. DNS is much less error-prone than using the hosts file and makes changes easier to implement down the line. Hostnames should be set to the fully-qualified domain name (FQDN). It is important to note that using Kerberos requires the use of FQDNs, which is important for enabling security features such as TLS encryption and Kerberos. You can verify this with
$ hostname --fqdn bp101.cloudera.com 1 2 $ hostname -- fqdn bp101. cloudera. com
If you do use /etc/hosts, ensure that you are listing them in the appropriate order.
192.168.2.1 bp101.cloudera.com bp101 master1 192.168.2.2 bl102.cloudera.com bp102 master2 1 2 192.168.2.1 bp101. cloudera. com bp101 master1 192.168.2.2 bl102. cloudera. com bp102 master2
Name Service Caching
Hadoop makes extensive use of network-based services such as DNS, NIS, and LDAP. To help weather network hiccups, alleviate stress on shared infrastructure, and improve the latency of name resolution, it can be helpful to enable the name server cache daemon (nscd). nscd caches the results of both local and remote calls in memory, often avoiding a latent round-trip to the network. In most cases you can enable nscd, let it work, and leave it alone. If you’re running Red Hat SSSD, you’ll need to modify the nscd configuration; with SSSD enabled, don’t use nscd to cache passwd, group, or netgroup information.
Link Aggregation
Also known as NIC bonding or NIC teaming, this refers to combining network interfaces for increased throughput or redundancy. Exact settings will depend on your environment.
There are many different ways to bond interfaces. Typically, we recommend bonding for throughput as opposed to availability, but that tradeoff will depend greatly on the number of interfaces and internal network policies. NIC bonding is one of Cloudera’s highest case drivers for misconfigurations. We typically recommend enabling the cluster and verifying everything work before enabling bonding, which will help troubleshoot any issues you may encounter.
VLAN
VLANs are not required, but they can make things easier from the network perspective. It is recommended to move to a dedicated switching infrastructure for production deployments, as much for the benefit of other traffic on the network as anything else. Then make sure all of the Hadoop traffic is on one VLAN for ease of troubleshooting and isolation.
Operating System (OS)
Cloudera Manager does a good job of identifying known and common issues in the OS configuration, but double-check the following:
IPTables
Some customers disable IPTables completely in their initial cluster setup. Doing makes things easier from an administration perspective of course, but also introduces some risk. Depending on the sensitivity of data in your cluster you may wish to enable IP Tables. Hadoop requires many ports to communicate over the numerous ecosystem components but our documentation will help navigate this.
SELinux
It is challenging to construct an SELinux policy that governs all the different components in the Hadoop ecosystem, and so most of our customers run with SELinux disabled. If you are interested in running SELinux make sure to verify that it is on a supported OS version. We recommend only enabling permissive mode initially so that you can capture the output to define a policy that meets your needs.
Swappiness
The traditional recommendation for worker nodes was to set swappiness ( vm.swappiness ) to 0. However, this behavior changed in newer kernels and we now recommend setting this to 1. (This post has more details.)
$ sysctl vm.swappiness=1 $ echo "vm.swappiness = 1" >> /etc/sysctl.conf 1 2 $ sysctl vm. swappiness = 1 $ echo "vm.swappiness = 1" >> / etc / sysctl. conf
Limits
The default file handle limits (aka ulimits) of 1024 for most distributions are likely not set high enough. Cloudera Manager will fix this issue, but if you aren’t running Cloudera Manager, be aware of this fact. Cloudera Manager will not alter users’ limits outside of Hadoop’s default limits. Nevertheless, it is still beneficial to raise the global limits to 64k.
Transparent Huge Pages (THP)
Most Linux platforms supported by CDH 5 include a feature called Transparent Huge Page compaction, which interacts poorly with Hadoop workloads and can seriously degrade performance. Red Hat claims versions past 6.4 patched this bug but there are still remnants that can cause performance issues. We recommend disabling defrag until further testing can be done.
Red Hat/CentOS: /sys/kernel/mm/redhat_transparent_hugepage/defrag
Ubuntu/Debian, OEL, SLES: /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/defrag
$ echo 'never' > defrag_file_pathname 1 $ echo 'never' > defrag_file_pathname
**Remember to add this to your /etc/rc.local file to make it reboot persistent.**
Time
Make sure you enable NTP on all of your hosts.
Storage
Properly configuring the storage for your cluster is one of the most important initial steps. Failure to do so correctly will lead to pain down the road as changing the configuration can be invasive and typically requires a complete redo of the current storage layer.
OS, Log Drives and Data Drives
Typical 2U machines come equipped with between 16 and 24 drive bays for dedicated data drives, and some number of drives (usually two) dedicated for the operating system and logs. Hadoop was designed with a simple principle: “hardware fails.” As such, it will sustain a disk, node, or even rack failure. (This principle really starts to take hold at massive scale but let’s face it: if you are reading this blog, you probably aren’t at Google or Facebook.)
Even at normal-person scale (fewer than 4,000 nodes), Hadoop survives hardware failure like a boss but it makes sense to build in a few extra redundancies to reduce these failures. As a general guideline, we recommend using RAID-1 (mirroring) for OS drives to help keep the data nodes ticking a little longer in the event of losing an OS drive. Although this step is not absolutely necessary, in smaller clusters the loss of one node could lead to a significant loss in computing power.
The other drives should be deployed in a JBOD (“Just a Bunch Of Disks”) configuration with individually mounted ext4 partitions on systems running RHEL6+, Debian 7.x, or SLES11+. In some hardware profiles, individual RAID-0 volumes must be used when a RAID controller is mandatory for that particular machine build. This approach will have the same effect as mounting the drives as individual spindles.
There are some mount options that can be useful. These are covered well in Hadoop Operations and by Alex Moundalexis, but echoed here.
Root Reserved Space
By default, both ext3 and ext4 reserve 5% of the blocks on a given filesystem for the root user. This reserve isn’t needed for HDFS data directories, however, and you can adjust it to zero when creating the partition or after using mkfs and tune2fs respectively.
$ mkfs.ext4 -m 0 /dev/sdb1 $ tune2fs -m 0 /dev/sdb1 1 2 $ mkfs. ext4 - m 0 / dev / sdb1 $ tune2fs - m 0 / dev / sdb1
File Access Time
Linux filesystems maintain metadata that records when each file was last accessed—thus, even reads result in a write to disk. This timestamp is called atime and should be disabled on drives configured for Hadoop. Set it via mount option in /etc/fstab :
/dev/sdb1 /data1 ext4 defaults,noatime 0 1 / dev / sdb1 / data1 & nbsp ; & nbsp ; & nbsp ; ext4 & nbsp ; & nbsp ; & nbsp ; defaults, noatime & nbsp ; & nbsp ; & nbsp ; & nbsp ; & nbsp ; & nbsp ; 0
and apply without reboot.
mount -o remount /data1 1 mount - o remount / data1
Directory Permissions
This is a minor point but you should consider changing the permissions on your directories to 700 before you mount data drives. Consequently, if the drives become unmounted, the processes writing to these directories will not fill up the OS mount.
LVM, RAID or JBOD
We are frequently asked whether a JBOD configuration, RAID configuration, or LVM configuration is required. The entire Hadoop ecosystem was created with a JBOD configuration in mind. HDFS is an immutable filesystem that was designed for large file sizes with long sequential reads. This goal plays well with stand-alone SATA drives, as they get the best performance with sequential reads. In summary, whereas RAID is typically used to add redundancy to an existing system, HDFS already has that built in. In fact, using a RAID system with Hadoop can negatively affect performance.
Both RAID-5 and RAID-6 add parity bits into the RAID stripes. These parity bits have to be written and read during standard operations and add significant overhead. Standalone SATA drives will write/read continuously without having to worry about the parity bits since they don’t exist. In contrast, HDFS takes advantage of having numerous individual mount points and can allow individual drives/volumes to fail before the node goes down—which is HDFS’s not-so secret sauce for parallelizing I/O. Setting the drives up in RAID-5 or RAID-6 arrays will create a single array or a couple very large arrays of mount points depending on the drive configuration. These RAID arrays will undermine HDFS’s natural promotion of data protection, slower sequential reads, and data locality of Map tasks.
RAID arrays will also affect other systems that expect numerous mount points. Impala, for example, spins up a thread per spindle in the system, which will perform favorably in a JBOD environment vs. a large single RAID group. For the same reasons, configuring your Hadoop drives under LVM is neither necessary nor recommended.
Deploying Heterogeneously
Many customers purchase new hardware in regular cycles; adding new generations of computing resources makes sense as data volumes and workloads increase. For such environments containing heterogeneous disk, memory, or CPU configurations, Cloudera Manager allows Role Groups, which allow the administrator to specify memory, YARN containers, and Cgroup settings per node or per groups of nodes.
While Hadoop can certainly run with mixed hardware specs, we recommend keeping worker-node configurations homogenous, if possible. In distributed computing environments, workloads are distributed amongst nodes and optimizing for local data access is preferred. Nodes configured with fewer computing resources can become a bottleneck, and running with a mixed hardware configuration could lead to a wider variation in SLA windows. There are a few things to consider:
Mixed spindle configuration – HDFS block placement by default works in a round-robin fashion across all the directories specified by dfs.data.dir. If you have, for example, a node with six 1.2TB drives and six 600GB drives, you will fill up the smaller drives more quickly, leading to volume imbalance. Using the Available Space policy requires additional configuration, and in this scenario I/O bound workloads could be affected as you might only be writing to a subset of your disks. Understand the implications of deploying drives in this fashion in advance. Furthermore, if you deploy nodes with more overall storage, remember that HDFS balances by percentage.
– HDFS block placement by default works in a round-robin fashion across all the directories specified by. If you have, for example, a node with six 1.2TB drives and six 600GB drives, you will fill up the smaller drives more quickly, leading to volume imbalance. Using the Available Space policy requires additional configuration, and in this scenario I/O bound workloads could be affected as you might only be writing to a subset of your disks. Understand the implications of deploying drives in this fashion in advance. Furthermore, if you deploy nodes with more overall storage, remember that HDFS balances by percentage. Mixed memory configuration – Mixing available memory in worker nodes can be problematic as it does require additional configuration.
– Mixing available memory in worker nodes can be problematic as it does require additional configuration. Mixed CPU configuration – Same concept; jobs can be limited by the slowest CPU, effectively negating the benefits of running updated/more cores.
It is important to be cognizant of the points above but remember that Cloudera Manager can help with allocating resources to different hosts; allowing you to easily manage and optimize your configuration.
Cloudera Manager Like A Boss
We highly recommend using Cloudera Manager to manage your Hadoop cluster. Cloudera Manager offers many valuable features to make life much easier. The Cloudera Manager documentation is pretty clear on this but in order to stamp out any ambiguity, below are the high-level steps to do a production-ready Hadoop deployment with Cloudera Manager.
Set up an external database and pre-create the schemas needed for your deployment.
create database amon DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8; grant all on amon.* TO 'amon'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'amon_password'; create database rman DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8; grant all on rman.* TO 'rman'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'rman_password'; create database metastore DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8; grant all on metastore.* TO'metastore'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY'metastore_password'; create database nav DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8; grant all on nav.* TO 'nav'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'nav_password'; create database sentry DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8; grant all on sentry.* TO'sentry'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY'sentry_password'; 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 create database amon DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 ; grant all on amon. * TO 'amon' @ '%' IDENTIFIED BY 'amon_password' ; create database rman DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 ; grant all on rman. * TO 'rman' @ '%' IDENTIFIED BY 'rman_password' ; create database metastore DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 ; grant all on metastore. * TO'metastore' @ '%' IDENTIFIED BY'metastore_password' ; create database nav DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 ; grant all on nav. * TO 'nav' @ '%' IDENTIFIED BY 'nav_password' ; create database sentry DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 ; grant all on sentry. * TO'sentry' @ '%' IDENTIFIED BY'sentry_password' ;
(Please change the passwords in the examples above!) Install the cloudera-manager-server and cloudera-manager-daemons packages per documentation.
yum install cloudera-manager-server cloudera-manager-daemons 1 yum install cloudera - manager - server cloudera - manager - daemons Run the scm_prepare_database.sh script specific to your database type.
/usr/share/cmf/schema/scm_prepare_database.sh mysql -h cm-db-host.cloudera.com -utemp -ptemp --scm-host cm-db-host.cloudera.com scm scm scm 1 / usr / share / cmf / schema / scm_prepare_database. sh mysql - h cm - db - host. cloudera. com - utemp - ptemp -- scm - host cm - db - host. cloudera. com scm scm scm Start the Cloudera Manager Service and follow the wizard from that point forward.
This is the simplest way to install Cloudera Manager and will get you started with a production-ready deployment in under 20 minutes.
You Play It Out: Services Layout Guide
Given a Cloudera Manager-based deployment, the diagrams below present a rational way to lay out service roles across the cluster in most configurations.
In larger clusters (50+ nodes), a move to five management nodes might be required, with dedicated nodes for the ResourceManager and NameNode pairs. Further, it is not uncommon to use an external database for Cloudera Manager, the Hive Metastore, and so on, and additional HiveServer2 or HMS services could be deployed as well.
We recommend 128GB per management node and 256-512GB for worker nodes. Memory is relatively inexpensive and as computation engines increasingly rely on in-memory execution the additional memory will be put to good use.
Diving a little deeper, the following charts depict the appropriate disk mappings to the various service storage components.
We specify the use of an LVM here for the Cloudera Manager databases but RAID 0 is an option, as well.
Conclusion
Setting up a Hadoop cluster is relatively straightforward once armed with the appropriate knowledge. Take the extra time to procure the right infrastructure and configure it correctly from the start. Following the guidelines described above will give you the best chance for success in your Hadoop deployment and you can avoid fussing with configuration, allowing you to focus your time on solving real business problems—like a boss.
Look for upcoming posts on security and resource management best practices.
Jeff Holoman and Kevin O’Dell are System Engineers at Cloudera.Penn State DE Carl Nassib's amazing senior season reached another pinnacle Monday, when he was named the Big Ten’s Defensive Player of the Year.
Despite being limited by injury in the Nittany Lions’ final three regular-season games, Nassib leads the conference in sacks (a school-record 15) and tackles for loss (19.5).
Nassib, who had never started a college game before this season, entered the 2015 campaign with two career sacks and 5.5 tackles for loss.
The Big Ten only announced the winners of its defensive awards Monday (offense comes Tuesday). Nassib was the only Lion to make the first-team defense, and was honored by the media and coaches.
DT Austin Johnson was named second team by the media and third team by the coaches. Fellow DT Anthony Zettel was named third team by the media and coaches.
Honorable mention picks included S Marcus Allen (M,C), LB Jason Cabinda (M,C), CB Trevor Williams (C) and CB Grant Haley (M).
LB Ben Kline won a Sportsmanship Award.
In an interesting twist, while Nassib was named Defensive Player of the Year, Ohio State's Joey Bosa was named Defensive Lineman of the Year.
In another interesting twist, the Big Ten named Michigan multi-purpose threat Jabrill Peppers its Freshman of the Year. Peppers is an academic sophomore who actually played in three games in 2014 and then was granted a medical redshirt, so he was included among the players eligible for this award (and weekly Freshman of the Week laurels).
That more than likely prevented PSU true freshman running back Saquon Barkley, who has already set a school rookie rushing record (1,007 yards), from winning the award.
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[[{"fid":"47548","view_mode":"default","fields":{"format":"default","field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":"All-Big Ten Coaches","field_folder[und]":"1"},"type":"media","attributes":{"title":"All-Big Ten Coaches","height":"886","width":"888","class":"media-element file-default"}}]]Yesterday, I showed a graphic that lays out popular devices by display size. In this post, I want to show a version created using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The upside of doing this programmatically rather than manually in a drawing program is that it’s easier to update, adjusts to each user’s viewport, and can be made interactive. The downside is that sometimes web technology isn’t up to the task of rendering something nicely yet.
With the programmatic approach, the main function takes in a set of objects, each of which represents a device with corresponding specs: display size (diagonal in inches), display resolution (height and width in pixels), and physical dimensions (height and width in inches).
Each device is then rendered as a div. The aforementioned specs are used to determine its size and shape, with the content area of the div acting as the display and its border serving as the bezel. The display size is also used to determine the horizontal position of each device.
There are also three optional parameters. Scale factor defaults 1 millimeter to 1 pixel, but can be varied per device. Vertical shift centers the display in the bezel by default, but can be tweaked for certain devices such as the Kindle. Finally, curve factor can customize the roundedness of a device using the border-radius property, useful for devices like the Veer, although there are some kinks with that.
Below is a screenshot of the results, and you can view the live version here. You can also have a look at the code, but pardon the cruft as this is just a proof of concept.GosuGamers Caster's Tool: Download it now
Casters often use overlays, and for a while now GosuGamers has been using a tool called GosuGamers Casters Tool made by GosuGamers' own Thomazor. We now release it for all to use.
- Download GosuGamers' Caster's Tool
Features
Lasse “Enron” Engen I am no longer a crewmember of GosuGamers, irl got the best of me, aaaargh!
We are now releasing the tool for everyone to easily use overlays to their casts, whether it's results, a logo hiding the replay bar or a banner. The tool was made a few months back, and the GosuGamers broadcast team has been using it for quite some time testing it as it has been upgrading with new features along the way.Install the program and start out by right-clicking, or double-clicking the player names then you get the rest. Though remember to have StarCraft 2 on fullscreen in windowed mode. Enjoy! GosuGamers.net - Download4.7 5 436 436
Second Clarisonic This is my 2nd Clarisonic nothing cleans as well as this. I particularly like the charging cord on the Mia verses the docking station with my first Clarisonic. I keep one in the shower all the time and my Mia at my bathroom sink. The charge lasts a long time and I like the travel case. I also love the Peter Thomas Roth products that came with this unit. I have searched high and low for a great cleanser and have used Bliss Foaming Face Wash for awhile now and it is fabulous. I now have another favorite cleanser in Peter Thomas Roth you can really feel the clean after using it. Both cleansers are FAR Better than Philosophy which smells like floor cleaner. The laser resurfacing moisturizer is great as well - I thought the gel would be too sticky but it's not and absorbs well. I use it at night before I go to bed. 10-15-13
Keeping this baby! Wasn't sure when I ordered this how much I would really like it. I have a dry spot on the
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light. Taken from the perspective that the law should most punish those who intend harm and not those who make "dumb mistakes" the pattern of sentencing doesn't seem to be a controversy. The fact that Swearengin still has a job where he's entrusted with a weapon and the authority to use violence when he's shown himself to be fatally careless, however, is.
California "public servants" have had some of the longest-standing protections of public employees anywhere in the country. The 1913 Civil Service Act created legal protections for government employees long before the privilege of collective bargaining became almost ubiquitous. The law provides for a long list of offenses that can result in termination (incompetence and inexcusable neglect of duty seem relevant here), but it also provides an extensive process of appeals for employees accused of firable offenses. The law has the effect of deincentivizing managers from trying to terminate employees even if there may be just cause.
Of interest, Henry also spoke with the deputy District Attorney, who pointed out Kern County's "conservative" constituency meant cases against police had to be rock solid. The DA recounts a case of police brutality caught on tape for which he could only secure a conviction for filing a false police report, after two trials. Defining down "reasonable doubt" when it comes to cops is a dangerous thing and holding them accountable is made difficult not just by civil service laws and often uninterested prosecutors but by a public wont to give cops the benefit of any doubt.David Goldman/Associated Press
Indianapolis Colts linebacker D'Qwell Jackson is reportedly being sued for $1.5 million by the pizza delivery driver he allegedly punched in February 2015, according to ESPN's Dianna Marie Russini.
Jackson was arrested and charged with simple assault nearly a year ago after allegedly punching the man, Jose Bonilla-Fuentes, on the left side of his face and back of his head in Washington, D.C., according to the Washington Post's Mark Lieberman.
Citing sources, Russini reported Bonilla-Fuentes is suing Jackson after the 32-year-old linebacker allegedly broke a bone in his face.
"I apologize for adding another distraction for this team," Jackson said in April, according to the Indianapolis Star's Stephen Holder. "I'm very fortunate to do what I do. I love what I do and I'm passionate. When the time allows, the facts will come out, but at this point, I want to apologize to the community and my fans and all my supporters out there."
Jackson—who has yet to face discipline under the NFL's personal-conduct policy—tallied 89 solo tackles and three sacks while appearing in all 16 games for the Colts last season.Bladedancer kindred had become overburdened with too many rules for just one pointy-ear, so in the new version it no longer provides amazing profile bonuses or a ward save, but instead creates a nice synergy with the unit of bladedancers it joins.
had become overburdened with too many rules for just one pointy-ear, so in the new version it no longer provides amazing profile bonuses or a, but instead creates a nice synergy with the of bladedancers it joins. The second big change concerns the Wild Huntsmen kindred. These bad boys are back, boosted by free reform. This comes at an expense, since the kindred's cost has been upped to reflect the added versatility, while at the same time the Wild Huntsmen will be less heavily armored than before.
concerns the. These bad boys are back, boosted by. This comes at an expense, since the's cost has been upped to reflect the added versatility, while at the same time the will be less heavily armored than before. When talking about Aspects, this is where you’ll find changes regarding the Tree spirits lists we mentioned above. Fertile seeds became infertile and got ditched from the book. Toxic Spores became susceptible to the winds which shortened their range, and it seems Dryads decided to strike on Entwined Roots which became exclusive for Thicket Beasts only. All these were measures taken to tone down the power of certain aspects of the book (S5 core Dryads, I'm looking at you).
SE_review_snapshotA Chinese official said Monday that the country's family planning policy should be unwaveringly adhered to, and would be improved step by step.
The policy is a long-term one and its primary goal is to keep a low birth rate, said Wang Xia, minister in charge of the National Population and Family Planning Commission, at a national conference.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics, at the end of 2011, the annual population growth rate stood at 0.479 permillage, down from 0.645 in 2002, when the family planning policy became a national law.
Also at Monday's conference, Wang said that pre-pregnancy check services will be expanded to reach all county-level areas across the country within this year.
Wang noted that migrants' equal access to related public services should be ensured.
At present, such services are available in about 60 percent of county-level areas, covering more than 80 percent of the target population, according to the official.
The official also said that efforts to rectify the gender imbalance are still needed.
The national meeting on family planning came at a time when some scholars and institutes are calling for a reform that allows more Chinese couples to have a second child, as the country faces demographic issues that could lead to labor shortage and an aging society.
"The family planning policy has had an effect in controlling population growth," said Du Peng, a professor studying population at the Renmin University of China, adding that adhering to the policy does not contradict allowing couples to have a second child.
According to a 2012 report issued by the China Development Research Foundation, one of the leading Chinese economic think tanks, the national fertility rate was below 1.5 in 2010, below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman, a basic fertility rate the population needs to replace itself from one generation to the next.
Currently the law permits couples who meet certain requirements, for example that both are only children, to have a second child.
"We should also see that the momentum of population growth has changed a lot from the past, and fine tuning of the policy should take into account local conditions," said Zhou Haiwang, a researcher from the Institute of Population and Development Studies under the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.
Zhou noted that many couples in urban areas are reluctant to give birth to even one child."For example the average fertility rate in Shanghai is only 0.84 for the past 10 years," he said.
He suggested that in areas with an extremely low fertility rate, measures should be taken to lower the cost for raising a child, encouraging couples to give birth.
Xinhua contributed to this storyOn Friday, Garrett Quinn pointed out two congressional races in which a Libertarian Party candidate received considerably more votes than the margin separating a winning Democrat from a losing Republican: Massachusetts' 6th District (48.3%-47.3%-4.5%** for Rep. John Tierney over Richard Tisei and Daniel Fishman), and Utah's 4th District (49.3%-48.1%-2.6%** for Rep. Jim Matheson over Mia Love and Jim Vein).
Last Wednesday, Brian Doherty also flagged Montana's race for U.S. Senate, where incumbent Sen. John Tester defeated the Ron Paul-endorsed Denny Rehberg 48.7% to 44.8%, while LP nominee Dan Cox received 6.5% of the vote. All three losing Republicans had significantly more libertarian credibility than maybe 90% of elected GOPers on the national level.
So are there any other "spoiler" accusations out there? At least four, probably more:
* Arizona's 1st Congressional District, where Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick beat Republican Jonathan Paton 48.4% to 45.7%, with Libertarian Kim Allen receiving 5.9% of the vote.
* Arizona's 9th Congressional District, where Democrat Kyrsten Sinema beat Republican Vernon Parker 48.2% to 45.4%, with Libertarian Powell Gammill garnering 6.4%.
* New Hampshire's 1st Congressional District, where Democrat Carol Shea-Porter beat incumbent Rep. Frank Guinta 49.7% to 46.0%, while Libertarian Brendan Kelly netted 4.3%. Editorialized the Andover Eagle-Tribune: "Perhaps Libertarians need to consider if their futile candidacies, which serve only to elect Democrats, are really in their long-term interests."
* Colorado's State Senate District 19, where incumbent Sen. Evie Hudak squeaked past Republican Lang Sias 46.9%-46.4%, while the LP's Lloyd Sweeney pulled down 6.5%. Commented former state GOP chair Dick Wadhams: " I think you have to go on the assumption that the majority of Libertarian votes would go to a Republican candidate if the Libertarian candidate was not on the ballot."
Any other national, state, or local LP "spoiler" accusations out there? List them in the comments, and I'll keep adding to this post.
** Those numbers were reversed for the first 15 hours this post was up. Apologies for the error.Next week, two Democratic candidates hoping to replace U.S. Rep. Joe Walsh will face off in the Illinois primary. Both have claimed to be the best-suited to take on the outspoken, Tea Party-backed Republican -- but as his money dries up and polls remain dismal, defeating Walsh may not be very tough for either of them.
On Monday, Politico reported that Walsh raised only $38,300 during the first two months of 2012, which is reportedly barely enough to cover the $24,015 he owes in legal fees.
Walsh's even bigger outstanding debt, however, is child support payments to his ex-wife. In 2010, Laura Walsh filed court papers claiming the congressman owed her more than $117,000 in child support and interest. She also claimed he funded his own 2010 campaign -- against Democratic incumbent Melissa Bean -- instead of paying up.
Joe Walsh has repeatedly denied owing such a large sum of cash, and lawyers for his ex told Cook County Circuit Court Judge Raul Vega last week that they were "working toward a settlement," the Chicago Tribune reports.
A poll of Illinois' 8th District in late January showed that only 32 percent of voters believe Walsh should be reelected, and 57 percent were ready for someone new.
In an interview with The Huffington Post, Iraq war veteran Tammy Duckworth, who is hoping to win the Democratic nomination in the 8th and face Walsh in November, said people in the district have "buyer's remorse" when it comes to Joe Walsh.
On this issue, former state deputy treasurer and 8th District Democratic candidate Raja Krishnamoorthi agrees with his opponent.Hi hi! I’m ElvisDitto, and you’ve probably seen me around FaceBook or YouTube from time to time. I handle sprites here and there on this little ol’ game we call Super Smash Flash 2. My confirmation to SSF2 is a unique sort of tag team with Zero Insanity, who you may remember from our stage blog a couple of weeks ago. We work together with a real synergy.
Aha, I’m rambling. More on that stuff later.
For now, I’m here to talk to you all about Pokémon, because if anyone knows anything about me, they know that there is nothing that I love more than those little pocket monsters.
With regards to our new demo, we knew that we had to up the ante in every aspect we could, and naturally, PokéBall Pokémon were no exception. It was no secret that in previous versions of Smash Flash we used a mix-match of different styles for these guys, but now we’re getting things more organised.
Let’s start with throwing this here PokéBall.
POKéBALL GO! POKéBALL GO!
Garchomp! Strike with Draco Meteor! Garchomp! Strike with Draco Meteor!
I guess Luigi should have realized he needs a Pokémon in order to battle. I guess Luigi should have realized he needs a Pokémon in order to battle.
Garchomp cries out, stunning opponents in front of it, then uses “Draco Meteor” a devastating Dragon-type move that calls down a shower of meteors from the sky.
Since the last demo, you’ll see we’ve caught a wide range of new Pokémon for you to play around with. We put a lot of care and attention into each one. We hope you enjoy the variety!
Zygarde is too zany for me! Zygarde is too zany for me!
Zygarde doesn’t like it’s environment being encroached on and will use its signature move, “Land’s Wrath” to try and get revenge. It slams the ground with it’s giant tail, causing fissures in the ground.
You mess with the Heracross, you get the horn! You mess with the Heracross, you get the horn!
Heracross is a fun one, as it’ll fly towards an enemy, then hurl them into the sky with its “Mega Horn”. You’re going to have to time your movement carefully if you plan on avoiding this one.
It’s just a little airborne, it’s still good, it’s still good! It’s just a little airborne, it’s still good, it’s still good!
Tepig pops out, and starts running at high speed, while engulfed in flames. If it hits an opponent, it’ll crash into them, setting them ablaze too! That’s why this move is called “Heat Crash”
You'll only ever see these types of characters standing next to each other in a Smash Bros. fangame. You'll only ever see these types of characters standing next to each other in a Smash Bros. fangame.
Unlike Smash for Wii U and 3DS, our Snivy will use its signature ability, Leaf Tornado. Sharp leavs will spin around Snivy’s general area, so be sure to avoid getting too close!
Seedot, assemble! Seedot, assemble!
Seedot, the ever adorable acorn Pokémon will march into battle, then fire out seeds like a gattling gun. This technique is known as “Bullet Seed”
Keeping in true to official Smash Bros, Jirachi will float upwards into the sky. Perhaps it grants a wish as it floats?
On top of this, a few more familiar faces are making a much needed return. We hope they live up to your expectations.
Beedrill always did frighten me as a kid. Beedrill always did frighten me as a kid.
Beedrill buzz into the playing field in a huge swarm of hatred. They will “Take Down” anyone in their way.
Bellossom is ready to entice foes into a deep sleep. Bellossom is ready to entice foes into a deep sleep.
Bellossom dances, shaking off “Sleep Powder” as it does so. Perhaps if it danced more gracefully…
And Koffing’s “Smokescreen” is now the right colour! And Koffing’s “Smokescreen” is now the right colour!
It’s super effective at blocking the view of the battlefield.
Wow! Venusaur, Blastoise and Charizard! What starter did you guys choose? Wow! Venusaur, Blastoise and Charizard! What starter did you guys choose?
Returning from Melee, Venusaur uses “Earthquake” and shakes the ground around him causing a ruckus, Charizard uses “Flamethrower” on either side of him dealing fiery multi-hit damage, and Blastoise uses “Hydro Pump” firing a watery projectile that pushes foes backward!
Speaking of familiar faces….
I bet you didn’t think you’d see this little guy return, now did you? I bet you didn’t think you’d see this little guy return, now did you?
Pichu has been missing out since Melee, but this time around it packs a real punch!
Pichu will jump up and shock anyone nearby with a powerful “Thunder Wave”. Pichu will jump up and shock anyone nearby with a powerful “Thunder Wave”.
On TOP of everything else, we also have a few Pokémon variants. What does that mean, you ask? Well, much like clones in the playable roster, some Pokémon function the same as others, but with differing stats.
Will you get Porygon? Will you get Porygon?
Porygon2? Porygon2?
PorygonZ, new to SSF2, is an option as well! PorygonZ, new to SSF2, is an option as well!
There’s even more of a gamble now with certain Pokémon than before! Try and find them all!
Pokémon are popular all over the world, and I think this last point will accurately reflect that. Not only do they appear inside PokéBalls, but you may also find them hiding in plain sight on stages!
Beldum? Were you jealous that your older sibling was already a pokéball?
Magnemite gracefully bobs around.
Now that we’ve celebrated the 20th Anniversary of Pokémon in style, I’d say this blog is done and dusted. Stay tuned, as next week we have the lovely Chernabogue who is going to talk to y’all about some more of the musical tracks in the game. Hope you enjoyed this week’s Dev Blog! Until next time. ElvisDitto, signing off.Researchers at the University of Tokyo's Ishikawa Oku Lab have been hard at work on a camera system that can track fast moving objects incredibly well, and the technology may change the way sports like baseball and soccer are televised. Recently, the team building the system has entered the next phase of testing: taking it outside, to see if will perform as well as it has in a lab setting. If all goes according to plan, they expect it'll be ready for broadcast use in roughly two years.
Demos of the tech are pretty impressive, as you can see in the video below showing the (warning: not recommended watching for those easily prone to motion sickness). To get the ping-pong ball-centric shots, the system uses a group of lenses and two small mirrors that pan, tilt and move so the camera itself doesn't have to. The mirrors rely on a speedy image tracking system that follows movement, rather than predicting it. Swapping the camera out for a projector also has some interesting applications -- it can paint digital pictures on whatever its tracking. Sounds like the perfect gadget for folks who wish their table tennis balls looked like emoji.Share This Video Facebook Twitter EMAIL
The old adage that you never know what someone is going through feels truer than ever today as Darryl McDaniels, better known as DMC of legendary rap pioneer trio Run DMC, revealed that at the height of the band’s success, his depressive thoughts almost led him to kill himself. In an interview with Boston radio’s Matty Blake and Nick Stevens, the hip-hop trailblazer shared some surprising insights into depression, suicide, and the need for therapy.
Relating his previous struggles to those of both Chris Cornell and Chester Bennington, who both committed suicide this year, just a month apart, DMC stressed the importance of talking to someone about depressive thoughts. “I want these young people to not be afraid to speak up,” he declares in the 4-minute clip, “Because one hundred percent of the time, two things happen. The people that hear that do this: ‘Oh my god, me too,’ or ‘my daughter.[etc.]'”
He also shares his own story, saying, “I was gonna jump.” In 1993, just after Down With The King had resurrected Run DMC’s popularity, he says he “woke up the next morning and I didn’t want to live no more.” He says he became suicidal, alcoholic, and a “metaphysical, spiritual, and emotional wreck,” and that “If you don’t reveal how you feel, you never heal.” It rhymes because he’s one of the greatest rappers ever, in his words. He credits therapy for setting him back on the right path.
Equally important, he says, is for people to be understanding and accepting to their depressed friends, citing prior experiences being advised by his bandmates that he shouldn’t have been depressed due to their success. “I can’t tell you, ‘Don’t feel hungry! Don’t feel cold!'” He reiterates that “The things you hold in will destroy you” if you don’t express them, and finishes with a quick eight bars of a rhyme to drive the point home.You’re Not Working As Hard as You Can
11 ways to bring your A-Game to work (and life).
Sean Johnson Blocked Unblock Follow Following Dec 8, 2016
Originally published here.
After three months of doing it herself, my wife dragged me into a CrossFit gym.
For most of our marriage, I’ve worked out pretty consistently once or twice per week, mostly lifting weights, and I’d routinely leave the gym feeling pretty good. I thought I knew what working out meant.
CrossFit taught me I had no clue what a hard workout was supposed to feel like.
The first session is the worst. It’s like getting hit by a truck. Your body is telling you it’s literally about to die. It’s not even remotely fun.
The workouts don’t get any easier. But you at least know what to expect going forward. You also find yourself slowly making progress. Two weeks in they had me repeat the workout from the beginning, and I found I’d shaved 30 seconds off my time. I still sucked, but it felt good.
Most importantly, I’ve learned that my body, even in its current pear-shaped form, is capable of far more than I thought. When you see the number of reps that await you — 200 push-ups or 100 burpees or whatever — you don’t think you can possibly do it. But you push through. And even if your time on the whiteboard is worse than everyone else’s (which mine consistently is), you have a feeling of satisfaction.
You now know what a hard workout feels like. And you have the satisfaction of knowing you put in your work that day.
Most people don’t know what hard work is.
I think most people don’t know what hard work is when it comes to their professional life.
There is a group of people who don’t know and don’t care. They believe their job is a necessary evil, and the best approach is to keep your head down and do just enough to avoid getting fired. Thankfully this isn’t the majority, and they usually get found out pretty quickly.
The problem is the second group, which I believe is the majority of us. This group cares about their job, and truly wants to do well. They show up every day, and believe they really are doing their best. When their bosses get frustrated with them for not doing more, they don’t understand it. They’re working as hard as they can.
Or so they think.
Why don’t they know?
Perhaps they don’t know because they’ve never been truly pushed. They’ve never had solid models to follow, like a family that drilled it into their head or a teacher who pushed them beyond the limits of what they thought was possible.
Perhaps it’s the nature of knowledge work. So much of it is sitting behind a computer, and if you’re not making clear deliverables like mock-ups or code or phone calls, it can be difficult to recognize who’s really hustling and who’s just screwing around.
Perhaps it’s because their peers don’t know either. Most of the people they’re surrounded by are as clueless as they are. In a typical office, there might be one or two people who truly know what hard work feels like and do it consistently.
Regardless of the reason, the effects are terrible.
Not knowing is why you might not love what you do.
Many people have been taught to pursue something they’re passionate about. They take a job, don’t like it that much, jump to a new one, and repeat.
There is a growing body of evidence that they don’t like their job because they aren’t good at it, and that passion comes from having mastery, not the other way around.
And the path to mastery is hard work.
Social scientists call it “deliberate practice”. While most people’s days consist of what Cal Newport calls “shallow work”, the people who love their work instead pursue deep work, work that requires intense bouts of concentration. That concentration leads to much more rapid progress, which leads to mastery, which leads to passion.
Not knowing how to work hard and deep makes it less likely you find the thing you’re passionate about.
Not knowing is why you might not be moving up the ladder.
My first job in New York was at a startup that had tons of turnover. This was because most people didn’t get promoted and didn’t get raises very often.
But some people did.
There were 5 or 6 people who got promoted rapidly and received generous raises in very short periods of time. Not surprisingly all of those people stuck around. And those people were instrumental in helping the company eventually sell.
Those people came from different backgrounds and had different personalities and skills. What they had in common though was an understanding of what hard work looks like. There were developers and designers who had 10x the impact of their peers. There was a sales guy who consistently outsold everyone else on the team by orders of magnitude.
Many people in the company saw those folks rise up, got frustrated and left. What they might not have done is ask themselves honestly what the founders saw in those people.
If you’re in a company that doesn’t have strict hierarchies and timelines for advancement and are watching other people who are younger or joined later vault ahead of you in the pecking order, it might be worthwhile to ask yourself why.
While there certainly might be unconscious (or conscious) biases driving some of these decisions, those are largely out of your control. Is there anything you personally can do to change the situation? It’s’ worth reflecting on this. Honestly.
Not knowing might be why you’re not as happy as you could be.
The phrase “workaholic” implies that it’s an addiction. And while I’m a huge believer in balance (having been through the startup meat grinder and with two small kids, I’m about as big an advocate for shutting things down and being present as you’ll find), I understand why they feel that way.
Just like a hard workout releases endorphins and makes you feel good, I think workaholics do so partially because they love how it makes them feel.
Watch an episode of Gary Vaynerchuk’s DailyVee series. He works 14 hour days because he has huge ambitious goals (like owning the Jets) and knows that working longer is one way to make that happen. But he also works that long because he loves it. You don’t get the impression that he cares about the money at all. He cares about the work itself.
Hard work doesn’t necessarily mean putting in long hours. You can spend 14 hours in the office and not get a single meaningful thing done.
But there is often a correlation between the people who work the most and the people who work the hardest — just like exercising.
Again, I don’t advocate 14 hour days. My team works 8. What I do advocate is bringing a higher level of intensity to those 8 hours.
I think your work day should feel kind of like a workout. You should be able to take the train home and feel like you gave it 100%. It makes it easier to connect with your family or read or crack open a beer and binge watch Westworld. Because you know you earned it.
How to Start Working Harder
Let’s assume you buy into this premise. How do you practically learn to do this?
1. Decide to start working harder.
The first step is simply to resolve to do it. Make a decision to show up on Monday and bring a higher level of intensity and focus. Like any character trait you’re trying to develop, you can’t wish your way there. You have to make the decision.
2. Prepare for discomfort.
Understand that working like this is very much like starting a new workout routine. In the beginning, it will feel uncomfortable. That’s to be expected.
Anticipate this, and come up with a strategy for dealing with it in advance. Tell yourself “when I get frustrated and want to quit, I will _______.” Your blank could take many forms — a reminder of some goal that your new focus will help you achieve, a reward you’ll treat yourself to at the end of the day, etc.
3. Measure your effectiveness and level of focus.
It’s almost impossible to improve your physical strength without tracking your workouts. Tracking tells you when you really pushed it and when you went through the motions. It also can help you stay motivated when you hit plateaus.
I suggest doing the same here. You can start tracking your level of focus on a scale of 1–10. Or you could get fancier and track your time, evaluating what % was spent on meaningful work. Once you have a baseline, you can set yourself goals for improvement.
4. Give yourself grace.
You will screw up. Every day. One of the secrets to success in life is learning to live comfortably in the gap between who you want to be and who you currently are. When you mess up, don’t beat yourself up. Dust yourself off, gently resolve to do better tomorrow.
5. Find a mentor who knows what hard work looks like.
There are people around you who already know what this looks like. People whose families were immigrants often know. Athletes who competed at the college level often know. People who spent years playing an instrument often know.
Find these people. Take them to breakfast. Ask them everything you can about how they go about their days, what drives them. Try to identify common patterns you can apply. Consider going one step forward and enlisting them as your personal coach to hold you accountable.
6. Build in renewal routines.
When I say you want to work with intensity, that does not mean non-stop. That is a recipe for burnout. When you exercise, you have periods of intense concentration and rest, both in between sets during your workout and between workout days.
Do the same — every 90 minutes or so, create a ritual that can help you recharge. Get away from your desk. Talk to some coworkers. Go for a walk. Grab a cup of fancy coffee from your favorite spot. Take a 15-minute power nap.
While this sounds indulgent, if you do it as a reward for 90 minutes of hard work I guarantee your days will be orders of magnitude more productive, even with the breaks.
It’s also important to build in routines in the evenings and weekends that recharge you. My wife and I have found that TV or movies at night don’t give us more energy or life — they usually drain it. After a hard day, ending on a stressful note is not helpful. Our routines involve cooking (which we love), reading with our kids, stretching, spending time in prayer or meditation, taking a bath, enjoying each other’s company.
7. Order your tasks from most to least important.
For most people, their willpower dwindles throughout the day. A good practice is to spend the first 90-minute block working intensely on your most important task. Each morning (or the night before) ask yourself which thing on your list would make the most impact. If you got nothing else done today, what one thing would make you feel like the day was still a success?
8. Identify your unproductive triggers.
Most of us have developed bad habits over the years that prevent us from truly focusing at work. For many, this involves things like constantly checking email or jumping into Facebook, launching an Internet death spiral you emerge from 30 minutes later. For others, it’s a constant need to get up and walk around.
There’s usually a triggering event that initiates patterns like this. Work hard to identify the trigger, and develop a strategy for dealing with it. This could involve installing software that blocks specific websites, or that turns off Internet access entirely. It could be applying strategies from meditation, gently noticing yourself when you get distracted, recognizing it and returning your focus. It could be more extreme, having a rubber band on your wrist and snapping yourself when you get up and break your concentration.
These patterns are not facts of life — they are simply habits, and they can be broken.
9. Create a motivating positive triggering routine.
On the other side, you can deliberately design triggers to tell your brain to engage in your positive routines.
This could involve lighting a candle by your desk. Making a cup of tea. Putting on a specific Spotify channel. Having an inspiring YouTube video queued up. Viewing your overarching goals one more time and reminding yourself why you’re about to start working. Try different approaches and see what works.
10. Set quantifiable goals.
If you don’t know where you’re going it can be hard to drum up the motivation to do this. Set measurable goals so you can monitor how you’re doing. Progress can be motivating.
If you have a collaborative goal setting process with your boss, set stretch goals for yourself that you know will require hard work to achieve. If your company doesn’t set goals for you, don’t use it as an excuse — make them yourself.
11. Find an accountability partner or group.
Many people have experienced the wisdom of having a gym buddy or coach to hold them accountable. Do the same with your work.
Seek out people who you think these ideas would resonate with. Send them this article. Ask to start a group that checks in on each other each day or week. Report on your intensity level, again on a scale of 1–10. This doesn’t have to be formal — a simple group text thread is sufficient.
Start working harder today.
Work should not be your entire life. But for the time you spend at work, you should put everything you have into it. If you do, I’m convinced you’ll enjoy your job more. You’ll likely get promoted. You’ll develop a skill that will likely translate into other areas of your life. And I’m guessing you’ll find yourself surprisingly happier overall.[JURIST] The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals [official website] on Friday struck down [opinion] a portion of a state law [text] banning consensual oral and anal sex, aimed at criminalizing homosexual conduct, as unconstitutional. The appeal was brought by a Dallas County, Alabama, man who was charged with engaging in consensual sodomy with another man and ultimately sentenced to 12 months in jail for “sexual misconduct.” The Alabama statute prohibiting such conduct states that “consent is no defense” to a prosecution under this law and the appeals court revealed that the commentary to the statute shows that the law was specifically enacted “to make all homosexual conduct criminal.” The defense largely relied on a 2003 landmark decision in Lawrence v. Texas [opinion] where the US Supreme Court found a Texas law banning “deviate sexual intercourse” to be unconstitutional; that it “further[ed] no legitimate state interest which can justify its intrusion into the personal and private life of the individual.”
Alabama is one of several southern US states that have had their sodomy laws recently adjudicated. In March Virginia passed [JURIST report] a bill removing the state’s ban on oral and anal sex, reducing “crimes against nature” only to bestiality and incest and continuing to prohibit sodomy in sex crimes against children. The bill came one year after a three-judge panel for the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit overturned [JURIST report] Virginia’s anti-sodomy law on the grounds it was unconstitutional. In October 2013 the Supreme Court of Georgia ruled [JURIST report] that its state statute prohibiting the solicitation of sodomy is constitutional, opining that the law is not violative of one’s due process or privacy rights.19 Retailers that Filed for Bankruptcy and/or Closed Stores in 2017
Consumer trends are changing in the world of traditional retail shopping. Those words couldn’t have rang truer in 2017, a year that saw a massive wave of bankruptcy filings and store closures across major brands, despite a growing US economy. Some of the spokespeople for the struggling stores are blaming Amazon for ravaging brick and mortar business, while others blame Millennials (and Generation Z, behind them) for not shopping in traditional suburban malls in traditional suburban ways.
Regardless of the reasons for closures, we’ve rounded up a list of the changes that have impacted Central Ohio retail destinations the most in 2017.
All Stores Closed:
In January, locally-based The Limited announced it would be closing all brick-and-mortar stores after 54 years in business. The Limited continues to sell clothing online, but is no longer the mall staple that it once way.
Also in January, American Apparel declared that it would be closing all stores following a bankruptcy filing in 2016. The Short North store was the only local one for the chain, which finished business in the spring. You can still buy online.
Mall staple Wet Seal also bit the dust in January, closing its remaining stores all across the US, after already downsizing from its peak reach years ago.
Some Stores Closed:
Macy’s declared a downsizing was under way in January, which included the closure of two local stores at Tuttle and Eastland malls. Uniquely, Tuttle already had to Macy’s anchors due to a department store merger years ago.
Central Ohio lost Kmart and Sears locations in 2017, both of which are owned by Sears Holdings. That news meant that Eastland Mall now no longer has any anchors, and Westland mall is now 100% vacant. We can likely expect more bad news from Sears in 2018 based on their investor reporting.
In February, mall anchor JCPenny announced big plans to close 140 stores this year, but no Central Ohio locations were affected by this round of downsizing.
Electronics store hhgregg declared back in March that it would be trimming 88 stores from its lineup, which only affected the Newark/Heath location in Central Ohio.
In March, RadioShack announced that it would be closing 187 stores across the US, which included all Central Ohio locations.
Sporting goods chain Gander Mountain announced major store closure news following a bankruptcy filling and sale. That included the shuttering of its Central Ohio locations.
Video game outlet GameStop announced the closure of 150 retail locations back in March, citing lagging sales and a drop in stock value.
Mall retailer Rue21 announced earlier this year that it would be closing 400 of its stores all across the country, which included locations in Central Ohio.
In June, Payless ShoeSource released a statement about the closure of 808 of its stores, or approximately 20 percent of the brick-and-mortar footprint for the chain. That included four Central Ohio locations.
Upscale chain Michael Kors also had some bad news this summer, announcing that 125 of its locations would be closing.
The parent company of Ann Taylor, Dress Barn and Lane Bryant announced that it would be closing locations across all three brands.
Children’s
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in the moral and political emancipation of the world, it is time she understood her high calling, and were harnessed for the work. For mighty causes, like floods from distant mountains, are rushing with accumulating power to their consummation of good or evil.”
Brought to you by AmericanMinute.com.
Discover more of Bill Federer’s eye-opening books and videos in the WND Superstore!MELBOURNE: The United States seems to have influenced Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard's U-turn on uranium exports to India, as the Obama administration viewed the long-standing ban was a roadblock to greater engagement between Washington and New Delhi."Gillard's decision to open the door to uranium exports to India came after talks with the Obama administration, which viewed the ban as a roadblock to greater engagement between Washington and New Delhi," The Australian newspaper claimed.The Prime Minister yesterday signalled she would use the Labour party's national conference next month to reverse a ban on exporting uranium to India, a non-signatory of the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty."There's nothing to be read into it, coming as it does the day before President (Barack) Obama's visit, other than it suited me as the day to make the announcement," she said, adding "So it's my decision, my announcement and it was made because of my logistics as today is the appropriate day."The paper said it was understood that Australian and US officials have been involved in intense strategic discussions about India and the Indian Ocean for several months.Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd has been in India this week for a meeting on Indian Ocean co-operation and Defence Minister Stephen Smith is expected to visit India early next month to boost bilateral defence co-operation.The Obama administration has been pursuing a closer partnership with India and considers Australia an integral part of its strategy, the paper said.US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said early this month that the US-Australian alliance had been transformed from "an Asia-Pacific alliance to an Indo-Pacific alliance".Speaker of the House John Boehner delivered a direct message to President Barack Obama after Obama’s victory in the election: “This is your moment” and “we want you to succeed.”
“If there’s a mandate in yesterday’s [election] results it’s a mandate for us to find a way to work together on the solutions to the challenges that we all face as a nation,” Boehner said in a speech at the Capitol on Wednesday.
These challenges, Boehner said, include the expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts at the end of the year, automatic defense spending cuts, the debt limit increase and the expiration of the continuing resolution that’s keeping the government running without a formal budget.
(RELATED: Harry Reid says he plans to change Senate filibuster rules)
He insisted that House Republicans are willing to work with the president to avoid the so-called “fiscal cliff.”
“Mr. President, this is your moment,” Boehner said. “We’re ready to be led not as Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans. We want you to lead not as a liberal or a conservative, but as the president of the United States of America. We want you to succeed. Let’s challenge ourselves to find the common ground that has eluded us.”
Boehner still rejects the position of Democrats like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid who want to raise the top tax rate, arguing that this would hurt small businesses.
However, he said Republicans are open to raising revenue by reforming the tax code with the help of Obama.
WATCH:
Follow Nicholas on TwitterFor nearly two decades, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has been administered by the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which means that the American government has been in control of a global database of addresses for most servers and sites on the Web.
That’s about to change: On October 1, the US government will hand over the reins to a nonprofit multi-stakeholder entity.
You won’t notice any changes in the way the internet works; the only difference is that the management of the internet’s ‘phone book’ will now fall to a body comprised of international representatives from foreign governments and tech companies.
The US notes that it’s comfortable handing over control of ICANN now because it considers the private-sector internet sufficiently “mature.” In fact, it initiated the handover process back in 2014; it did, however, seek an extension of its administration for a year last August so it could figure out how the multi-stakeholder governance approach might pan out.
Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information and NTIA Administrator Lawrence E. Strickling summed up the significance of the transition in a blog post earlier this week:
Stakeholders spent two years developing a thoughtful consensus proposal that meets the criteria we outlined in 2014 and will strengthen the multistakeholder approach, while maintaining the stability, security, and openness of the Internet that users across the globe depend on today. This multistakeholder model is the key reason why the Internet has grown and thrived as a dynamic platform for innovation, economic growth and free expression.
Read next: Communist and cultural effects on tech communitiesOn rare occasions, a specific instrument manufacturer becomes so iconic that their name becomes synonymous with the instrument itself. Guitars have the Gibson Les Paul and Fender Stratocaster, organs have Hammond, and synthesizers have Moog. While there is an ever-growing world of analog and digital synths, alongside ever-more imaginative software-based synth programs, Moog synths and their classic tone remain the brass ring for many. Responsible for the concept of modular synthesis (which is currently enjoying a new renaissance), many aspects of Moog synths, especially their famous ladder filters, are often copied in the analog and digital realms.
As you might suspect, such an innovative line of products has an interesting and somewhat idiosyncratic history. The current iteration of the company, Moog Music, has its roots in founder Dr. Robert Moog’s storied past, and picks up where Moog left off in the late 1970s when he left his eponymous company for other ventures, including a stint at Kurzweil during the mid to late ’80s. However, to know and understand what Moog Music stands for, you need to take a look at Bob Moog’s own history.
The late Dr. Robert Moog, who went from selling Theremin kits to inventing voltage-controlled synthesizers.
Born May 23, 1934, in New York City, Moog found his entry into electronic music not behind the keyboard of some proto-synth, but rather building and selling Theremins, the proximity-controlled instruments you play via hand gestures—prevalent in the sound tracks of many 1950s sci-fi movies. Moog continued to make Theremins, and then “assemble-it-yourself” Theremin kits throughout the 1950s and ’60s, helping to finance his way through undergrad at Queens College, CUNY; graduate school at Columbia University; and finally his Ph.D. in engineering physics, from Cornell.
The Birth of Modular and Moog as We Know It
Clearly not satisfied in handling one challenge at a time, just before his graduation from Cornell, Moog, working alongside composer Herbert A. Deutsch, created the basis for what would eventually become his Moog Modular synthesizer. What started life as a few breadboards eventually took shape, and by the 1964 Audio Engineering Society’s Convention, Moog had unveiled prototypes and began taking orders for what would become a sonic revolution.
While his Theremin and Theremin kit business was always successful, it was not until Moog created his modular approach to synthesis that his thumbprint would truly begin to be felt. Pioneering subtractive synthesis based around voltage-controlled oscillators, Moog employed transistors rather than tubes used in earlier synthesizer systems built by others, whose size and cost made them mostly impractical for larger-scale production. Thanks to the (comparatively) smaller size and modular design, the Moog Modular began finding its way into recording studios to be used in film scoring, as well as on albums.
The Moog factory, in Asheville, North Carolina
Though we take for granted that synths are played with an organ-style keyboard, the modular design was not, in fact, designed for performance, and its sounds could be triggered in a number of ways, including via different modules or its ribbon controller. Familiar to anyone who has worked in a professional recording studio, the Moog Modular used patch cables to connect different modules to one another, allowing for a wide possibility of signal flow and, therefore, sonic options.
Helping the ’60s and ’70s Sound Psychedelic
The eerie and seemingly infinitely changeable sound of Moog synthesizers played no small role in the burgeoning psychedelic sound of the 1960s and the ’70s, finding its way onto releases from artists ranging from The Byrds, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, The Doors, and many more. Bob Moog himself once quipped, after the Moog was used on the soundtrack of Midnight Cowboy, “There’s a psychedelic scene where everybody’s stoned, and that’s where they used the Moog. You know, you really couldn’t get stoned back then without having some synthesizer music playing.”
“There’s a psychedelic scene where everybody’s stoned, and that’s where they used the Moog. You know, you really couldn’t get stoned back then without having some synthesizer music playing.”
While proving popular with pop artists of the time, the synthesizer as an instrument was still a bit of a footnote prior to the release of Wendy (née Walter) Carlos’s now famous Grammy-Award-winning album, Switched-On Bach. Carlos, a musical prodigy, performed classic Bach pieces entirely on a custom-built Moog synthesizer. The album truly showcased what synthesizers are capable of, and helped bring the Moog name to the lips of musicians around the world.
Big Sounds from Small Places: The Arrival of the Minimoog
1970 saw the arrival of the Minimoog, which has become the format most people think of when they think of Moog. Scaling down the Moog Modular into a keyboard-based piece that could easily be used for live performance as well as in the studio, the Minimoog became quickly popular with a wide variety of artists, and saw a few revisions, though Revision D remains the most sought after and emulated. While Moog Modulars were frankly cost and size prohibitive, the Minimoog placed the synthesizer within the grasp of more people, thanks to its size, production, and pricing.
The importance of the Minimoog on synthesis, and popular music as a whole, almost cannot be overstated. Originally finding a home in acts like prog rock giants Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, the Minimoog’s influence on early electronic music was felt on its heavy use on Kraftwerk’s classic, Autobahn.
A Moog by any Other Name…
In 1977, Bob Moog left Moog Music, and started a company called Big Briar, continuing to steadfastly produce Theremins. Once again, Moog continued to push boundaries with the release of his Moogerfooger line of effect pedals (still available today), which found their way into synth players’ signal flows, as well as the pedalboards of many famous guitarists.
One of the line of Moogerfooger effects pedals
Without his guidance and ideas, Moog Music faltered in Bob Moog’s absence and, in 1993, stopped all manufacturing. However, in 2002, like a voltage-controlled phoenix rising from the ashes, Bob Moog reacquired the rights to the name Moog Music, and moved Big Briar’s product line to the Moog Music name.
Seemingly to celebrate this victory, Moog Music released the first iteration of the Minimoog Voyager, with its final iteration being the Minimoog Voyager XL. This marked a new era for Moog Music, seeing the release of many more affordable and digitally controlled units, allowing users to now save presets while still maximizing the sound of analog synthesis.
Moog Minimoog Voyager XL Monophonic Synthesizer
Bob Moog died in 2005, leaving behind a legacy of sound and inspiration for a wide variety of musicians, composers, and performers. Moog Music has continued onward with his vision, and the company is seemingly more relevant than ever, thanks in no small part to the resurgence of modular synths and the growing appetite for all things analog. The future is exciting, as we all wait to see what will take place in the Moog lineup.LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA and TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - Jan. 16, 2017) -
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The Tinley Beverage Company Inc. (the "Company" or "Tinley") (CSE:TNY)(CSE:TNY.CN)(OTC PINK:QRSRF) is pleased to announce that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Hemplify, Inc., has signed with LA Distribution Co. for distribution of Hemplify throughout Los Angeles County and Orange County.
Los Angeles Distributing Company is a leader in business to business wholesale distribution and serves over 2,000 businesses in Los Angeles and Orange County. It has a strong track record of identifying and being early adopters of healthy and innovative beverages including alkaline waters, coconut waters, kombucha teas, matcha teas, cold brew coffees, fresh-pressed juices and energy shots.
"We believe hemp extract is poised to be a significant consumer category, with consumer awareness driven in part by the passing of Proposition 64 in California and in part by the continued growth of the traditional hemp seed category," said Richard Medina, Co-Founder of LA Distribution.
"We're delighted by the enthusiasm Richard and his team have shown for this new category. We look forward to working with their sales and delivery teams to bring Hemplify to their extensive network of retail customers throughout LA and Orange County," said Jeff Maser, CEO of Tinley.
To place wholesale orders for Hemplify, please contact LA Distributing Company at (323) 838-0000 or [email protected], or visit www.ladistco.com.
About Hemplify, Inc. and The Tinley Beverage Company, Inc.
Hemplify, Inc. manufactures the "Hemplify" line of products. "Hemplify" is a line of fruit-flavored, sugar-free, vegan, drinkable supplements that contain hemp stalk extract. This extract contains terpenes and other phytoconstituents. Each product also contains 9-12x the potassium electrolyte content of major sports drinks, 200mg of Omega 3 and excellent sources of 9 vitamins, including 100% DV of Vitamin B12, C and D. Hemplify is produced with patented technology that elevates absorption into the bloodstream, ensures shelf stability and masks the hemp oil's taste to deliver delicious, refreshing flavors. The company is selling its products in California and in 5 other states, as well as online. Hemplify, Inc. (Santa Monica, California) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Tinley Beverage Company Inc. (Toronto, Canada). The Tinley Beverage Company has also developed a line of cannabis-infused beverages that it is working to launch in jurisdictions throughout North America where such products are permitted.
Forward-Looking Statements
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This press release contains or refers to forward-looking information, and is based on current expectations that involve a number of business risks and uncertainties. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from any forward-looking statement include, but are not limited to, delays in obtaining or failures to obtain required governmental, environmental or other project approvals, political risks, uncertainties relating to the availability and costs of financing needed in the future, changes in equity markets, inflation, changes in exchange rates, fluctuations in commodity prices, delays in the development of projects and the other risks involved in the mineral exploration and development industry. Forward-looking statements are subject to significant risks and uncertainties, and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from expected results. Readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date hereof and the Company assumes no responsibility to update them or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances other than as required by law.Donald Trump campaigned as a champion of the “forgotten man,” promising to make America great again with a focus on lunch-pail populism and steel mills. He accused both Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton of being “totally controlled” by Wall Street. And he cleverly leveraged Bernie Sanders’s primary campaign accusations that Clinton was too close to banks into weapons he himself could wield.
On the campaign trail, Trump alleged that “Hillary Clinton meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of US sovereignty,” and that the United States has merely “an illusion of democracy” but is “in fact controlled by a small handful of special global interests rigging the system.” In his campaign’s closing ad on the subject, Trump drove the point home by juxtaposing Clinton with pictures of various prominent Jewish financiers.
Then, having won the election, he set about installing an incredible array of financial industry insiders at high levels of policymaking. They’re setting a policy trajectory that’s a stunning reversal of both Trump’s campaign rhetoric and the broad track of American policymaking over the years.
After the crash of 2008, there was broad consensus that something had to be changed. The Obama administration, joined by a handful of Republicans, put together the Dodd-Frank act to overhaul financial regulation in the United States. Many critics on the left (and a few on the right) argued that the law didn’t go far enough and should have implemented hard caps on the size of financial institutions. Most Republicans rejected the law but embraced alternative theories of how regulation ought to be changed — in terms of stricter limits on bank borrowing, an end of government involvement in mortgage securitization, or some kind of effort to guarantee that there would be no government bailouts in the future.
They are all different theories aimed at a similar goal — to restrain banks from engaging in excessive risk-taking that endangered the economy.
Trump is, however, simply throwing all of that out the window in favor of the idea that what America needs is more rules written with input of the banks themselves and aimed at the goal of encouraging a return of risky lending. That’s likely to be great for bankers, bank shareholders, and maybe the odd wealthy real estate developer while doing nothing for Middle America or the middle class.
Trump’s Wall Street team
Trump’s set of policy advisers so far is drawn overwhelmingly from Wall Street. Even without formal new acts of Congress, an administration team that wants to do Wall Street’s bidding can easily get its way by simply encouraging regulatory agencies to turn a blind eye to enforcement.
Trump’s National Economic Council chief, Gary Cohn, comes to the White House directly from service as chief operating officer of Goldman Sachs. For leaving the investment bank to join the government, he received a massive $285 million bonus from Goldman. Trump’s Treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin, is a hedge fund manager who used to work at Goldman Sachs. The populist wing of Trump’s administration is represented by senior counselor Steve Bannon, who used to work at Goldman Sachs, and the moderate wing of his administration is represented by Trump’s daughter Ivanka, who tapped Goldman Sachs’s Dina Powell to serve as her policy adviser.
Then, on Friday, outside of a meeting with a new council of CEOs that includes JPMorgan chief executive Jamie Dimon, Trump proclaimed that “there’s nobody better to tell me about Dodd-Frank” — the big financial regulation overhaul passed in the wake of the crisis — “than Jamie.”
He proceeded to issue a vaguely worded executive order instructing his Treasury secretary to conduct a 120-day review of Dodd-Frank’s provisions and come up with proposals for things to scrap. It adds up to an administration that’s overwhelmingly likely to do the complete opposite of draining the swamp. Barack Obama’s financial regulatory apparatus almost certainly won’t be entirely thrown out the window, and it’s unlikely to be replaced by a sweeping new ideological vision. Instead, it will simply be implemented and overseen by and for the interests of the kind of wealthy business executives whose opinions Trump personally values.
As Trump himself explained while unveiling the order, “we expect to be cutting a lot out of Dodd-Frank.” To explain why, he referenced his rich friends. “I have so many people, friends of mine, with nice businesses, they can’t borrow money because the banks just won’t let them borrow, because of the rules and regulations and Dodd-Frank.”
As Larry Summers, former Treasury secretary and National Economic Council chair, put it, this is more like grousing from “an East Hampton cocktail party than a serious policy discussion.” But of course, Trump has a lot more experience with society parties than with serious policy discussions.
Bank deregulation without principles
Throughout the Obama era, conservative opposition to the post-crisis regulatory landscape took two broad flavors.
The basic premise of both the Federal Reserve and the White House was that, faced with financial crisis, the government had no choice but to intervene to rescue the system. Given that reality, a responsible government has an obligation to try to regulate the system in order to avoid the need for bailouts.
One strand of opposition to Obama’s regulatory efforts, personified by House Financial Services Committee Chair Jeb Hensarling, basically rejects this premise. This strand’s view is that a drastically simplified regulatory framework — perhaps including a crude limit on bank borrowing and not much else — would be fine, and what the federal government really needs to do is tie itself more strongly to the mast of free markets and no bailouts.
The other strand of opposition, reflected in industry, is simply that the industry would prefer not to be regulated. Bankers feel that if American banks weren’t regulated so much, they could do business more aggressively, which would be good. Trump’s choice of the COO of one giant bank as his top economic policy adviser and citation of the CEO of another giant bank as a leading authority on smart regulatory policy is a good sign of where he stands on this. His anecdote explaining that some of his rich friends are being told regulation is the reason they can’t get loans is, in its way, even more telling. Statistically speaking, there is more bank lending today than ever before. But it’s certainly true that if regulators allowed banks to engage in riskier behavior, some new risky bets could get made.
The downside, of course, would be a much more fragile economy.
Trump is laying the groundwork for the next financial crisis
It’s noteworthy that Cohn, whom Trump is relying on for advice, was Goldman’s COO, a practical businessman whose job was to work to make the bank more profitable. Goldman Sachs also has a division dedicated to conducting big-picture analysis of the global economy. That research division is headed by Jan Hatzius, whose views of Trump’s economic policies are worth paying attention to.
Goldman’s analysis of the Trump economy is a balance between the idea that Trump will deliver a short-term boost to growth thanks to fiscal stimulus and the concern that Trump will hurt the economy with chaos and trade wars.
That Trump’s team of former Goldmanites will unleash prosperity by deregulating Goldman Sachs doesn’t strike Goldman’s economic analysts as plausible. In part, that’s simply because with the unemployment rate already low and the Federal Reserve already in the process of raising interest rates, there’s no room for this to work.
Indeed, Cohn himself, speaking to the Wall Street Journal last week about his deregulatory agenda, said the United States has “the best, most highly capitalized banks in the world, and we should use that to our competitive advantage.”
Weaker regulation, in other words, will let US-based banks gain more global market share relative to European or Japanese competitors. That’s great if you happen to be a bank shareholder or a bank executive, or have a yearly bonus pegged to bank share prices. But it has nothing to do with creating job opportunities for the long-term unemployed or increasing middle-class wages.
There’s no great mystery as to how regulatory policy shaped primarily by the business interests of major banks ends — big profits, big bonuses, and eventually a big crash and a big bailout. But the genius of bank regulation as a policy area is that no matter how badly you screw it up, the odds are that on any given day, there won’t be a financial crisis anyway.
A poorly supervised financial system can pile on egregious hidden risks for fun and profit and suffer no obvious bad consequences for years. If it happens to blow up in an election year, of course, you’re screwed. But while dramatic moves on immigration, health care, and budget policy are sure to provoke immediate blowback, on bank regulation, it’s entirely plausible that Trump will sow the seeds of destruction and nobody will notice until reelection is in the rearview mirror.A free health-care program in an impoverished part of the world sounds like a welcome development. But the “Physicals for All” project in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is not what it seems, according to a Human Rights Watch report published today.
Starting in 2016 and running annually from July through November, the project, though operated by health departments, is actually used by police to collect citizens’ DNA samples and blood types. This year, the program gathered such data on over 18 million residents in the region.
In recent years Chinese authorities have struggled to maintain control in the politically restive region, which is home to 10 million Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities. Other measures have included bans on veils, “abnormal” beards, and religious activities in schools, plus a requirement to provide a DNA sample to get a passport. In one part of the region, authorities required that all vehicles have a GPS system for government tracking—or be denied service at gas stations.
The Physicals for All program stands out for the way it’s been characterized as a free benefit for a poor region, and important to stable development (link in Chinese). ”What’s transmitted to the public via media and social media do not mention DNA collection in Physicals for All,” wrote HRW researcher Maya Wang in an email to Quartz.
HRW points to government guidelines (link in Chinese) on “population verification” that include instructions on offering medical checkups like Physicals for All. They state health workers should collect accurate data on anyone between the ages of 12 and 65. There is no age range, however, for individuals deemed dangerous by authorities, in which case any immediate family members should be also be given the physicals.
Although Physicals for All is touted as a voluntary program (link in Chinese), some residents told HRW that that wasn’t the case. One Uighur said his neighborhood committee demanded participation, warning that any absence would be considered “political disloyalty.” He added he had not received the results of his physical.
In recent years, China has been stepping up efforts nationwide to collect personal information—including intimate relationships, delivery records, and biometric data—from not only people it considers potential threats, but normal citizens as well. Government databases now include such data on tens of millions of citizens, among them Uyghurs, migrant workers, and college students.At least 13 staffers (out of a total of 170) have been laid off by Headspace, the app-based mindfulness startup headquartered in Los Angeles.
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The layoffs came earlier this month amid a department reshuffling that has left employees feeling stressed out, sources tell Fast Company. The app, which offers users guided meditations and mindfulness exercises, has been considered one of the most successful companies in its space, with Forbes recently estimating that Headspace was valued at more than $250 million. But two people with direct knowledge of the situation, as well as recent Glassdoor employer reviews, paint a more muddied picture of the meditation technology startup and its internal company culture. The job cuts came right as the company launched the redesigned version of its app this month. CEO Richard Pierson, who took over the company in March, confirmed the layoffs, telling Fast Company that 13 positions have been cut from the company’s marketing department, with further restructuring planned for the London team. Headspace also confirms that the customer experience team is being moved to the product side in a “strategic organizational shift.” As part of that effort, the company announced earlier today that it has hired former Twitter VP Ross Hoffman as its new chief business officer. Pulling Back On Marketing Pierson says the layoffs were part of a shift away from having an in-house brand agency, which the company had been building in recent years. “We don’t need to invest in the brand that way,” he says now, adding that the company had put together a robust team as part of that investment in advertising. It’s not unusual for app startups to invest heavily in marketing as they pursue user growth, and Headspace appears to be no exception. Last year, the company began testing expensive ad pushes specifically targeting New Yorkers–including pricey subway advertisements. Pierson says Headspace’s efforts in New York were a marketing “test” which cost about $2 million, and added that the company has no plans for a big marketing push to accompany its most recent app relaunch.
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Pierson insists that, though the company’s advertising efforts and marketing department hiring spree were a “strategic misstep,” Headspace is still doing well and claims the company has been growing healthily for the past year. In an emailed statement, the company says it feels strategically sound: “We feel very confident around our product and growth strategy, it’s not something we divulge in public settings–but our board and investors are very happy with where we’re taking the company strategically.” A Competitive Relaxation Industry Headspace was founded in 2010 as a meditation event business run by cofounders Pierson, a former marketing executive whose clients included body-spray purveyor Axe, and Andy Puddicombe, a Buddhist monk. In those initial years, the company morphed into the popular meditation app it is today. For the first few years Pierson worked as CEO. Then, in 2014, Sean Brecker took on the executive role as the business began to really grow, raising $30 million in a Series A round in 2015. Overall, Headspace has reportedly seen over 11 million downloads [Update: a company spokesperson reached out to say the company has logged 15.8 million downloads to date]—and it has hovered between the 9th or 10th position in U.S. Health & Fitness app download ranks since last November, according to AppAnnie. Earlier this year, Brecker decided to move to the CFO role–and Pierson took over again as CEO amid what seems to have been a challenging time for the startup. For one thing, competition from others in the space was heating up—rival meditation app Calm surpassed Headspace in app downloads earlier this year, according to one source, who called that moment “a wake-up” for the company. For his part, however, Pierson says he was not aware that Calm had outpaced Headspace in download ranks, and questions the validity of that claim. SimilarWeb’s algorithmic “usage rank,” which ranks apps by taking into account downloads and active users, put Calm far ahead of Headspace for at least the last month–Calm’s health and fitness app usage has ranked between 67 and 75, whereas Headspace has wavered between 83 and 92. AppAnnie’s rankings also show Calm in the lead–it hovered around the number four and five spot for health and fitness download ranks compared to Headspace, which oscillated between nine and 10. Cultural Woes? Under Brecker’s leadership, employee satisfaction was relatively high and many staffers applauded Headspace’s open and communicative work culture, according to sources and Glassdoor reviews. The company hosted weekly all-hands meetings during which any question was fair game. “Everyone was so opinionated in a good way,” says one source, describing the work atmosphere under Brecker.
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But lately, those meetings have taken on a different tenor. “When Rich took over, it would be crickets,” says one source, describing the all-hands meeting environments. The atmosphere feels more confrontational and less open, according to sources. Comments on employer review site Glassdoor echo those sentiments. “For a company with a mission to improve the health and happiness of the world, we are not at all trying to improve the health and happiness of our world internally,” writes one reviewer. “You can’t cross the management. If you disagree or ask the wrong question, you will have a target on your forehead.” Another Glassdoor post from earlier this week is headlined “Trainwreck.” In fact, of the 40 reviews of Headspace on Glassdoor, the bulk of the negative ones were written in the last few months. When asked about the shifting cultural atmosphere, Pierson notes that he’s been at the company since the beginning: “it’s not like I stepped in out of nowhere.” Anonymous reviews, he points out, may be from disgruntled fired employees. Pierson also claims that Headspace consistently takes great pains to foster a communicative culture. “We do as much as we can to have everyone have their voices heard,” he says, pointing to the weekly all-hands meetings, as well as anonymous surveys the company provides. “We take employee feedback really seriously.” “I don’t think that any company or any culture gets it 100% right all the time,” adds the CEO.
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Despite the layoffs, it’s clear employees still care about the product and mission. And Pierson doesn’t shy away from taking responsibility for the firings, adding that he regrets overhiring in the marketing department. The layoffs, according to him, had little to do with the individual people or their performance. “It’s on me,” says Pierson matter-of-factly. “I made that call.”Willie Taggart is off to a scorching recruiting start at Oregon, as Barton Simmons noted in Tuesday's Cover 3 column.
The Ducks' 2018 class currently ranks sixth nationally and first in the Pac-12 with 13 commitments, eight of whom are four-star prospects. It’s an impressive effort by Taggart, especially when taken with his finish to the 2017 cycle when he helped Oregon to a Top 20 class despite arriving in December.
Oregon is currently on pace for a Top 10 class, which it has never done in the history of the 247Sports Composite rankings.
But arguably the most interesting thing about Taggart’s recruiting success is where he’s doing it – specifically on the East Coast.
Mainstay recruiting territories like California and Oregon represent a large portion of the Ducks' commits, but four of the team's 11 verbal pledges hail from east of the Mississippi River.
Specifically, the Ducks have three commitments from Florida.
It’s not surprising to see Taggart have success in the Sunshine State. Oregon hired him away from South Florida, after all. But it's telling that commits are willing to take a seven-hour flight (if you’re leaving from Orlando) to attend the school, let alone visit it.
These are pre-established relationships paying off for Taggart.
“(Distance is) nothing major,” four-star cornerback Isaiah Bolden told 247Sports. “Coach Taggart and I are so close.”
Along with Bolden, Oregon holds verbal pledges from four-star wide receiver Warren Thompson and three-star defensive end Jonathan King out of Florida. Each of them had offers to stay at home – or even in the same region – but Bolden said his fellow Floridians chose the Ducks for an important reason.
“The football family be different under Coach Taggart,” Bolden said. “It’s building something special and putting Oregon back on the map.”
Still, it’s one thing to be committed to a school in June and another to sign in February (or December).
But in his effort to sign these East Coast studs, Taggart has a few advantages. First, some of his relationships with these players date back years. Second, and probably more important, prospects from Florida are often more willing to leave home than any other battleground state. In the 2017 class, for example, only seven of Florida’s Top 25 prospects opted to stay in the Sunshine State for college – though several of those players attended IMG and weren’t Florida natives, which slightly skews the numbers.
“There’s so many of (players) and everyone recruits the crap out of it,” 247Sports Director of Scouting Steve Wiltfong said. “There are so many SEC programs that are near Florida where their families can come see them play. … Kids are being discovered in that state earlier and relationships are being formed earlier. It’s helping out-of-state programs pluck the in-state kids, where, back in the day, the process didn’t start until they were seniors and in-state schools had a big advantage.
“For Willie Taggart, in particular, it’s impressive. He has a proven product people saw in-state and he had the opportunity to go to Oregon, and the other side of the country is enticing to some. We’ll see if he keeps these guys.”
Oregon must do most of its recruiting work on the West Coast in order to thrive. Distance simply dictates that. But under Taggart, the Ducks can certainly supplement their classes with East Coast talent.
Bolden, at least, thinks Oregon can keep it up in Florida.
When asked how many kids the Ducks will sign from the Sunshine State this cycle, he said, “solid six.” Bolden wants to turn Eugene into a bit of a Northwest Florida. So, considering Taggart’s ability to pull kids in from both east and west, where will this 2018 Oregon recruiting class finish?
“Easy Top 10,” Bolden said.
If that's the case, the Ducks will have Taggart’s Florida relationships to thank for its record-setting group.BOSTON — Edward Snowden talked live via satellite with OpenStack COO Mark Collier about why open source matters, his toolkit and how fear has become the most common political value. Here’s the complete 25-minute Q&A that closed out the day-two keynote of the Summit Boston. You can also catch the video here.
There are thousands of people here from the OpenStack community, building the cloud in over 60 countries. What’s your take on cloud computing and what does that mean from your point of view?
SNOWDEN: There’s a lot of different ways to look at it. In the abstract sense – what does the ordinary user think about cloud, what does it mean for them? Cloud means Google apps, Gmail — they’ve got their stuff on someone else’s computer.
On the other hand we have what you guys do, the IAAS layer which is increasingly becoming the bones of the internet, the thing that we build on. One of the most dangerous things we can see happen in this space — one of the things that you guys do best — is help people who are in a place to make the decisions make them in a considered way. For most people, the internet is kind of magic. It just happens. They look at it on their smartphones, their Facebook app is the internet, but that’s not enough.
What OpenStack does is make you lose that inherent silent vulnerability
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is a must: it’s absence to date is the biggest barrier to meaningful and enduring political action.
The reasons are diverse. Foremost in the democratic nations is the divisive nature of the debate, a crucial issue when those divisions are ideological. Scientists, pundits and activists alike may desire more public support based on scientific evidence, but it seems clear that such evidence doesn’t impinge much on the broader public discourse, one way or another.
After all, as I pointed out recently, we’ve had a literal mountain of reports delivered to our doors – well, screens – all free, all staggeringly comprehensive in both scope and weight, and all from authoritative sources as diverse as the Royal Society, the IPCC, the AAAS and the Pentagon. Such diversity precludes the kind of foolish dismissal the denial community indulges in – their projection that climate change science is coloured by ideological intentions, when denial is founded on nothing else but. (They sure as hell don’t have any science, but as we shall see, they don’t appear to need any).
The mountainous reports may have some influence at institutional levels, but in the public domain I fear that they gain little lasting traction. As the Huffington Post reported recently, “According to the National Science Foundation’s recently released Science and Engineering Indicators 2014, 80% of Americans do not understand what it means to study something scientifically”. Without an understanding of how science works, the public are unlikely to be swayed by its discoveries, beyond a mild frisson over the morning’s first cup of coffee. (Gosh! Ice in that cold place up north is melting, it says here…pass the toast…can’t believe how crap Manchester United are this season…).
Another indicator is the August 2013 poll by The Carbon Brief. They discovered that the much-vaunted ‘hiatus’ in surface warming – an extremely hot topic among those invested in the subject, if you’ll forgive the pun – hadn’t really affected public opinion much at all.
“The story that climate change has stopped over the last 16 years was recalled by just one in 20 people: less than a quarter of the number who thought they recalled a made-up story about China announcing it won’t limit its emissions…Despite the media coverage of the supposed pause, there’s been no significant change in the numbers who think climate change requires action now, and the numbers who don’t”.
So much for the scientific evidence – no matter which way it’s spun. If neither the science nor the activism (on either side of the debate) has much impact on the public at large, what does?
Bridging the Generation Gap
The answer is the weather. As I wrote recently, we believe what we can see out of the window. Farmers in the mid-west believe the fields of parched crops. Arizona and California believe the fires that are starting way to early, and getting way too fierce for the time of year. Britain believes the mopping up needed after the heaviest regional winter rainfall in 248 years. While Scandinavian bears have been waking up early from their annual hibernation because temperatures are unseasonably warm, and Norway experienced ‘freakish’ January wildfires, Australia is recovering from record heatwaves.
These incidents are not isolated: the UK’s Guardian reported last year that “Portugal, China, Hungary, Finland, and Britain, all recorded heatwaves, and the temperature in Death Valley, California hit 129.2F (54.0C), the hottest temperature ever recorded on Earth during June. Meanwhile, Shanghai had 24 days with temperatures at or above 35C in July and recorded 40.6C, the highest ever temperature recorded in 140 years of records in the city”.
In fact, as executive secretary of the UN climate secretariat Christina Figueres pointed out in a recent Guardian interview, extreme weather events should no longer be dismissed as one-offs:
“If you take them individually you can say maybe it’s a fluke. The problem is it’s not a fluke and you can’t take them individually. What it’s doing is giving us a pattern of abnormality that’s becoming the norm.”
In a perfect world, perhaps the number of incidents and their frequency might be enough to convince the public that we need to do something about climate change. But as Adam Corner wrote in the Guardian, the recent UK floods did little to catalyse public opinion about climate change mitigation.
“The problem – as ever with the highly polarised issue of climate change – is that the “evidence” of extreme weather can be interpreted in multiple, competing ways”, writes Corner. “Floods have happened before, and will happen again. While the argument that they are made more likely and more severe by climate change is simple enough, it is also vulnerable to sceptical attacks because no single extreme weather event can be conclusively linked to climate change”.
It is understandable that vague, long-term issues – potential threats in the future – don’t impact on us with the immediacy of water coming under the door, fire rushing towards a house, people fainting in the street from heat exhaustion or a field full of dying crops. But when these events take place only occasionally, it is easy to dismiss them, despite the warnings from science that these are exactly the kind of events we’re going to see more of.
Until quite recently, we had to look to history for the frequency of extreme weather, just as we did for more profound changes. It was easy to dismiss extreme weather events as being part of ‘natural variability’. We can read about some old Inuit elder complaining that he’s never seen conditions like last year’s ‘since I was a boy’, but the anecdotal nature of the message is hardly compelling.
What will be more compelling – very much so – is when the changes, the extremes, the instabilities, are no longer inter-generational. The speed at which the climate is destabilising away from the patterns we’ve enjoyed for thousands of years is taking climate science by surprise. In the coming decades, the frequency of extreme events is likely to increase to the point that history is being re-written within the scope of perhaps a couple of generations, maybe even just one.
When we no longer need to read the journals of those long gone to determine the last time the North-West passage was open because the last time was six years ago, that the last dust bowl was during the Great Depression instead of the last decade – that’s when public opinion will change. It will not be science, nor ideology that brings home the reality of the danger we’re in. It will be the simple act by the next generation, doing nothing more scientific than looking out the window, because the danger will no longer be a future threat, but one that’s arrived, one that a single generation can remember all too clearly.
That too is when the demagoguery will have to stop (although stopping now might be a good idea, frankly), because it will no longer be credible to argue that ‘we’ve always had extremes of weather’ – not when the personal experience of a single generation tells us that these extremes are no longer isolated events, and that the climate is now so unstable we can witness the effects and the frequency of them within a single lifetime.
Climate change is here, now. My generation may not believe it: the next generation will have to.
Epilogue
It occurred to me after writing this article that it could be construed as fatalistic; no point in doing anything until such time as the excrement and the fan are in such close proximity, nobody could take climate change denial seriously any more. It is a terrible thing to admit that we have to wait until so much damage is done before we take things seriously – akin to waiting until the entire ground floor of a house in on fire before calling the emergency services, instead of just putting out that pan fire – but the damage is already being done, so there’s no turning back now. The question is this: how much damage do we have to suffer, how much irrevocable destabilisation does it take to convince the complacent, the bored, the disinterested, the ideologues and vested interests?
If there is a purpose to activism right now, it is to bring forward the date when we wake from this environmental nightmare. There will be damage, there will be victims, there will be terrible costs inflicted, much of it on those least able to afford them, but the task at hand now is to wake the world from its dangerous sleepwalk as soon as we can.
Advertisements"And neither of you have ever done this before?" Ruby asked incredulously as she walked in between her girlfriends.
"City girl, remember?" Blake replied wryly.
Pyrrha shook her head as well, her long red ponytail swaying behind her. "I did not have the time for such things when I was growing up."
The brunette let out a long-suffering sigh as she wrapped her arms around each girl's waist, drawing them in close. "My girlfriends are so deprived," she stated sadly.
"And that is why we have you, little rose," Pyrrha giggled. "To educate us in such matters."
"Among other things," Blake added sotto voce. Ruby giggled as well at that and leaned over to plant a quick kiss on the raven-haired girl's cheek.
They were heading down towards the waterfront of Mistral, the only side of the city not bordered by swampland. As they approached, each of them let out a sigh of relief at the cooler breeze coming in off of the ocean.
"Wow, Pyrrha, why don't your parents live over this way?" Ruby asked curiously. "It's so much nicer!"
"Because most Mistralians have the same idea," the redhead laughed lightly. "You would not believe the real estate prices down this way."
The trio paused at the docs, searching along the wooden and concrete pathways for a certain vendor that Ruby had insisted would be present.
"Found one!" the brunette chirped, her sniper eyes quickly spying her target on the far end.
The three of them set off once more. All were clad in shorts and tank tops, much to Ruby's delight, as she'd take any excuse to see more of her girlfriend's skin.
Not that she was staring, or anything.
"You're ogling," Blake murmured.
Orrr maybe she was.
"Can you blame me, though?" the brunette protested. "I've got the hottest girls in all of Remnant on my arms!"
"Well, I certainly feel the same way," Pyrrha laughed.
"Mmm," Blake agreed. "Still, we are in public."
"And I'm keeping my ogling perfectly respectful," Ruby proclaimed loftily. "Nobody knows what's going on inside my head."
"We know," the other two answered in unison.
"Can't prove a thing," the brunette snickered as they walked up to the umbrella-covered cart. It had a cooler attached to it, but more important were the buckets of fishing poles sitting on the ground.
"Hi there!" Ruby chirped cheerfully. "We'd like to rent three poles, and buy some bait as well, please!"
"Sure thing," the vendor, a gray-haired young man with furry koala ears on top of his head replied. He paused, though, upon seeing Pyrrha. The two of them stared at each other for a brief instant before smiles grew on their faces.
"Oh my Oum, Pyrrha!"
"Krebbs! My goodness, it's been years!"
The taller redhead gave the thin boy a quick hug before stepping back and turning to her girlfriends with an excited gleam in her emerald eyes.
"Girls, this is Krebbs Cinereal, my childhood friend from before Sanctum. Krebbs, these are my girlfriends, Ruby Rose and Blake Belladonna."
"Girlfriends?" the Koala Faunus laughed merrily. "Damn, Pyrrha, you've certainly come a long way!"
The redhead blushed lightly, though she couldn't keep a grin off of her face. "Yes, well… I am certainly more happy than I've ever been, that is for certain."
Krebbs nodded towards the other girls amicably. He suddenly perked up a bit as a breeze blew in from behind the three of them.
"Well, well," he grinned at the Cat Faunus. "And Mated, as well?"
Now it was the raven-haired girl's turn to blush brightly. "Er, not quite," she murmured. "We're, well… That is, it's in the early stages still."
"Ahh, gotcha." He gave Pyrrha a wink. "You're a lucky girl to be sharing a scent with such beautiful women!"
"We like to think so," Ruby replied with a wide smile as she gave the redhead a one-armed hug.
"Right! So you ladies wanna do some fishing!" Krebbs clapped his hands together. "Beginners?"
"They are," the brunette stated, inclining her red-tipped head. "But I've done this before."
"Excellent, then I'll just let you do your thing. One regular pole and two novice ones, three sets of bait…"
The grey-haired boy pulled their items together and accepted Ruby's lien before waving them off merrily.
"Just bring them back whenever you can!" he called out as they headed down one of the docks. "I'm here till sundown!"
"Thank you Krebbs!" Pyrrha called back with a wave.
"So," Ruby murmured. "Guess it's that obvious we share products now, huh?"
Blake nodded happily. "Told you it would be for another Faunus." She eyed the two of them. "And you're both still okay with that, right?"
"You kidding me?" the brunette exclaimed. "That was such a cool feeling, like, he just caught a sniff and was all, 'oh you three are bonded together'! That was awesome!"
Pyrrha giggled quietly. "Well, I would not say I had quite the same reaction… But yes, it was quite pleasant to have our relationship acknowledged in such a fashion, even if I had already informed him of such."
The Cat Faunus sighed contentedly and wrapped her arms around the two of them. "I love you both so much."
"And I love the both of you as well," Pyrrha smiled.
"Ditto," Ruby added with a smirk. "And you still gotta tell us about this whole Mating thing, you know."
"When you're ready," Pyrrha quickly interjected.
"Oh, for sure," Ruby hastened to agree. "No pressure or anything."
The raven-haired girl smiled once more and nodded. "I will, someday soon. There's no rush, though."
"Nope," Ruby replied. "We're not going anywhere."
They ended up at the edge of the pier, which was thankfully unoccupied. Several other jetties had some people also fishing, but the three of them could enjoy the solitude.
"Okay, so lemme give you guys a few pointers," Ruby began, laying the poles out. "This one is mine, it's a little more of a complicated spincaster, so don't worry about it for right now…"
The petite brunette proceeded to show the other two how to properly bait their hooks and cast out into the water. They practiced a few times before all three of them were sitting on the side of the dock, bare feet dangling out over the edge and with their poles in hand. Silver, amber, and green eyes stared out at the bobbing floats.
"This is quite relaxing," Pyrrha murmured, resting her head atop Blake's.
"Mmm."
"Yeah, wish we had some decent chairs," Ruby mused. "But this is nice." She leaned over as well and laid her head on the raven-haired girl's shoulder.
The three of them sat in silence for another ten minutes or so, just enjoying the weather, the peace, and each other.
Until Pyrrha's line began to jerk.
"Oh!" the redhead exclaimed. "Oh oh oh! What do I do?"
"Reel it in!" Ruby replied excitedly. She and Blake put their poles down, securing them into helpful iron rings there for just that purpose, as they stood up on either side of Pyrrha. The Mistralian native was bouncing on her toes, eagerly retracting the line.
Soon enough a small, wiggling fish came into view.
"Okay, bring it this way… Yep, just like that…" The brunette reached out and grabbed hold of the catch, slipping it off of the hook and dropping it to the pier behind them. "Congrats, fluffy fox! You…"
She trailed off as she watched Blake hurl herself forward to pounce on the frantic fish. It shot out from under her and back into the water.
Pyrrha and Ruby just stared at their girlfriend, open-mouthed, as she slowly turned to face them. Her face was bright crimson with mortification as she wrung her hands together.
"I'm so sorry, Pyrrha," Blake whispered, her bottom lip trembling. "I just… I just couldn't help myself…"
Ruby cleared her throat. "Um… kitty cat… What exactly were you trying to do?"
"I don't know!" the Cat Faunus wailed quietly. Tears were now welling up in her amber orbs. "I didn't mean to! It was just there, and I couldn't help it! It was worse than a Dust-damned laser pointer!"
Pyrrha chuckled lightly and crouched down to enfold her distraught girlfriend in a warm hug. "It's quite alright, love, not like we wouldn't have returned it back to the water anyway, right?"
"But that's not the point!" Blake sniffled. "It was your catch!"
Ruby sighed as she squatted next to Blake as well, rubbing her back gently. "And she already forgave you, sweetie. What's really bothering you?"
The raven-haired girl was silent for another heartbeat before she spoke up again, her words barely audible. "I'm not just some animal, slave to her base instincts."
"No, you are not," Pyrrha reassured her gently. "You are our girlfriend and lover who we absolutely adore for all that you are."
"And this is part of you, kitty cat," Ruby added. "We love and accept every part of you. Okay?"
"Okay," Blake replied in a small, sheepish voice. "I'll try better next time."
"You don't have to do that," Pyrrha laughed, helping the Cat Faunus to her feet. "If you want to pounce, then pounce!"
Blake nodded slowly, her hands reaching up to adjust her bow. "It's just… difficult. Going against every hard-earned lesson to… not be myself."
"But with us, you can," Ruby smiled gently.
She nodded once more, wiping her cheeks with the back of her hand. A small smile crept across her face. "Shall we return to our fishing?"
"Yes, let's," the redhead replied warmly.
They placed new bait on Pyrrha's hook, and before long had returned to their original positions. Ruby snuck a glance up at her Faunus lover, noting that her face had once again attained some measure of peace.
A little part of the brunette was irrationally angry that someone with so much potential for being a free spirit had spent most of her life chained within the constraints of society's prejudices. Blake was beautiful in her eyes no matter what, but when she could be herself, be openly Faunus, she really shone like a brilliant star.
Right then and there, it was suddenly cemented in Ruby's mind that she was truly going to spend the rest of her life with these two girls. They hadn't really discussed the far future very much, but she knew that what the three of them had together - Blake's freedom, Pyrrha's cheer, her own confidence - was far stronger for the bond they shared. And she was willing to defend that bond, their love, with every fiber of her being.
For now, though, she was content to smile softly and nuzzle Blake's shoulder. "I love you guys."
"Love you too, little rose," Blake murmured, turning slightly to place a kiss on the crown of her head. Pyrrha reached her arm around and hugged the two of them in close.
"I love you both so very much," the redhead whispered gratefully. "Thank you again for being here with me."
"Pyrrha," the brunette smiled. "There's no place on Remnant I'd rather be than by your sides."
"Mmm," Blake agreed, with a good deal of her own gratitude.
Yeah, Ruby thought to herself warmly. I'm not going anywhere. Ever.
A/N: I often enjoy sticking little easter eggs inside my stories to see who picks up on them. However, this one took me so long (because for the life of me I couldn't remember the right movie) that I'm just gonna give it to you. Krebbs was the koala in the 1990 animated Disney film Rescuers Down Under. Ahh, the classics.
One more Mistral chapter with the Purruby girls, and then we'll check in with Freezerburn over in Atlas!
Fluffy Cat Faunus snuggles for my lovely reviewers: THB4, DschingisKhan, Jack Inqu, ILikeHotDogs, Throthgar's bane, Gorsouul, kaiju62, Reaper Whisper, ExKage, Boombox94, SamuraiShippo, allie300093, joltflier, MakaS0ul, Marauderby. May your day be free from laser pointers.
Stay shiny!What do George Osborne, Jeremy Corbyn and Ed Miliband have in common? A liking for a soft Brexit, it turns out.
But while Osborne is responding to the border lockdown instinct of some Tory Brexiteers, the former Labour leader, along with Chuka Umunna, Lisa Nandy and Rachel Reeves, has to start by making the case to fight for Brexit at all.
And that’s before you get to the thorny and emotional question of freedom of movement.
Speaking at a Resolution Foundation fringe event, Miliband ridiculed calls to be the “party of the 48 per cent”, in reference to the proportion who voted to stay in the EU referendum.
Remain voters should stop thinking Brexit was a “nasty accident” and start fighting for a good deal, he urged.
Miliband said: “I see talk saying we should become the party of the 48 per cent. That is nonsense.
"I don’t just think it is nonsense electorally, but it is nonsense in policy because it buys into the same problem people were objecting to in their vote which is the old ‘I’m right, you’re wrong’”.
Remain voters shared many of the same concerns as Leave voters, including on immigration, he said.
Miliband praised the re-elected Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s comments that a hard Brexit would be a disaster. He said: “We have to engage in these negotiations.”
Although he said he “anticipated” staying on the back benches, he did not rule out a return to the shadow cabinet, and urged the party to use its newly recruited member, many of whom joined under Corbyn.
Miliband was backed up by Nandy, seen as a rising star of the party, who said there was longterm dissatisfaction with jobs and wages: “You throw freedom of movement into the mix and you create dynamite.”
She also called for Labour to throw itself into Brexit negotiations: “We have been stuck between two impossible choices, between pulling up the drawbridge or some version of free market hell.
“But the truth is we are a progressive, internationalist, socialist party and we can’t afford to make that false choice.”
Reeves, who wrote in The Staggers that freedom of movement should be a “red line” in Brexit negotiations, said: “I don’t buy this idea that people who voted Leave have changed their minds.”
And she dismissed the idea of a second referendum on the eventual deal: “If people voted against the deal, then what?”
But while the speakers received warm applause from the party member audience, they were also heckled by an EU national who felt utterly betrayed. Her interruption received applause too.
Umunna acknowledged the tensions in the room, opening and ending his speech with a plea for members not to leave the party.
Having called identity politics "the elephant in the room", he declared: “We have got to stay in this party and not go anywhere. It is not just because you don’t win an argument by leaving the room, it is because we are the only nationwide party with representatives in every region and nation of this country. We are the only party representing every age and ethnic community.
“Stay in this party and let us build a more integrated Britain.”By: David DeLuca
As a result of President Obama’s recent historic visit this past April, U.S. athletes can now travel to Cuba to participate in approved participatory sporting events. As a result, Spartan Race is happy to introduce a groundbreaking Spartan event: the first-ever Reebok Spartan Race in Cuba.
This exclusive event, limited to only 1,000 people will be an extraordinary package deal. Early registrants will receive transportation, entry to a special cultural celebration, and, of course, the opportunity to make Spartan history on the first Cuban race course! The race is scheduled for early 2017. (Final date subject to government approval.)
Remember: We can only take 1,000. Pre-register now, before it’s too late.
What you’ll encounter:
Music everywhere. Literally, everywhere. Get ready to dance.
Literally, everywhere. Get ready to dance. Beautiful architecture. Visit Old Havana, one of the most beautiful and culturally significant architectural destinations in the western hemisphere.
Visit Old Havana, one of the most beautiful and culturally significant architectural destinations in the western hemisphere. Tons of old-school cars. Due to the trade embargo with the U.S., Cubans had to keep American cars from the 1950s running for the past six decades. Let’s just say they have character.
About Cuba
The Islands. Cuba—the Republic of Cuba, to be exact—consists of the island of Cuba, the island of Juventud and other surrounding groups of smaller islands at the meeting point of the Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean Sea, and the Gulf of Mexico. Its capital and largest city is Havana.
Culture. The cultures of the Taíno and Ciboney peoples, Spanish colonialism, the African slave trade, and Cuba’s close relations with the Soviet Union in the 20th Century have combined inCuba to form a cultural melting pot. In Cuba one finds fusion everywhere: in the music, the food, and in the people.
People. More than 11 million people inhabit Cuba. Their ancestry is a mix of Spanish, Canarian, Catalan, Andalusian, Galician, Asturian, African, Haitian, Jamaican, French, Portuguese, Italian, German, Russian, Chinese, Filipino, Lebanese and Jewish.
Music. Cuba is known as the birthplace of Son music, a blend of Spanish and African music celebrated around the world. Have you heard of Gloria Estefan? Celia Cruz? Buena Vista Social Club? All hail from Cuba.
Food. Cuban cuisine is a fusion of Spanish and Caribbean. If you’re eating a “Cuban” meal, you can expect plantains black beans and rice, ropa vieja (shredded beef), Cuban bread, pork with onions, and tropical fruits.
Remember: We can only take 1,000. Pre-register now, before it’s too late.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption How is Greece faring under its international obligations?
Workers in Greece are holding a 24-hour general strike over continuing cuts as international lenders decide whether to unlock further bailout money.
Flights and other transport are being disrupted by action in both the public and private sectors, and schools and hospitals are also affected.
But torrential rain in Athens has limited public protests, with both main unions cancelling their rallies.
Greece has held more than 30 general strikes since early 2010.
Unemployment stands at nearly 28% after massive public sector cuts and tax rises to reduce its fiscal deficit.
Greece has been granted two bailouts totalling about 240bn euros (£202bn; $323bn) to help cover holes in its financing, and there is speculation it will need a third package of at least 11bn euros next year.
Image caption Ferries remained moored in the port of Piraeus, near Athens.
Image caption Suburban railway stations shut down.
Image caption Trade union posters urged support for the strike in Athens.
Image caption There were angry scenes in front of the finance ministry on Tuesday when troika auditors visited.
At issue just now is the latest instalment from the second bailout, worth 1bn euros. The payment must be approved by the troika of lenders: the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
The troika says there is a budget gap of 2.5bn euros for next year that may require more austerity but the government argues the country cannot take any more.
Greece has predicted that it will emerge from its six-year long recession next year, in a sign it may be finally recovering from its debt crisis.
However, recovery for Europe's sick man remains a slow and painful process that could yet take years to achieve, the BBC's Mark Lowen reports from Athens.
Two separate protest marches to parliament in Athens were called off due to bad weather.
But smaller groups of mainly Communist Party supporters still braved the driving rain, according to reports.
Meanwhile thousands of people marched in Greece's second city Thessaloniki.
Ferry, rail and some air services are still being disrupted by Wednesday's action. Air traffic controllers have stopped work for several hours.
"Workers, pensioners and the unemployed are going through an endless nightmare," port workers said in a statement.
"The government and the troika are destroying this country."
The public sector union Adedy said in a statement: "United we can stop them, we can topple them."
When troika auditors arrived at the finance ministry in Athens on Tuesday, a protester flung coins at its leader, Poul Thomsen. The attacker was arrested but reportedly later released.(CNN) Zika-infected mosquitoes aren't just causing medical problems, they're creating a theological conundrum for the Roman Catholic Church, according to priests and other experts.
The church has long forbidden nearly every form of birth control, but health officials in some Latin American countries have advised women not to get pregnant, because the virus has been linked to an incurable and often devastating neurological birth defect.
"I've never seen this advice before, and when you hear it, you think, 'What are the bishops going to do?'" said the Rev. John Paris, a bioethicist and Catholic priest at Boston College.
"It's going to present a lot of problems for the bishops to sort out," echoed Daniel Ramirez, an assistant professor of history and American culture at the University of Michigan and an expert on Latin American religious culture.
"They're going to have to really thread a fine theological needle here," he added.
Differing views on Catholicism and birth control
It's not entirely clear what the chances are that a pregnant woman who contracts Zika will have a baby with microcephaly. Babies with the defect have small heads and abnormal brain growth and often have developmental delays, seizures, problems with movement and speech, and other issues.
A baby who has microcephaly in Recife, Brazil.
According to the Brazil Ministry of Health, from November 8 through January 30, 404 babies were born with microcephaly, an unusually high number. Seventeen of these cases have been linked to Zika. Authorities are investigating another 3,670 suspected cases of microcephaly.
Colombian officials said they calculate that during the course of the current Zika epidemic, 500 newborns will be born with microcephaly, and 500 newborns will have a neurological disorder called Guillain-Barre syndrome.
In December, authorities in Brazil urged women not to get pregnant. Then last month came the warning from Colombia to delay pregnancy until July. Then in an interview, a health official in El Salvador recommended that women "try to avoid getting pregnant this year and the next."
Does this mean couples in these largely Catholic countries should abstain from sex for two years? Or should they use so-called "natural family planning"? The method, which involves a woman monitoring her basal body temperature and vaginal secretions to avoid having sex at fertile times of the month, has a 25% failure rate, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Or, because of Zika, should couples use more effective methods of birth control?
So far, the church hierarchy has remained silent on these questions.
The Catholic catechism states that besides "natural family planning," anything else that works to "'render procreation impossible' is intrinsically evil."
The Rev. Father Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, said that means birth control is wrong no matter what. "That prohibition doesn't change based on circumstances," he said. "So couples have a responsibility to live according to the church's teachings in whatever circumstances they find themselves."
But other priests don't see it that way.
"The polemical approach, that contraception is devious or demonic in origin or the smoke of Satan, may ultimately not be the best pastoral approach," said the Rev. James Bretzke, a professor of theology at Boston College.
He said in the face of such consequences -- in this case, a baby who could suffer greatly -- he thinks the church might not be so hard line, especially under the leadership of Pope Francis, who has taken a more merciful stance on many social issues from abortion to homosexuality and is himself from South America, where Zika has taken such a heavy toll.
"In Catholic Church teaching, some would say it would be acceptable to try to prevent conception in cases like this," Bretzke said.
Paris, the bioethicist, agreed that extenuating circumstances call for more nuanced approaches. "In the older world, you couldn't eat meat on Friday, but if you were starving and meat was the only food available, of course you would eat meat," he said.
Or consider German families who in the aftermath of World War II stole coal, he said. "The Bible says 'thou shalt not steal,' but is it wrong for a father to go get a bucket of coal to keep his family from freezing to death? The answer is no, of course not," Paris said.
The church's next steps
Representatives of the Latin American Bishops Council did not respond to inquiries from CNN. Pavone said he expects the bishops will at some point issue a statement instructing Catholics not to use "artificial" birth control.
But Bretzke and Paris, who like Pope Francis are Jesuits, said they think the church will likely remain silent on the issue. "It'll be interesting to see whether and how Catholic leaders in these countries weigh in," Bretzke said.
Ramirez, the historian from the University of Michigan, noted that practically speaking, it might not matter. As in the United States, many Catholics in Latin America don't follow the church's advice on birth control anyway. According to a survey by the Spanish-language television network Univision, 88% of Mexicans, 91% of Colombians and 93% of Brazilians support the use of contraceptives.
Ramirez said he thinks the Catholic Church might weigh in on Zika and birth control, perhaps at the highest level. By the end of next month, Pope Francis is expected to deliver an apostolic exhortation on family life. His report will take into consideration recommendations from bishops around the world, who discussed such issues in a synod, or meeting, in Rome last fall.
"I think the situation with Zika might cause the Vatican to add a couple of caveats to whatever document is coming out on the synod," Ramirez said. "And there will be some leeway in the Francisco era for a more nuanced approach to the contraception question."
He said he thinks the approach will consider the unprecedented situation that Zika presents.
"I think the message will be that whatever you as married Catholics decide to do, we will walk with you," he said. "That we'll encourage you to follow the church's precepts, but when you don't, we will still love and accept you."The Best Active College Football Coaches - CFB Playoff Style Ranking the top college football coaches heading into the 2014 college football bowl season In 2007 College Sports Fans took a look at the best active college football coaches highlighting the long-time winners like Joe Paterno and Bobby Bowden as well as then up-and-coming names like Greg Schiano and Rich Rodriguez. Wow have things changed. It used to be that every school thought they have the best college football coach; well every school with a winning team and tradition. But then along came the Nebraska Cornhuskers where they seemingly have lost touch with reality after first firing Frank Solich after 6 seasons and a 58-19 record, then Bo Pelini after 7 years and a 66-27 mark. Our take this time around is much different than your standard, over-done Top 10 list that we are guilty of in the past. This Top Active College Football Coaches list will take on the format of the College Football Playoff and Selection Committee Bowls - a top 4 playing for the title of #1, and four other match-ups of top-tier coaches who are just outside of the Top 4. Unlike the College Football Playoff we are not going to be bound by conference affiliations but we will throw in a few connections with the bowls. Some will be obvious choices while others, like every name after #1 and #2, are more difficult choices or still making their name. Either way, we hope you enjoy. CollegeSports-fans.com is a leading provider of NCAA Tournament content, future sites, College Football bowl game historic data, future schedules, data and more, so you will see a few links below to our bowl game content. We encourage you to browse and see all that we have here and enjoy the following.
And now, without further ado, the CollegeSports-fans.com Top Active College Football Coaches list: "Playoff Selection Committee Bowls" These are the best coaches ranked from number 5 through 12, in no particular order. Mind you that this is heading into the 2014 college bowl season thus we may be prisoners of the moment like the rest of sports world. That having been said, these spots could easily change a year from now when we update the best coaches list once again. Cotton Bowl Classic - A bowl game with historic Big 12 and SEC ties, given the geography and conference affiliation, TCU's Gary Patterson seems appropriate to get the first spot in this match-up. Patterson's opponent in our version of the "Cotton Bowl" is Steve Spurrier of South Carolina. Spurrier gets the invite based on his legacy more than this past season, but three consecutive 11-2 seasons in 2011-2013 shows that 2014 should not be cause for overreaction as the Spurrier resume is one of college football's best. Fiesta Bowl - The Fiesta Bowl and the Big 12 have been connected for years during the BCS era, so it seems fitting that Oklahoma head coach Bob Stoops
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was discovered. It is more likely that the word Compostela came from the Latin word compostum meaning cemetery and, oddly enough, forerunner of the modern English word "compost" for decaying matter. Spanish people in Northern New Mexico call their own cemeteries camposantos -- holy fields. Whatever the mystery in the name Santiago de Compostela, it is still a term that means much to the people of Taos at this time of year.
The original Spanish colonists established their first church of San Jerónimo at Taos Pueblo. Padre MartÌnez then changed the seat of ecclesiastical power to Nuestra SeÒora de Guadalupe in Taos proper. But the festival that honors Santiago and Santa Anna seems to transcend both of these historical facts. The Taos Fiestas honor the two saints annually. The first day is dedicated to Santiago, who is the patron saint of Spain. On that day, men used to ride on horseback through the plaza in their finest livery, "encatrinados" as they were called in their fancy attire.
One wonders just how the son of simple fisher-folk might feel knowing that he was going to inspire the religious unification of Europe throughout the Middle Ages and, later, to have a festival named after him in a land yet to be discovered.
James and his brother, John, were mending their nets one day on the shores of Lake Genesaret. They were the sons of lowly Zebedee. They were called by Jesus of Nazareth to be fishers of men. As Jesus got to know their personalities better with the passing of time, he gave them an additional name. That name was "Boanerges," which means "sons of thunder" in Greek. The gospels speak of how James raised the dead daughter of Jairus to life in the name of Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles also says that he was the first of the apostles to undergo a martyr's death for his faith. The story is that he was executed by King Herodes Agrippa I circa 44 A.D.
Popular tradition holds that James had preached in northwestern Spain when the area was still known as Galicia. It was to this area that the body of the Apostle of Spain was returned by two of the nine converts he had made in the area, Theodorus and Athanasius.
The faithful followers of St. James asked permission to entomb the body from Queen Lupa, known as the "She Wolf" (La Loba). This may have derived from the early writings of the founding of Rome in which Romulus and Remus were nursed by a she-wolf and caused the country to prosper. Whatever the case, Queen Lupa eventually converted after she had made the lives of the disciples miserable. St. James was buried in her palace and later, the Cathedral of Compostela was built on the same foundation.
In the year 711 Moorish invaders crossed from North Africa to Spain and dominated the country until 1492. A hero was needed to inspire people to action against the enemies of the faith. A rumor was spread that during the Battle of Clavijo of 834, when Ramiro I of Leon defeated Abdurrahman II, a vision had been seen in the sky above the battle. An armed horseman on a white charger was seen trampling his enemies. Thus, a humble fisherman became a fearsome warrior. The cry of "°Santiago Matamoros! (St. James Slayer of Moors!) was to echo in Spain for centuries.
According to the Codex Calixtinus a chapter in the Liber Sancti Jacobi, the first person known to make a pilgrimage to the tomb was French Bishop Gottskalk of Le Puy. By the 1100s though, a virtual sea of pilgrims adorned with scallop shells on their cloaks, were traipsing down from as far as Sweden. St. Bridget herself is known to have made the pilgrimage, as did St. Francis of Asis.
The exact spot of the tomb of the martyr was lost for over 800 years. A hermit named Pelagius had a vision of the site of the burial place. The site uncovered was aglow with light.
The bishop of Iria Flavia declared the bones to be "the authentic relics of St. James." Again, the tomb was lost for a thousand years and rediscovered in the late 1800s.
It is important to recall the story of Santiago on occasion for much was sacrificed that we might have some joyful days of rest in the shade.Firearms retailers are reporting a surge in sales among gays and lesbians in the aftermath of the Orlando massacre.
Gun sales typically surge after a mass shooting as people take steps to ensure their personal security, but now a new cohort is heading to the gun store: LGBT folks.
KDVR reports: "However, what’s different this time around is the clientele. Mike Smith, a firearms instructor in Colorado Springs, is one of many closely tracking the sudden surge in gays and lesbians buying weapons."
“I look at it as a disenfranchised minority that needs someone who’s willing to say I’m a resource who’s here and willing to help,” Smith told KDVR.
“We’re not surprised by it,” George Horne, owner of a Denver firearms dealer, told KDVR.
The Pink Pistols, a club for gay and lesbian gun owners, saw its membership rolls more than double since the massacre. “It’s sad that we must consider such things, but when there are persons out there who mean us harm, we must find ways to protect ourselves within the law,” Gwendolyn Patton, speaker for the club, said in a statement.Laurence Rees is the author of Auschwitz: A New History, from which this article has been adapted.
Oskar Groening, at the age of 94, is currently on trial in Germany, charged with being an ‘accessory’ to several hundred thousand murders while he served as an SS officer at Auschwitz during World War II. On Wednesday, Groening, who admits moral guilt but denies that he ever committed a crime, as he didn’t personally kill any of the prisoners, was sentenced to four years in prison.
I first met Groening just over 11 years ago in a Hamburg hotel. He had agreed—after a great deal of persuading—to give an interview for the BBC/PBS documentary series ‘Auschwitz: The Nazis and the ‘Final Solution,’ that I wrote and produced. I was, frankly, astonished that he had consented to take part in the series. Never before, to my knowledge, had a member of the SS from Auschwitz ever agreed to appear on camera. I was even more surprised by what he had to say. Here is an extract from his testimony, as I recorded it in my 2006 book Auschwitz: a New History.
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***
In 1942, when he was twenty-one years old, Oskar Groening was posted to Auschwitz. He almost immediately witnessed a transport arriving at “the ramp”—the platform where the Jews disembarked. “I was standing at the ramp,” he says, “and my task was to be part of the group supervising the luggage from an incoming transport.” He watched while SS doctors first separated men from women and children, and then selected who was fit to work and who should be gassed immediately. “Sick people were lifted on to lorries,” says Groening. “Red Cross lorries—they always tried to create the impression that people had nothing to fear.”
He estimates that between 80 and 90 percent of those on the first transport he witnessed in September 1942 were selected to be murdered at once.
“This process [of selection] proceeded in a relatively orderly fashion but when it was over it was just like a fairground. There was a load of rubbish, and next to this rubbish were ill people, unable to walk, perhaps a child that had lost its mother, or perhaps during searching the train somebody had hidden—and these people were simply killed with a shot through the head. And the kind of way in which these people were treated brought me doubt and outrage. A child was simply pulled on the leg and thrown on a lorry … then when it cried like a sick chicken, they chucked it against the edge of the lorry. I couldn’t understand that an SS man would take a child and throw its head against the side of a lorry … or kill them by shooting them and then throw them on a lorry like a sack of wheat.”
Groening, according to his story, was so filled by “doubt and outrage” that he went to his superior officer and told him: “It’s impossible, I can’t work here any more. If it is necessary to exterminate the Jews, then at least it should be done within a certain framework.” His superior officer calmly listened to Groening’s complaints, reminded him of the SS oath of allegiance he had sworn and said that he should “forget” any idea of leaving Auschwitz. But he also offered hope—of a kind. He told Groening that the “excesses” he saw that night were an “exception,” and that he himself agreed that members of the SS should not participate in such “sadistic” events. Documents confirm that Groening subsequently put in for a transfer to the front, which was refused. So he carried on working at Auschwitz.
Significantly, Groening did not complain to his boss about the principle of murdering the Jews, merely its practical implementation. When he saw people in front of him who he knew were going to die within hours in the gas chambers, he says his feelings were “very ambiguous.” He says, “How do you feel when you’re in Russia, here’s a machine gun in front of you, and there’s a battalion of Russians coming running towards you and you have to pull the trigger and shoot as many as possible? I’m saying it on purpose like this because there’s always behind you the fact that the Jews are enemies who come from the inside of Germany. The propaganda had for us such an effect that you assumed that to exterminate them was basically something that happened in war. And to that extent a feeling of sympathy or empathy didn’t come up.”
When pressed for the reason why children were murdered, Groening replies: “The children are not the enemy at the moment. The enemy is the blood in them. The enemy is their growing up to become a Jew who could be dangerous.”
Clues as to how it was possible that Oskar Groening felt helpless women and children were “enemies” who had to face “extermination” can be found in his life before he was posted to Auschwitz. He was born in 1921 in Lower Saxony, son of a skilled textile worker. Groening’s father was a traditional conservative, “proud of what Germany had achieved.” One of Groening’s earliest memories is of looking at photographs of his grandfather, who served in an elite regiment of soldiers from the Duchy of Brunswick: “His position impressed me terribly when I was a boy—he was sitting on his horse and playing his trumpet. It was fascinating.”
After Germany’s defeat in World War I Groening’s father joined the right-wing Stahlhelm (Steel Helmet), one of the many ultra-nationalist organizations that flourished in the wake of what they proclaimed was the humiliating peace of Versailles. His father’s anger at the way Germany had been treated grew more intense as his personal circumstances became more strained—lacking capital, his textile business went bankrupt in 1929. In the early 1930s young Oskar joined the Stahlhelm’s youth organization, the Scharnhorst.
Nothing felt more natural for Oskar Groening, who was only 11 years old when the Nazis came to power in 1933, than to ease from the Stahlhelm’s Scharnhorst into the Hitler Youth. He adopted the values of his parents and judged that the Nazis “were the people who wanted the best for Germany and who did something about it.” As a member of the Hitler Youth he took part in the burning of books written by “Jews or others who were degenerate.” And he believed that, by doing so, he was helping rid Germany of an inappropriate, alien culture. At the same time, he thought National Socialism was demonstrably working on the economic front:
“Within six months [of the Nazis coming to power] the 5 million unemployed had vanished from the streets and so everybody had work. Then [in 1936] Hitler marched into the Rhineland [demilitarized under the terms of the Versailles treaty] and simply occupied it—nobody tried to stop him. We were terribly happy about this—my father opened a bottle of wine.”
In the meantime, young Oskar went to school. He eventually finished high in his final class and, at 17, began a traineeship as a bank clerk. Just a few months after he started work in the bank war was declared; eight out of the 20 clerks were immediately conscripted into the army and their places taken by young women. This meant that the remaining trainees such as Groening could “get jobs they would have never normally reached. For example, I had to take over the cash till.”NHS patients recuperating after a hospital stay may soon be put up in Airbnb-style accommodation in people’s homes to ease the burden on hospital wards running at capacity.
NHS patients recuperating after a hospital stay may soon be put up in Airbnb-style accommodation in people’s homes to ease the burden on hospital wards running at capacity.
A pilot scheme will see around 30 patients waiting for discharge from hospital care stay with local residents who have a spare room or annex.
CareRooms is recruiting “hosts” – who do not need any previous care experience – in Essex. They could earn up to £50 (€56) a night putting up people recuperating from a hospital stay.
The company said it will transform spare rooms and annexes with a private bathroom into “secure care spaces for patients who are waiting to be discharged”.
Prospective hosts, who can earn up to a maximum of £1,000 (€1122) a month, need to go through security checks before they are approved for the scheme. They are required to heat up three microwave meals each day and supply drinks and are offered “host protection” as well as a helpline and training.
The company’s website said it aims to “provide patients with a practical alternative to hospitals and care homes to recuperate in”.
It adds: “Our hospitals are becoming increasingly full with patients who have nowhere to go, your spare room and bathroom can be safely converted to allow patients to be discharged for a maximum of two weeks, for remote carers to look after them and for minimal impact and risk to your daily life.”
The news comes amid the crisis of delayed discharges in hospitals.
Last week, Age UK warned that increasing numbers of elderly and frail patients are being “marooned” in hospital beds, despite being medically fit.
NHS figures show that last year, 2.2 million hospital “bed days” in England were lost due to delayed transfers of care. The proposed trial will take place in Essex. It was first revealed by the Health Service Journal (HSJ).
NHS bodies in the county, along with local authorities, are in preliminary discussions over the project – which would see willing and eligible patients primarily recruited from Southend University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. CareRooms said the “micro pilot” would involve just five to 10 hosts over a three-month period.
The trial will not start until all parties are assured that the process is “safe or safer than standard practice”, it said.
Dr Harry Thirkettle, co-founder and chief medical officer for the website, said that around 30 patients would be involved.
He said: “What we’re aiming towards is patients who just need short-term accommodating either before going home or going into long-term care. We are looking to find patients who are medically fit for discharge, who don’t have any cognitive impairments.
“The reason they would come to us is because they either live alone and don’t have support or they have mobility issues. So you can imagine someone who had a leg fracture and is unable to go up and down their stairs, so until that fracture is healed they could come to us and stay in ground-floor accommodation.
“The aim is to match the right patient to the right room.”
He said that some people may find the scheme preferable to staying in hospital.
“There is good evidence out there about the effects of long-term hospitalisation on people – they lose muscle strength and mass, it impairs their cognition,” he said. “We hope that by allowing people to be discharged to a home-like environment, quicker, that would give massive benefits for patients.”
But some raised concerns over the pilot.
Campaign group Save Southend A&E told the HSJ: “We are shocked that an NHS trust is endorsing such a company... offering beds in private residential homes opens a huge can of worms for safeguarding, governance and possible financial and emotional abuse of people at their most vulnerable time.
“It is almost weekly that there are reports of abuse and poor care in registered residential and care homes, therefore the monitoring of such ‘placements’ in private homes would be a huge and risky task.”
Dr Thirkettle, who is also a part-time A&E doctor, said that hosts have to go through a “vigorous” vetting process including a number of detailed interviews, providing at least three references and everyone over 18 in the property would have to undergo a DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) check.
“On the host side we have a really vigorous vetting process that they have to go through,” he said. “We also have some technology safeguarding solutions as well – we will have sensors which are able to detect any time someone has been in or out of the room.
“We will have a 24-hour call centre, we also have a telemedicine GP service so all of the people in our rooms will be able to get a GP consultation within four hours.”
He said the scheme is still in “scoping phase” adding: “We are not starting until each one of those organisations is confident that this is safe or safer than standard practice.”
The website states that patients will be offered: catering, a GP service, “premium entertainment”, specialist beds, “fall detection”, patient safety monitoring, rehabilitation packages, a private bathroom, door sensors and “CQC-certified care”.
The scheme was helped by NHS England’s Clinical Entrepreneur programme which helps frontline doctors realise ideas and develop their entrepreneurial aspirations.
Independent News ServiceIDINA Menzel's son "hates" 'Frozen'.
The 45-year-old actress-and-singer voiced Elsa in the hit 2013 Disney film and performed the film's unforgettable track 'Let It Go' but her seven-year-old child Walker has only ever watched the animation twice in his life, but he already dislikes everything about it because its "princessy".
Speaking about the animated movie to Stephen Colbert on 'The Late Show...' on Wednesday (18.01.17), she said: "He's seen it maybe twice, he hates it. It's princessy and it's mommy singing so it means that she has to work and go sing the stupid song, and it takes me away from him."
However, Idina - who won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for 'Let It Go' in 2014 - has admitted Walker does use the fact his mum was in 'Frozen' to woo the girls.
The brunette beauty - who has Walker with her ex-husband Taye Diggs - shared: "The only time he really liked was when I was volunteering at his kindergarten class last year and we were doing arts and crafts. He started talking to one of the little girls and the girl was looking at me so he goes, 'Do you want my mom's autograph, she's Elsa.' That's like his game, he's got game."× UNIX® Certification
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Benefits for UsersTata Steel has completed the sale of its long products business to Greybull Capital, in a deal that will preserve 4,400 UK jobs and revive the British Steel name.
Tata started talks with Greybull about the sale in December, three months before the Indian conglomerate decided to sell its entire UK business. Greybull, an investment firm, has paid a nominal £1 for the business, which makes products such as railway tracks and steel used in construction.
The sale includes the steelworks in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, and sites in Teesside, Workington and York. The business also employs about 400 people in France.
Tata Steel to sell off entire British business Read more
Workers accepted a temporary 3% pay cut and changes to terms and conditions in April as part of the deal to salvage the business, which will be renamed British Steel.
The brand of the former state-owned industry disappeared in 1999 with the creation of Corus, which Tata bought in 2007. The new logo was unveiled at the Scunthorpe plant on Wednesday.
Greybull said the long products business had returned to operating profit in the past two months as the result of a turnaround plan that included making higher-value products. The firm, founded in 2008 by the French-born brothers Nathaniel and Marc Meyohas, said it had £400m ready to invest in the business.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest British Steel’s new logo, which was unveiled on Wednesday. Photograph: British Steel/PA
British Steel’s commercial director, Peter Hogg, said jobs at the firm were now secure. “We have no plans to make any job reductions. The future of the business is based on that strong turnaround plan.”
Greybull declined to say whether it had bid for Tata’s other UK steel assets, which employ about 11,000 people and include the blast furnaces at Port Talbot in south Wales.
Marc Meyohas said: “Our entire focus has been on getting this deal to where it is and launching British Steel. Being investors in the steel industry you would expect any active shareholder to look at what is going on in the broader market. Tata’s other assets that may be for sale … we are going to be approached and we are going to be looking at that.”
Bidders submitted proposals to buy the business last week. The UK government has offered to provide loans and guarantees to a buyer and has urged Tata to allow time for a deal to be done. Tata is also considering keeping the business in light of the government’s support package.
Meyohas said Greybull’s dealings with Tata were tough commercial negotiations but that Tata had behaved in a responsible fashion.
Bimlendra Jha, chief executive of Tata Steel UK, said: “As a responsible seller, Tata Steel is delighted to have secured a buyer for this business and we hope that under Greybull Capital ownership, the business will continue the momentum of the improvement programme that has been initiated in the last 12 months.”
Hogg said the long products business would be profitable in the current financial year after withdrawing from plate production, its worst performing business, saving money by closing a coke oven and making about 400 small changes. “It’s been about making the whole business more cost-competitive, more focused and more agile. It’s a big business but it can have a smaller business feel when it’s not part of a larger organisation,” he said.
Hogg said he had lobbied the government to help the steel industry with lower energy prices and business rates, more incentives for research and development and greater use of British steel in infrastructure, from big projects to smaller ones such as a new school or hospital.
Paul McBean, the chairman of the multi-union committee at the Scunthorpe works, said: “Getting to this point has taken months of work and commitment from our workforce and I thank them for their support and dedication to the steel industry. I am delighted we are relaunching our fantastic business as British Steel. It marks a new start, and a new chapter, for our business.”Local woman says soon-to-be illegal drug saved her life
By Sept. 30, kratom will be an illegal drug, and it’s in communities in the Local 6 region.
The Drug Enforcement Administration says the decision came because kratom causes a high, can be addictive, and doesn’t have a medical use at this time. As a Schedule 1 drug, it will be on the list with heroin, methamphetamine, and marijuana.
It’s made in southeast Asia and comes from the plant Mitragyna Speciosa. It comes in many forms, including powder and pills. There is a large sales presence online, but I spoke to Crystal Helene who says she gets it locally and says kratom saved her life.
Helene’s life has been an exciting one. She began modeling in 1997 and was even part of a national runway in Chicago. “That was my childhood dream,” she said. Helene has also lived a life that required a lot of strength. Her pain began with a tumor in 2004 and a fall that left her bedridden for three months in 2006. In 2008, her grandmother and husband died.
The next year, Helene was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, and she says she endured adverse effects from Lyrica. She says her entire body hurt. “To take that away from me when I’ve always been that way — entrepreneur, business like, go-getter, grinder, perfectionist — then it messes with your mind,” Helene told me. She added that: “regular work that you do on a daily basis takes double, triple, the time for me.”
The fibromyalgia, along with a neck surgery and degenerative joint disease, led Helene to a slew of prescribed narcotic medicines. She says mistreatment as a result of her need for pain medication along with lingering pain made her feel like she didn’t want to go on anymore.
In January, she tried kratom. She says that helped her get out of bed.
But, the DEA says it’s a public hazard, and as soon as Sept. 30th, you will be breaking a federal law if you buy, sell, or own kratom. The DEA also says no conclusive research shows a medicinal advantage.
Helene says kratom gave her dignity, and people don’t treat her like a pill popper. “Yes, I’m worried. I don’t want to be treated like that,” she said.
Detective Matt Carter with the McCracken County Sheriff’s Department says they’ll treat this like any other drug. As soon as it’s considered a Schedule 1 drug, they will enforce it.
Will kratom be a felony or misdemeanor? Carter says it depends. With marijuana, it depends on the quantity a person has on them. With this scheduling being relatively new, they’re waiting to find that out from the federal government.
The DEA says the scheduling is unstoppable at this point. It will last for two years, with an option to extend for an addition year. Then, kratom will either be permanently on the Schedule 1 list or be removed completely.Unlike the casting announcements for Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises, there’s a refreshing transparency to reports on the upcoming animated version of Batman: Year One—primarily because the adaptation of Frank Miller’s classic comic doesn’t deviate in the slightest from its source material, so there’s no need for invented aliases or other forms of possible subterfuge. So rest assured that these people are really and truly who they say they are: The film will feature former The O.C. ruffian turned taciturn Southland cop Ben McKenzie as Bruce Wayne/Batman, Breaking Bad-ass Bryan Cranston as James Gordon, perennially kicked-around actress Eliza Dushku as Catwoman, and Battlestar Galactica’s Katee Sackhoff as Gordon’s co-worker and mistress, Detective Sarah Essen. Also on board: Alex Rocco, who will combine both his gangster work in The Godfather with his Simpsons-launched cartoon voiceover career by playing crime boss Carmine Falcone. According to executive producer Bruce Timm, the animated Year One is a “straightforward literal retelling” of Miller’s comic book—and because it wouldn’t be a Batman-related Newswire without rampant speculation, we’d say that certainly bodes well for the rumors that they’re planning on following it with a similar adaptation of The Dark Knight Returns.
AdvertisementDivisive, False Ad Shows Man Walking Into Women's Restroom
If there were any questions about how hate-filled North Carolina Republican lawmakers are, their latest ad has just answered them. The North Carolina Republican Senatorial Committee, which has no official website, has launched an ugly, divisive, and false "I Stand With Governor McCrory" campaign to fundraise off HB2, the expansive and unconstitutional anti-LGBT law Governor Pat McCrory signed last week.
It actually labels the ACLU - an organization whose mission is to protect and defend the U.S. Constitution - and LGBT civil rights groups "radical, left-wing special-interest groups."
"The ACLU and other radical, left-wing special-interest groups are suing North Carolina to create an extreme national mandate forcing women and young girls to share locker rooms and bathrooms with grown men," it claims, falsely.
LOOK: North Carolina Gov. McCrory in Hot Seat as Apple, Google, NBA, Many Others Denounce Anti-LGBT Law
Worse, it fear-mongers with an image (photo above) that falsely depicts what LGBT non-dicrimination laws do, by showing a man walking into the women's restroom.
Since Gov. McCrory signed HB2 into law, over 80 corporations and business leaders have emphatically denounced it, and urged the North Carolina Republican governor to repeal it. Instead, McCrory has launched a campaign of half-truths and lies, even recording a 5-minute video attacking his opponents and denouncing what he calls "a vicious, nation-wide smear campaign" targeting North Carolina. The attacks are actually directed at him for signing HB2, and not North Carolina.
Three states and several major cities have instituted a ban on taxpayer funded travel to the Tar Heel State. North Carolina's Attorney General has refused to defend the law in court, deeming it "unconstitutional."
EARLIER:
Breaking: Lawsuit Against North Carolina Filed In Federal Court Over Sweeping Anti-LGBT Law
OPINION: How Many Lies Did the Sponsor of North Carolina's Anti-LGBT Bill HB2 Just Tell on MSNBC?...
Pat McCrory Says He Signed the Broadest Anti-LGBT Bill in the Nation to Prevent Government Overreach
Image: Screenshot via I Stand With Governor McCrory
See a mistake? Email corrections to: [email protected]Using nearly two decades of satellite data, the team of international researchers observed an acceleration of ice loss from the continent’s ice shelves, with an increase in loss of 70% in West Antarctica over the last decade. In the Amundsen and Bellingshausen regions, some ice shelves have lost up to 18% of their thickness in less than two decades.
New research published this week in the journal Science Express describes how the ice shelves around Antarctica are thinning and therefore allowing more of the ice sheet behind them to flow into the sea.
New research published this week in the journal Science Express describes how the ice shelves around Antarctica are thinning and therefore allowing more of the ice sheet behind them to flow into the sea.
Using nearly two decades of satellite data, the team of international researchers observed an acceleration of ice loss from the continent’s ice shelves, with an increase in loss of 70% in West Antarctica over the last decade. In the Amundsen and Bellingshausen regions, some ice shelves have lost up to 18% of their thickness in less than two decades.
Professor David Vaughan, Director of Science at British Antarctic Survey (BAS) commenting on this research says, “The paper from Paolo et al., is an excellent piece of work. Previous work led by BAS in 2010 showed the rates at which the various floating ice shelves around Antarctic were thinning, but this paper takes that work forward by showing how that thinning has changed over time. This new insight will allow us to improve our understanding of how the oceans around Antarctica are driving change in the ice sheet.”
“To begin to predict with confidence how ice sheets will change in future and contribute to global sea-level rise we need to understand exactly where and why they are changing at the moment. We already know that it is changes in the ocean that are driving changes in the floating ice shelves, and that those changes are in turn driving changes in grounded ice sheet. But these new results, indicate that the pattern and rate of change in the floating ice, is complex and changing from year-to-year. These satellite results are thus highlighting the areas that require detailed exploration and investigation. The NERC iSTAR programme has recently completed its second season of investigation into one of the key areas of change shown in this new study — Pine Island Glacier.”
Melting Antarctic ice image via Shutterstock.
Read more at British Antarctic Survey.Long before asphalt was the go-to replacement for cobblestones, city planners tried a number different materials to cover the roads including, in Philadelphia, wooden blocks.
The bustling streets of Philadelphia circa the 1830s were a noisy place. Chief among the cacophony was the sound of horse’s hooves loudly clopping across the cobblestones, and a solution had to be devised. Thus the local businessmen teamed up with the city government and together they came up with the idea of paving the streets with sound-absorbing wooden blocks instead of resonating cobbles. Thus a number of the city streets were refinished with wooden paving using blocks of pine and oak, effectively muffling one of the largest sources of noise pollution of the day. Unfortunately sound was not the only thing the wooden streets absorbed.
The blocks quickly began to soak up every bit of liquid that fell on them from rain to copious amounts of horse urine. In addition to expanding and warping into a bumpy mess, the roads became unbearably smelly (especially in the summer) as the pee-soaked blocks rotted and crumbled. The trend of wooden roads quickly fell out of favor, and by the time automobiles hit the scene, they were all but gone.
However on the tight little 200 block of Camac Street, the wooden avenues remained. The area having developed into an artsy little enclave during the 20th century, the wooden roads were seen as a quaint oddity, but by the 1990s they had fallen into a dreadful state. Luckily, conservationists took an interest in the city’s only remaining wooden road and had it redone with treated wooden blocks that will hopefully last longer than their predecessors. And smell better too.A Silver Cross mother whose son was killed in Afghanistan says she has been treated as a "secondary-class person" — and was even billed by the government for cost over-runs for the fallen soldier's funeral.
In Ottawa for the National Day of Honour events organized to pay tribute to Canada's fallen soldiers and civilians from the 12-year Afghan mission, Wendy Miller told CBC News Network's Power & Politics her grief has been exacerbated by a lack of support services — and disrespect.
"My son didn't die for them to turn around and treat his mother like a secondary-class person. Sorry, it's not fair," she told host Evan Solomon. "We're not asking for cash or money. I just want the respect. You've got him. His name's up there. Fine. You don't disrespect his mother. He loved me so much."
Pte. Andrew Miller, 21, is shown in a Canadian Forces photo. Miller was killed in Afghanistan along with fellow medic Master Cpl. Kristal Giesebrecht, 34, by an improvised explosive device in 2010. (DND handout/Canadian Press)
Pte. Andrew Miller of Sudbury, Ont. was killed at age 21 by an improvised explosive device outside Kandahar on June 21, 2010. His family was subsequently sent a bill for $2,300 after the costs of his funeral went "over-budget."
"I screamed," she said.
The family was even served notice the government would garnishee taxes if no payment was made.
Her husband, Ray Ealdama, who served in Afghanistan for the RCMP in 2007-2008, said there were nights of "absolute mayhem" trying to get answers, but the only official explanation was that there were "procedures" in place.
Friends in Andrew's Petawawa-based unit eventually "passed around the hat" and took care of the bill.
A media relations officer for National Defence said in an email to CBC News that funeral and burial costs for Canadian Forces members are reimbursed to a maximum set by the Treasury Board.
"If the family of the deceased chooses to expend more than the entitlement outlined in the Treasury Board policy, they must pay those expenses out of pocket to the company, organization or individual providing the goods or service. Families may also be aided in seeking further support from the Military Family Fund," the media relations duty officer said in the email.
Johanna Quinney, a spokeswoman for Defence Minister Rob Nicholson, offered condolences to Pte. Miller's family before noting the government changed the policy for funeral costs in 2007 to allow for annual adjustment for inflation.
"This is entirely appropriate and it is the least we can do for our fallen soldiers."
Days of anguish
But Miller said the funeral costs were only the beginning. Because her son was single when he was killed, she was ineligible for counselling and support.
While she wears a "military mom face" through remembrance ceremonies, every day has been filled with anguish, she said.
"It's hysteria in my mind. You don't get over it, ever," she said.
The National Day of Honour has come under heavy criticism for being hastily and poorly organized and for having corporate participation. Miller has been disappointed by the process, but is determined to participate to share the common experience of grief with others who have lost their sons and daughters.
"I hated our country for a long time. But then I thought, I don't hate my country, I hate the people that are running these things and they're not seeing the Wendy Miller the mom — who had this sweet boy, with his big face and
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rallies on the anniversary of the death of its former leader.
The threat to launch an unannounced strike was conveyed in a fax sent from the North's National Defence Commission to South Korea's National Security Council, according to Yonhap news agency.
It came shortly after several conservative groups held protests in Seoul on the second anniversary of the death of the military regime's former leader Kim Jong-il.
Some protestors reportedly burnt photographs of the current leader Kim Jong-un, an action condemned in North Korea as an insult of the "highest indignity".
The South Korean government reportedly responded immediately to Pyonghang's threats of attack, with a vow to "sternly react" to any provocations.
Tensions have once again flared in the region after the young leader last week publicly purged and executed his uncle Jang Song-thaek in a bid to consolidate his grip on power.
North Korea has a long history of issuing bellicose threats to South Korea, with military officials reporting on this occasion that there currently were no signs of unusual activity.
Seoul, a city with a ten million-strong population, is known to be within range of the conventional artillery operated by North Korean soldiers along the heavily-fortified border.
The threats came as Dennis Rodman, the former NBA star, controversially arrived in in North Korea on his third trip since he first visited the renegade state in February this year.
The sportsman, accompanied by a documentary crew, is scheduled to spend four days training a national team of North Korean basketball players for a January exhibition in Pyongyang.
Despite requests from defectors and organisations to highlight the human rights abuses in the hardline regime during his visit, he has refused to be drawn on political issues, insisting his visit is for "fun" not politics.A tutorial on how to create an intro animation where a decorative Polaroid stack becomes a grid similar to the effect seen on the takeit website.
View demo Download source
Today we’d like to show you how to create a very simple intro effect similar to the one seen on the takeit website where a stack of Polaroids gets animated to a grid when clicking on a button or when scrolling. On their site, the grid continues to get animated throughout the page but we want to show you in detail on how to achieve that one specific Polaroid-to-grid effect with all its trickiness.
So, let’s get started!
Planning the effect
Check out the demo and get familiar with all the elements present and with the effect that happens if you click the arrow button on the phone or if you scroll.
We have an intro “page” that contains a big headline, the Polaroid stack and a device with a button. We also have a header with some links. What we want to do is to animate the Polaroid stack to a grid layout and make all the other elements, except the header links, disappear with a neat animation. This will be triggered either by scrolling down or by clicking the arrow.
As with many effects, the best way is to think of the end state as default state. So, we won’t take a stack of Polaroids and calculate their positions in the final grid state but instead the grid state is their default state and the initial scattered position is something we set them to in the beginning. We’ll use the first six images and move them to a common center point and then scatter them a bit with the help of a factor that adds the illusion of randomness. Do we need to move the images up to some previous section? No, actually we don’t. We can use a fixed intro section that we’ll instead animate up, outside of the viewport, giving the illusion as if we are moving (the grid) down.
Since we will have many animations happening, we want to have solid, individual control over them. A library like dynamic.js will help us animate the elements, so we will control the crucial animations in our script.
Most of the layout will be powered by flexbox. Read this guide by Sara Soueidan from the CSS Reference to understand all its great properties.
The images we are going to use in the demo are from Unsplash.com.
Let’s start writing the markup!
Attention: We’ll be using some modern properties that are only supported in modern browsers.
The Markup
How are we going to make our effect look as if we are scrolling down the page and moving around the elements without actually scrolling? We can simply trick the user’s eye by moving a fixed background outside of the viewport, creating the illusion that we moved down in the document. For that we will create a section with the class page and the “modifier” page–mover. Inside we’ll only have a loader. Check out more CSS loaders on Load Awesome by Daniel Cardoso.
The main title will not go inside of that page section because we want to animate it differently. If we’d put it inside we’d have to consider the parent’s movement and we don’t want that. So we create a own division for the main title with the class title-wrap.
Then we define the section for the grid which will also be a page, but with the modifier page static. There we’ll also have a title wrapper and an unordered list as our grid. The last element in our static page is a button for loading more items (this we won’t implement but it’s ready for a dynamic solution).
The last two elements in our view container are the device and the arrow button to trigger the animation and show the grid.
<div class="view"> <header class="header"> <!-- some links --> </header> <section class="page page--mover"> <div class="la-square-loader"><div></div></div> </section> <div class="title-wrap"> <h1 class="title title--main">OH<em>!</em>SNAP</h1> <p class="title title--sub">Smart Auto-Filtering for your shots.</p> </div> <section class="page page--static"> <div class="page__title"> <h2 class="page__title-main">Polaroid Stack to Grid Intro Animation</h2> <p class="page__title-sub">Recreating the effect seen on the <a href="http://www.takeitapp.co/en">takeit</a> website</p> </div> <ul class="grid"> <li class="grid__item"> <a class="grid__link" href="#"> <img class="grid__img" src="img/photos/1.jpg" alt="Some image" /> <h3 class="grid__item-title">Natural saturation effects</h3> </a> </li> <li class="grid__item"><!--... --></li> <li class="grid__item"><!--... --></li> <li class="grid__item"><!--... --></li> <!--... --> </ul> <button class="button button--load" aria-label="Load more images"> <svg class="polaroid" width="100%" height="100%" viewBox="0 0 220 243" preserveAspectRatio="xMidYMid meet"> <rect class="polaroid__base" x="0" y="0" width="220" height="243" rx="5"></rect> <rect class="polaroid__inner" x="16" y="20" width="189" height="149"></rect> <g class="polaroid__loader"> <circle cx="61.5" cy="94.5" r="17.5"></circle> <circle cx="110.5" cy="94.5" r="17.5"></circle> <circle cx="159.5" cy="94.5" r="17.5"></circle> </g> </svg> <span class="button__text">Load more</span> </button> </section> <div class="device"> <div class="device__screen"></div> </div> <button id="showgrid" class="button button--view" aria-label="Show me more"> <svg width="100%" height="100%" viewBox="0 0 310 177" preserveAspectRatio="xMidYMid meet"> <path fill="#FFFFFF" d="M159.875,174.481L306.945,27.41c2.93-2.929,2.93-7.678,0-10.606L292.803,2.661c-1.406-1.407-3.314-2.197-5.303-2.197c-1.989,0-3.896,0.79-5.303,2.197L154.572,130.287L26.946,2.661c-1.406-1.407-3.314-2.197-5.303-2.197c-1.989,0-3.897,0.79-5.303,2.197L2.197,16.804C0.733,18.269,0,20.188,0,22.107s0.732,3.839,2.197,5.303l147.071,147.071C152.197,177.411,156.945,177.411,159.875,174.481L159.875,174.481z" /> </svg> </button> </div><!-- /view -->
That’s all the markup, let’s move on to the styles!
The CSS
Note that we use the necessary -webkit- prefixes for better mobile support and Safari.
First, we’ll reset the box-sizing for all elements to border-box:
*, *::after, *::before { box-sizing: border-box; }
For the body, we’ll set some typography and colors:
body { font-family: 'Avenir Next', Avenir, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; overflow-x: hidden; color: #a5aeb5; background: #e9ecef; }
We will need a helper class that prohibits initial scrolling (while the JavaScript is still loading; then we take care of it in our script):
.js body { overflow: hidden; }.js body.overflow { overflow: auto; }
The header element with the links will be positioned absolutely and we’ll use flexbox to lay out the elements inside:
.header { position: absolute; z-index: 1000; display: -webkit-flex; display: flex; -webkit-justify-content: space-between; justify-content: space-between; -webkit-align-items: flex-start; align-items: flex-start; width: 100%; padding: 2.5em; pointer-events: none; }
With pointer-events set to none you don’t make this element clickable. Inner elements like links will have pointer-events set to auto. This technique can be useful for fixed or absolute elements that should be on top of everything but that are not obtrusive in the parts that are not “needed” to be clickable.
Now, let’s define the styles for the movable page. Since this is going to be our illusion artist, we set it to a fixed position and size it to the whole screen. The background is set to a dark color:
.page--mover { position: fixed; width: 100%; height: 100vh; pointer-events: none; background: #2d323c; }
The title wrap will be positioned at the top part of the page:
.title-wrap { position: absolute; z-index: 101; width: 100%; margin: 10vh 0 0 0; text-align: center; pointer-events: none; }
The typographic styles for the inner elements are as follows:
.title { line-height: 1; position: relative; text-indent: 0.2em; letter-spacing: 0.2em; text-transform: uppercase; }.title--main { font-size: 5.75em; margin: 0 auto; color: #df2d70; }.title--sub { font-size: 1.15em; font-weight: 700; display: block; margin: 0; color: #565f73; }
With a media query for larger screens, we ensure that the title elements are sized relatively to the viewport:
@media screen and (min-width: 100em) {.title--main { font-size: 7vw; }.title--sub { font-size: 1.35vw; } }
The static page will have a flexbox column layout that makes sure that everything is neatly centered. We’ll add a maximium allowed width which will be enough space for three full images in a row:
.page--static { display: -webkit-flex; display: flex; -webkit-flex-direction: column; flex-direction: column; -webkit-align-items: center; align-items: center; max-width: 1220px; margin: 0 auto; padding: 2em 0 0; text-align: center; }
The page title elements have the following styles:
.page__title { padding: 0 2em; }.page__title-main { font-size: 2em; margin: 0 auto; padding: 3em 0 0; color: #03a9f4; }.page__title-sub { font-size: 1.05em; margin: 0.5em 0 4em; }
Now, let’s style the device. We get the Sketch device from the Facebook devices collection and export the SVG. That will serve as the background image of our device division. This division is fixed with a z-index that will lay it on top of everything. We set the dimension to a square that is relative to the viewport height. This ensures that it never becomes bigger than half of the screen. We center it with the negative margin technique:
.device { position: fixed; z-index: 1000; bottom: 0; left: 50%; width: 45vh; height: 45vh; margin: 0 0 0 -22.5vh; background: url(../img/device.svg) no-repeat 50% 0%; background-size: 100%; }
The screen of the device will contain an app screenshot and its sizes are percentage based, relative to the device:
.device__screen { position: absolute; top: 25.5%; left: 8.5%; width: 83%; height: 100%; background: url(../img/screen.jpg) no-repeat 50% 0%; background-size: 100%; }
Next, let’s style the two buttons, the arrow button and the “load more” button. Since they both have some style resets in common, we define the following styles:
.button { margin: 0; padding: 0; border: none; background: none; }
The view button will be positioned absolutely and we’ll give it a little movement so that it stands out as trigger. We’ll also add some hover transition for the fill:
.button--view { position: absolute; z-index: 1000; top: 100vh; left: 50%; width: 3em; height: 1.75em; margin: -3em 0 0 -1.5em; -webkit-animation: pointDown 0.6s 0.6s ease-in infinite alternate forwards; animation: pointDown 0.6s 0.6s ease-in infinite alternate forwards; fill: #fff; } @-webkit-keyframes pointDown { from { -webkit-transform: translate3d(0,-10px,0); transform: translate3d(0,-10px,0); } to { -webkit-transform: translate3d(0,0,0); transform: translate3d(0,0,0); } } @keyframes pointDown { from { -webkit-transform: translate3d(0,-10px,0); transform: translate3d(0,-10px,0); } to { -webkit-transform: translate3d(0,0,0); transform: translate3d(0,0,0); } }.button--view path { -webkit-transition: fill 0.3s; transition: fill 0.3s; fill: inherit; }.button--view:hover,.button--view:focus { outline: none; fill: #03a9f4; }
The load more button also has some text:
.button--load { width: 7em; color: #a3b0bd; }.button--load svg { width: 2.5em; }.button__text { font-size: 0.65em; font-weight: bold; display: block; margin: 0.85em 0 0 0; text-indent: 3px; letter-spacing: 3px; text-transform: uppercase; color: inherit; -webkit-transition: color 0.3s; transition: color 0.3s; }
Besides a hover transition, the little Polaroid will be ready for a loading state that we trigger with the class button–loading. The three little circles will be animated to indicated that images are being loaded:
.polaroid__base,.polaroid__loader { -webkit-transition: fill 0.3s; transition: fill 0.3s; fill: #a3b0bd; }.button--load:hover,.button--load:focus { color: #03a9f4; outline: none; }.button:hover.polaroid__base,.button:focus.polaroid__base,.button:hover.polaroid__loader,.button:focus.polaroid__loader { fill: #03a9f4; }.polaroid__inner { fill: #e9ecef; }.button--loading.polaroid__loader circle { -webkit-animation: fadeInOut 0.3s ease-in infinite alternate forwards; animation: fadeInOut 0.3s ease-in infinite alternate forwards; }.button--loading.polaroid__loader circle:nth-child(2) { -webkit-animation-delay: 0.1s; animation-delay: 0.1s; }.button--loading.polaroid__loader circle:nth-child(3) { -webkit-animation-delay: 0.2s; animation-delay: 0.2s; } @-webkit-keyframes fadeInOut { from { opacity: 0; } to { opacity: 1; } } @keyframes fadeInOut { from { opacity: 0; } to { opacity: 1; } }
Then we will want to hide the button (that’s for when there are no more images to be loaded in your real case scenario):
.button--hidden { pointer-events: none; opacity: 0; -webkit-transition: opacity 0.3s; transition: opacity 0.3s; }
The grid will also be powered by flexbox. The z-index is 100 just so that its underneath the device and the main title:
.grid { position: relative; z-index: 100; display: -webkit-flex; display: flex; -webkit-flex-wrap: wrap; flex-wrap: wrap; -webkit-justify-content: center; justify-content: center; -webkit-align-items: center; align-items: center; max-width: 100%; margin: 0 auto; padding: 0 0 6em; list-style: none; }
We want to control the size of our grid items so they don’t need to be flexible. The width should be one third of the parent’s width. A padding of 10px will create a gutter for the Polaroid images:
.grid__item { display: block; -webkit-flex: none; flex: none; width: 33.33%; padding: 10px; }
When we insert new items into the grid, we need to control the visibility of the grid items. For this we will create the following helper class:
.grid__item--hidden { opacity: 0; }
The link element will be the one with the border decoration, so we add a padding of 13px for all sides except for the bottom side. This part will be styled in the title element.
.grid__link { display: block; padding: 13px 13px 0 13px; background: #fff; }
The image will fill all available space:
.grid__img { display: block; width: 100%; }
The Polaroid titles will have a nice script font to look like they have been written on:
.grid__item-title { font-family: 'Caveat', cursive; line-height: 1; position: relative; overflow: hidden; margin: 0; padding: 1em 0.5em; text-align: left; white-space: nowrap; text-overflow: ellipsis; color: #698b8d; background: #fff; }
Note that we have inserted the link to the Google Web font in the head of our HTML.
Since we need to preload our images, let’s show a little animated loader that actually reminds of a Polaroid. We’ve used a CSS loader from Load Awesome and adjusted some styles:
/* Loader (styles defined in square-loader.min.css) */.la-square-loader { position: absolute; top: 60%; left: 50%; color: #565f73; opacity: 0; -webkit-transform: translate3d(-50%,-50%,0) scale3d(1.35,1.35,1); transform: translate3d(-50%,-50%,0) scale3d(1.35,1.35,1); }.la-square-loader > div { border-radius: 2px; }
We should never hide anything assuming that JS is available but think about how everything looks/works without it. So, while we are actually preloading the images, we don’t want some elements to be shown. Then, when the images are loaded, we’ll want to show the grid, the device and the arrow button:
.js.la-square-loader { opacity: 1; -webkit-transition: opacity 0.3s; transition: opacity 0.3s; }.view--loaded.la-square-loader { opacity: 0; }.js.grid,.js.device,.js.button--view { opacity: 0; }.view--loaded.grid,.view--loaded.device,.view--loaded.button--view { opacity: 1; }.view--loaded.button--view { -webkit-transition: opacity 0.3s; transition: opacity 0.3s; }
The same holds for the pointer events of the static page:
.js.page--static { pointer-events: none; }.view--grid.page--static { pointer-events: auto; }
Finally, we have to tweak our layout a bit for smaller screens:
@media screen and (max-width: 56em) {.header { padding: 1em; }.title-wrap { font-size: 53%; margin: 85px 0 0 0; }.page__title-main { font-size: 1.3em; }.page__title-sub { margin-bottom: 1em; }.grid__item { width: 50%; max-width: none; } }
And that are all the styles!
Now, let’s write the magic spells for this dead bird to come to life!
The JavaScript
First, let’s define and initialize some variables:
// main page container var mainContainer = document.querySelector('.view'), // the grid element gridEl = mainContainer.querySelector('.grid'), // grid items gridItems = [].slice.call(gridEl.querySelectorAll('.grid__item')), // main title element titleEl = mainContainer.querySelector('.title-wrap >.title--main'), // main subtitle element subtitleEl = mainContainer.querySelector('.title-wrap >.title--sub'), // the fullscreen element/division that will slide up, giving the illusion the items will fall down pagemover = mainContainer.querySelector('.page--mover'), // the loading element shown while the images are loaded loadingStatusEl = pagemover.querySelector('.la-square-loader'), // window sizes (width and height) winsize = {width: window.innerWidth, height: window.innerHeight}, // translation values (x and y): percentages of the item´s width and height; scale value; rotation (z) value // these are the values that the 6 initial images will have introPositions = [ {tx: -.6, ty:-.3, s:1.1, r:-20}, {tx:.2, ty:-.7, s:1.4, r:1}, {tx:.5, ty:-.5, s:1.3, r:15}, {tx: -.2, ty:-.4, s:1.4, r:-17}, {tx: -.15, ty:-.4, s:1.2, r:-5}, {tx:.7, ty:-.2, s:1.1, r:15} ], // the device deviceEl = mainContainer.querySelector('.device'), // the animated button that triggers the effect when clicked showGridCtrl = document.getElementById('showgrid'), // the title and subtitle shown on top of the grid pageTitleEl = mainContainer.querySelector('.page__title >.page__title-main'), pageSubTitleEl = mainContainer.querySelector('.page__title >.page__title-sub'), // the grid´s load more button loadMoreCtrl = mainContainer.querySelector('button.button--load'), // true if the animation is currently running isAnimating, // true if the user scrolls (rather than clicking the down arrow) scrolled, // current view: stack | grid view ='stack';
introPositions is the array where we can define the positions of each of the six images that are part of the stack. Initially, the images will be positioned on the center of the screen (at the bottom) and then each one will have a specific transform applied based on introPositions. The “tx” and “ty” values are percentage based and define how much of the item’s width/height will be added to the item’s translation. The “s” and “r” represent the scale and rotationZ respectively. If we’d want the stack to appear differently we’ll just need to adjust these array values.
Next, let’s define our init function:
function init() { // disable scroll while loading images classie.add(document.body, 'overflow'); disableScroll(); // preload images imagesLoaded(gridEl, function() { // enable page scroll again enableScroll(); // controls the visibility of the grid items. Adding this class will make them visible. classie.add(mainContainer, 'view--loaded'); // show initial view showIntro(); // bind events initEvents(); }); }
We’ll preload all the images inside the grid, and only then show the stack of the six first images behind the device. While the images are being loaded we disallow the user to scroll the page, since the act of scrolling will also make the grid appear.
The showIntro function will position the six images behind the device. The images are first positioned in the center of the page (bottom) and the translation, scale and rotation values set in introPositions are applied to each image. We want that both the images and the device element slide from bottom up once all images are loaded, so we need to position these elements first and then animate them to their final state:
function showIntro() { // display the first set of 6 grid items behind the phone gridItems.slice(0,6).forEach(function(item, pos) { // first we position all the 6 items on the bottom of the page // (item´s center is positioned on the middle of the page bottom) // then we move them up and to the sides (extra values) // and also apply a scale and rotation var itemOffset = item.getBoundingClientRect(), settings = introPositions[pos], center = { x : winsize.width/2 - (itemOffset.left + item.offsetWidth/2), y : winsize.height - (itemOffset.top + item.offsetHeight/2) } // first position the items behind the phone dynamics.css(item, { opacity: 1, translateX: center.x, translateY: center.y, scale: 0.5 }); // now animate each item to its final position dynamics.animate(item, { translateX: center.x + settings.tx*item.offsetWidth, translateY: center.y + settings.ty*item.offsetWidth, scale : settings.s, rotateZ: settings.r }, { type: dynamics.bezier, points: [{"x":0,"y":0,"cp":[{"x":0.2,"y":1}]},{"x":1,"y":1,"cp":[{"x":0.3,"y":1}]}], duration: 1000, delay: pos * 80 }); }); // also animate/slide the device in: // first, push it slightly down; to make it disappear completely outside // of the viewport we´d need to set the translateY to // winsize.height * 0.45 --> 45vh) dynamics.css(deviceEl, { translateY: winsize.height * 0.25 } ); // now animate it up dynamics.animate(deviceEl, { translateY: 0 }, { type: dynamics.bezier, points: [{"x":0,"y":0,"cp":[{"x":0.2,"y":1}]},{"x":1,"y":1,"cp":[{"x":0.3,"y":1}]}], duration: 1000 }); }
The bind/init events function looks as follows:
function initEvents() { // show the grid when the showGridCtrl is clicked showGridCtrl.addEventListener('click', showGrid); // show the grid when the user scrolls the page var scrollfn = function() { scrolled = true; showGrid(); window.removeEventListener('scroll', scrollfn); }; window.addEventListener('scroll', scrollfn); // show/load more grid items; // this is just a simple dummy function that // simulates the loading of more items into the grid loadMoreCtrl.addEventListener('click', loadNextItems); // window resize: recalculate window sizes and reposition // the 6 grid items behind the device (if the grid view is not yet shown) window.addEventListener('resize', debounce(function(ev) { // reset window sizes winsize = {width: window.innerWidth, height: window.innerHeight}; if( view ==='stack' ) { gridItems.slice(0,6).forEach(function(item, pos) { // first reset all items dynamics.css(item, { scale: 1, translateX: 0, translateY: 0, rotateZ: 0 }); // now, recalculate.. var itemOffset = item.getBoundingClientRect(), settings = introPositions[pos]; dynamics.css(item, { translateX: winsize.width/2 - (itemOffset.left + item.offsetWidth/2) + settings.tx*item.offsetWidth, translateY: winsize.height - (itemOffset.top + item.offsetHeight/2) + settings.ty*item.offsetWidth, scale : settings.s, rotateZ: settings.r }); }); } }, 10)); }
We will need to define the events for when we click the “show grid” control button (arrow), the page scrolling, the window resize and the loading of more grid items.
Now let’s define all the animations we need for showing the grid. Once again, we’ll be using the dynamics.js library which will make this process much easier:
function showGrid() { // return if currently animating if( isAnimating ) return; isAnimating = true; // hide the showGrid ctrl dynamics.css(showGridCtrl, {display: 'none'}); // main title animation dynamics.animate(titleEl, { translateY: -winsize.height/2, opacity: 0 }, { type: dynamics.bezier, points: [{"x":0,"y":0,"cp":[{"x":0.7,"y":0}]},{"x":1,"y":1,"cp":[{"x":0.3,"y":1}]}], duration: 600 }); // main subtitle animation dynamics.animate(subtitleEl, { translateY: -winsize.height/2, opacity: 0 }, { type: dynamics.bezier, points: [{"x":0,"y":0,"cp":[{"x":0.7,"y":0}]},{"x":1,"y":1,"cp":[{"x":0.3,"y":1}]}], duration: 600, delay: 100 }); // device animation dynamics.animate(deviceEl, { translateY: 500, opacity: 0 }, { type: dynamics.bezier, points: [{"x":0,"y":0,"cp":[{"x":0.7,"y":0}]},{"x":1,"y":1,"cp":[{"x":0.3,"y":1}]}], duration: 600 }); // pagemover animation dynamics.animate(pagemover, { translateY: -winsize.height}, { type: dynamics.bezier, points: [{"x":0,"y":0,"cp":[{"x":0.7,"y":0}]},{"x":1,"y":1,"cp":[{"x":0.3,"y":1}]}], duration: 600, delay: scrolled? 0 : 120, complete: function(el) { // hide the pagemover dynamics.css(el, { opacity: 0 }); // view is now ´grid´ view = 'grid'; classie.add(mainContainer, 'view--grid'); } }); // items animation gridItems.slice(0,6).forEach(function(item, pos) { dynamics.stop(item); dynamics.animate(item, { scale: 1, translateX: 0, translateY: 0, rotateZ: 0 }, { type: dynamics.easeInOut, duration: 600, delay: scrolled? 0 : 120 }); }); // page title animation dynamics.css(pageTitleEl, { translateY: 200, opacity: 0 }); dynamics.animate(pageTitleEl, { translateY: 0, opacity: 1 }, { type: dynamics.bezier, points: [{"x":0,"y":0,"cp":[{"x":0.2,"y":1}]},{"x":1,"y":1,"cp":[{"x":0.3,"y":1}]}], duration: 800, delay: 400 }); // page subtitle animation dynamics.css(pageSubTitleEl, { translateY: 150, opacity: 0 }); dynamics.animate(pageSubTitleEl, { translateY: 0, opacity: 1 }, { type: dynamics.bezier, points: [{"x":0,"y":0,"cp":[{"x":0.2,"y":1}]},{"x":1,"y":1,"cp":[{"x":0.3,"y":1}]}], duration: 800, delay: 500 }); // the remaining grid items gridItems.slice(6).forEach(function(item) { dynamics.css(item, { scale: 0, opacity: 0 }); dynamics.animate(item, { scale: 1, opacity: 1 }, { type: dynamics.bezier, points: [{"x":0,"y":0,"cp":[{"x":0.2,"y":1}]},{"x":1,"y":1,"cp":[{"x":0.3,"y":1}]}], duration: 800, delay: randomIntFromInterval(100,400) }); }); }
We start by hiding the “show grid” control (arrow) and then we animate the following elements: the main title and subtitle, the device, the page–mover division (fullscreen element that slides up giving us the illusion the stack items will fall down), each stack item, the page title and subtitle (the title/subtitle before the grid) and all the other grid elements. Note that these animations follow a specific order; for each one we’ll need to define a specific duration and a delay. Also, if the grid is shown as a result of a page scroll then the delays can be different.
And we are in the end! Don’t forget to have a look at both demos and see how we can tune the effect of the stacked grid items moving to their grid position!
We hope you enjoyed this tutorial and find it useful!
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Firefox Supported
Internet Explorer Supported from version 11+
Safari Supported
Opera Supported
View demo Download sourceThe streets around Victoria Coach Station are street-sleeper city. The more you look, the more you see. As the light dims, first one or two, then up to two dozen, begin to make their rounds. Foraging for cardboard boxes, they are men like Santa, who, once he has enough – four boxes will do – will bed down on marble, curling up under the columned portico of a locked office.
Santa’s head is round, with clear eyes and a thick grey beard that has bristled white on the streets. He is cold, and keeps repeating himself: “The worst thing that happened… It was a few weeks ago. These men… They came and they started shaking me going, ‘Hey, what’s up, mate… Hey, why are you sleeping, mate… Hey, do you want to dance, mate.’ They were drunk English.”
Santa spends the days wandering round Victoria picking up cigarette butts. He is Polish and in his mid fifties; Santa is what the English on the street call him. He is lucky. He tells me he sleeps in a German army-surplus parka he was given by some praying people who walk around at night.
Come night, come his fears. Will the Roma that sleep in tunnels under the Hyde Park Corner steal his parka? If it rains, will an addict come trembling to the portico and smoke his spice there? Sometimes, he dreams of his family: what are they doing? Would they ever take him back?
For a London street sleeper, Santa’s story is pretty conventional. He was a miner in southern Poland. For decades, he worked in the shafts. He had two children and a wife; he always drank. Then, in his early fifties, he lost his job.
There were layoffs, mines were closed; the economy was changing. Things broke down at home. It only cost £50 to get to London, so Santa tried his luck. Many young men were doing the same thing.
The city was bigger than he expected and much less British: full of Poles, Romanians, Indians, Nigerians and people he couldn’t even place. With his 20 words of English, he traipsed around, in and out of Polski Skleps, Polish shops, looking for work. In one after another they told him that to get a proper job, he needed documents – a National Insurance number – and to get these documents he needed an address. But to get an address, he needed money.
There was one way out of the arrivals trap, other Poles told him: work for cash in hand. He found a job working for an Albanian at a carwash in Kings Cross for a few quid an hour with a promise that he would be paid at the end of the month. The money was just enough to cover a bed in a shared room and bus tickets to the car wash and back. Payday came. He asked and asked again until the boss beat him up and told him to get lost. No money meant he
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from feeding David Anderson, California Institute of Technology
'Flick a switch'
Scientists from the California Institute of Technology suggest the nerve cells act as a central switchboard, combining and relaying many different messages in the brain to help reduce food intake.
Using laser beams they were able to stimulate the neurons - leading to a complete and immediate stop to food consumption.
Prof David Anderson, lead author of the study told the BBC: "It was incredibly surprising.
"It was like you could just flick a switch and prevent the animals from feeding."
Researchers then used chemicals to mimic a variety of scenarios - including feelings of satiety, malaise, nausea and a bitter taste.
They found the neurons were active in all situations, suggesting they may be integral in the response to many diverse stimuli.
The cells worked rapidly when mice had taken a full meal, indicating they may also play an important role in the prevention of over-eating.
'Emotional link'
Prof Anderson said: "These cells represent the first well-defined hub that inhibits feeding in the brain.
"It is likely that similar cells exist in the human brain. If this is true and it can be proved they are involved in inhibiting eating in people, they could one day provide pathways for the development of therapies for many different eating disorders."
They say they would next like to investigate how this cluster of cells interacts with other well-known nerve centres involved in the promotion of food intake.
The population of neurons involved in the current research are buried in a region of the brain known as the amygdala - an area which is also associated with emotions such as stress and fear.
Prof Mohammad Hajihosseini, from the University of East Anglia, UK, who was not involved in the research said: "This is a very important contribution.
"The researchers build on previous work and have found another piece of the jigsaw in the long and complex circuitry involved in appetite control in the brain.
"One of the next questions to answer is whether these neurons could be an important link between feeding and emotions."This year hurricanes have rocked America and the Caribbean. Harvey, Irma, Jose and Maria have caused billions of dollars of damage and so far, left 103 people dead in the US alone. In addition to the carnage wreaked along the way, natural disasters such as hurricanes, cyclones and tsunamis leave many struggling to rebuild their lives and homes years after the initial hit.
As the rescue workers begin to depart, the scale of the damage hits home. For many the rebuilding of homes and damaged property brings neighborhoods together, garners much needed social support, and in some cases even improves lives following the disaster. For some, the rebuilding of lives becomes marred by the overwhelming symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) which is known to affect victims of natural disasters. Natural disasters can cause losses of homes, neighborhoods, belongings and even the death of family and friends. When exposed to life threatening situations or those which encompass significant loss or grief, PTSD can disrupt the lives of sufferers for years until they recognize the symptoms and seek help.
PTSD is both disabling and an added economic burden to families already suffering the loss of their homes and livelihoods. The hurricanes are not simply an economic blow because of the physical damage caused, they represent a mental health disaster which if not treated, will continue to spread as victims struggle to receive help and present with worsening physical symptoms and difficulties wherever they end up living. Following Hurricane Sandy, a brief telephone screening in the local area six months after the disaster identified 14.5% of adults as suffering from PTSD. When disaster strikes the most urgent needs such as housing and emergency medical care need to be taken care of but as the storm subsides the mental health clean up must begin.
Even if not directly affected by the flooding and hurricanes, being in close proximity to victims of the disaster can cause secondary traumatization, a condition which has been documented in spouses of war veterans, children of holocaust survivors and in medical, social work or mental health personnel. Just as a nasty cold passes from person to person, so too is trauma contagious.
Some of those at risk of developing PTSD from natural disasters are children. Whereas an adult hopefully has the cognitive ability to understand the traumatic event in the context of geographical causation, children often ascribe personal meaning to events which they struggle to comprehend. In a study comparing over 800 children’s experiences following Hurricane Katerina in 2005 and the Chilean earthquake and tsunami in 2010, regardless of which disaster the children experienced, over one third of children demonstrated enough mental health symptoms to warrant a referral for further evaluation. In a two year, long-term study following 400 youth directly affected by hurricane Katrina, while 71% demonstrated resilience and warranted no diagnosis of PTSD, a quarter of the youth suffered from PTSD but recovered by the end of the study and 4% still suffered from chronic PTSD at the study’s close.
Children often see traumatic events as punishment for misbehavior, ascribe unrelated causality, have difficulty discussing the event because of limited language skills and have poorer abstract reasoning skills which impacts their comprehension. While the study following Hurricane Katrina demonstrated that the vast majority of children do not suffer from PTSD symptoms, when the study’s authors mapped out which psychosocial elements could be used to identify protective factors related to the children’s resilience, they discovered that having supportive friends was the only predictor of PTSD resilience. Indeed, numerous studies attest to the protective factors of familial, professional and peer support and these contribute and boost personal resilience. Low socioeconomic status, prior traumas, poor education and the lack of a support network all contribute to increasing the risk of developing PTSD.
During the next few months, and as the effected regions begin to stabilize, providing psychological first aid is critical to ensure the rehabilitation of the region. Psychological first-aid is based primarily on the normalization of PTSD-related symptoms. In adults this may consist of helping them see how their panic attacks or outbursts of anger are familiar responses to stress and for a child, this may be expressed in arguments with friends or struggling at school. Psychological healing also includes challenging the inappropriate feelings of guilt, responsibility and shame which may come following the hurricanes, and providing adaptive coping mechanisms to address these thoughts and feelings. With adequate support, and trained mental health professionals providing expert de-briefing, post traumatic symptomology can be dramatically reduced.
While the symptoms of trauma may seem overwhelming and damaging, most people experience stress symptoms following a trauma but they generally subside over the following days or weeks. Finding it difficult to sleep, being more irritable, experiencing shock, confusion and anxiety are all common symptoms following a trauma but they do not make the sufferer a ‘victim’ or a ‘patient’. Just as making sense of the range of symptoms associated with PTSD is a crucial element of trauma therapy, so too is it important for self-soothing and recovery. Stress reduction interventions such as mindfulness, yoga and sports participation all have been shown to boost mood and strengthen resilience factors, protecting before trauma and healing after trauma.
Three months after a trauma occurs is when PTSD tends to be diagnosed amongst sufferers; those who will recover on their own have generally recovered and those who require more intensive clinical help can receive focused care. A large scale study was carried out on survivors receiving CBT (cognitive behavior therapy) for PTSD following Hurricane Sandy. The treatment was provided in just ten sessions and comprised of education and awareness, breathing re-training, behavioral activation, and cognitive restructuring. While these real-world studies are difficult to control (it is not ethical to withhold treatment to those seeking help), the study’s authors were able to demonstrate that whereas no significant change was demonstrated in the pretreatment phase, there was a significant reduction in trauma symptomology following the program and in the follow up stage.
Short-term interventions yielding long-term results show promise in reducing the pain of PTSD and are becoming more and more commonplace in disaster zones. Studies in Thailand, China and Italy have all demonstrated the efficacy of psychotherapy for youth exposed to earthquake related traumas.
Time will tell whether Houston, the Caribbean and Florida manage to mentally recover from the trauma of recent hurricanes but while the physical injuries will fade and the houses will be rebuilt, the psychological impact is likely to worsen. Implementing targeted psychosocial care is both a humanitarian need and an economic necessity—saving lives, jobs and families.We know that food affects the body -- but could it just as powerfully impact the mind?
While the role of diet and nutrition in our physical health is undeniable, the influence of dietary factors on mental health has been less considered. That may be starting to change.
For the first time, a report by a task force advising on new dietary guidelines, commissioned by the departments of Health and Human Services and Agriculture, included a point considering the possible role of diet in mental health outcomes. The USDA and HHS report notes, for example, that the American Psychiatric Association classifies omega-3 fatty acids (which are most commonly found in oily fish) as a complementary treatment for depression. However, the advisory panel concluded, for now, that the research was too limited to make policy suggestions.
Some psychiatrists, too, have recently launched a rallying cry for a more integrative approach to mental health care -- one that takes diet and other lifestyle factors into account in diagnosing, treating and preventing mental illness. In a paper recently published in The Lancet Psychiatry, an international group of scientists (all members of the International Society for Nutritional Psychiatry Research) argue that diet is "as important to psychiatry as it is to cardiology, endocrinology and gastroenterology."
With over 450 million people globally suffering from some form of mental disorder and a pharmacological approach having achieved only limited success in treating debilitating mental health conditions, the field of psychiatry may be reaching a sort of tipping point.
"We're now facing this huge epidemic of mental health disorders," one of the paper's authors Dr. Drew Ramsey, an integrative psychiatrist at Columbia University and author of Fifty Shades of Kale, told The Huffington Post. "Depression is the leading cause of disability in the world and soon it will be the leading cause of disability in America. So, as somebody who treats depression, it's of great interest when we see a data signal that suggests that we can treat depression by focusing on nutrition and what we eat."
Ramsey and colleagues' paper cites a number of studies attesting to the vital role of certain nutrients in brain health, including omega-3s, Vitamin D, B vitamins, zinc, iron and magnesium. The modern diet, while dense in calories, tends to be lacking in these important nutrients, which may be contributing to the rise in mental health conditions. Many studies have linked depression with low levels of key B vitamins, for instance, while low maternal Vitamin D levels have been found to play a role in the child's risk of developing schizophrenia.
The research has been mounting in recent years, and has expanded from a focus on individual nutrients to dietary patterns more broadly. In 2011, a large study found the modern Western diet (which is high in processed, high-calorie and low-nutrient foods) to be linked with increased depression and anxiety, as compared to a traditional Norweigan diet. 2014 review of studies, too, linked unhealthy dietary patterns with poor mental health and children and adolescents.
"For a long time in psychiatry, we've known that individual vitamins can have a big impact on mental health -- vitamin B12, iron, magnesium -- but really in the past 10 years, studies have begun to look more at dietary patterns, and that's been quite revealing," said Ramsey.
Growing evidence of the brain-gut connection also lends support the hypothesis that when it comes to mental health, food matters. The idea that there might be a significant link between gut health and brain health -- and that gut bacteria imbalances in a number of neurological conditions, including anxiety, depression, autism, ADHD and schizophrenia -- has gained steam in the scientific community. A 2014 neuroscience symposium even called the investigation of gut microbes a "paradigm shift" in brain science.
"The idea that brain health depends on gut health... that's certainly the next wave of this," Ramsey noted.
However, up to this point, the traditional line of treatment for mental heath problems has been pharmaceutical interventions or treatments like talk therapy, or some combination of the two. Diet and exercise are rarely taken into consideration, except by "alternative" practitioners. Bringing diet into the equation would represent a major shift in the field of mental health care, opening up new modes of treatment and low-cost, low side-effect interventions for individuals suffering from a range of mental health concerns.
"Food should be the first line of defense because it's a foundational treatment," said Ramsey. "We really need to move away from thinking of things like diet and exercise as 'complementary' or 'alternative.' That's really bad thinking that's gotten psychiatry into trouble."
Of course, it's important to remember that the causes of mental health problems are complex, and can span psychological, biological, emotional, environmental and dietary factors. But improving one's diet with brain-healthy nutrients can only support mental and neurological health.
"A well-nourished brain is going to be more resilient," says Ramsey. "Being a modern human is stressful. There are a lot of demands for our attention and we're exposed to a lot more trauma... Through diet, over time you make the brain more resilient."Every day in the Philippines, there are 11 new cancer cases.
Seven adults die of cancer every hour and eight children die of this disease every day.
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These alarming statistics, says the Cancer Coalition of the Philippines (CCP), show that cancer is a “growing and serious public health concern” in the country and that Congress should give priority to the passage of a law that will increase survivorship among Filipinos.
National cancer control act
That is the proposed National Integrated Cancer Control Act, which the House of Representatives’ committee on health begins to tackle on Monday, according to coalition spokesperson Paul Perez.
“The meeting (on Monday) should push them to come up with a substitute bill covering an integrated national cancer control act,” Perez told the Inquirer on Sunday.
He said there were around 30 versions of the bill in the House.
‘Project: Brave Kids’
Perez heads “Project: Brave Kids,” which attends to children with cancer.
He launched the project after his son fought—and won—a battle with leukemia.
Even with the statistics, there are still “many more (cancer cases) that remain uncounted, unrecorded and unreported,” said journalist Kara Magsanoc-Alikpala.
“With this data, we hope Congress sees cancer as an urgent health concern that needs legislative action now to address the different gaps in the cancer control program,” said Alikpala, herself a cancer survivor.
She said there had been “inroads” in the past seven years in the effort to put together a law aimed at saving more Filipinos from cancer death.
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“But it’s still outpaced by the increase in incidences of cancer and deaths due to cancer,” she said.
Assistance fund
A salient provision in the bill is the proposal for a P30-billion cancer assistance fund that will “support the medical and treatment assistance programs for patients.”
This emphasizes the financial burden that cancer imposes on patients and their families—regardless of their economic status.
“There is a high incidence of treatment noncompliance and abandonment due to high out-of-pocket payment in relation to the financial capacity of patients and their families,” said CCP member Daisy Cembrano.
Among those who have filed versions of the proposed National Integrated Cancer Control Act are Senators JV Ejercito and Sonny Angara, and Representatives Alfred Vargas, Karlo Nograles, Jericho Nograles, Chiqui Roa-Puno and Bernadette Herrera-Dy.
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MOST READBillie Joe Armstrong's Labor Day weekend is off to a rocky start after the Green Day frontman was kicked off a Southwest Airlines flight Thursday for having pants that hung too low.
Armstrong was traveling from Oakland, Calif., to Burbank, Calif., when the incident occurred. About it, he tweeted:
BJAofficial
Cindy Qiu, an associate producer at ABC 7 in Oakland who was on the flight, told the news agency that when a flight attendant asked Armstrong to pull his pants up, he asked: "Don't you have better things to do then worry about that?" When the attendant asked again, also threatening to have Armstrong removed from the flight, he retorted "I'm just trying to get to my f**king seat."
Southwest replied via twitter to the ticked-off rocker, saying:
SouthwestAir"Sustainability" is a popular buzzword, but I think we should also consider "longevity." When a company has sustainable practices but you must re-buy their products every few years, it seems obvious that we should be leaning more towards longevity.
This is Patagonia's Men's Better Sweater Hoody, which I purchased three years ago for $159:
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Because my apartment is freezing and I spend a lot of time outside in the winter, I wear it literally every day from the start of November to mid-March, a solid 4.5 months, every year. From a functionality standpoint it's lightweight, warm, has handwarmer pockets and a hood, which I have grown to prefer over hats (less things to lose outside).
After three years of use, the surface has become pilled:
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Because the garment is so functional, I've lived with the pilling and have resisted buying a new one, because it just works.
Until yesterday morning, that is. Something happened when I was hurriedly yanking it on and the zipper separated from the lining, preventing me from zipping it up all of the way.
I resigned myself to the fact that I'd have to replace it and headed to a local Patagonia store. I'd only gotten three years out of it, but in this day and age, I figured that was the best I could do.
At the store a 20ish sales clerk approached me almost immediately to see what I needed. I asked if they had any more Better Sweater Hoodies in my size. "I'm sorry, we're out of that one for the season," he apologized. "All we've got is XL. May I ask why you're looking for that one specifically?"
I unzipped my outer jacket to show him the Hoody I was wearing underneath. "The zipper has started to separate," I said.
"Oh, we'll just fix that for you," he said. "We can replace that entire zipper lining. This store is a new location and our sewing machine hasn't arrived yet, but it should be here next week or the week after. Bring it by and we'll fix it for free."
"Uh…really?" I said. It was so long since anyone in any retail environment had ever offered to fix something rather than trying to sell me a new one.
He took a closer look at my Hoody. "And in the meantime, I've got a Sweater Stone you can use to get rid of that pilling," he volunteered. He disappeared downstairs and came back with this little white box:
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"This thing does a great job, you can literally make the Hoody look brand-new," he said, handing it to me.
I looked around for the register. "Great, where do I pay?"
"No no, it's free," he said. "Take it, and let us know how it works out. Start using it under the armpit or an inconspicuous area until you get the hang of how to use it. And check back in next week or the week after when we've got the sewing machine, and we'll fix that zipper too."
I'd never heard of a Sweater Stone, but I went home to try it out.
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It's a black piece of pumice stone and didn't take long to figure out how to use: You lay the garment flat on a table, then drag the stone's edge along it and it just snips the pills off after a few passes. I found it works best when you go "with the grain" of the garment, and in only one direction. After maybe two minutes, here's what one side of the garment looked like versus the other, un-stoned side on the right:
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Pretty awesome.
The Sweater Stone isn't an expensive item, I looked it up and it's available for mostly sub-$8. Nevertheless I did not expect them to give this to me for free, unsolicited; the store clerk's prime concern seemed to be to help me solve my problem, not make a quick buck. So this is the third Patagonia retail episode I've had that has reinforced that I'll be a lifelong customer.
With the first, the waterproof lining on an expensive jacket I owned failed after three years. I found it was because I had washed it improperly and caused it to delaminate; after the clerk educated me on the right way to do it, they still replaced it for free.
With the second, the waterproof lining on a pair of Torrent Shell pants I bought there failed after four years. These had delaminated due to pure heavy use and friction. Again, they unhesitatingly offered me a free replacement. This episode was notable because it was handled by an older, more senior sales clerk who had a younger, new clerk in tow and instructed him, on the fly, how and why they handled replacements like this.
Then there's this third one with the free repair.
I'm impressed with Patagonia not only for their policies regarding sustainability and longevity, but because they have somehow managed to train this into their front-line retail employees, and have empowered them to offer solutions on the spot. They didn't have to call a manager and have me wait: The first two offered me replacements unprompted, and the only questions asked were seeking to understand how their product had failed. This latest guy asked the right questions to figure out what I needed and offered to fix it free. He also spotted the pilling, something I hadn't even asked about, and instantly enabled me to fix that for free.
In contrast, after my North Face jacket failed five years ago, after just a single season, I brought it to the store to ask about repair. The bored teenage sales clerk looked at me like I was crazy and suggested I buy a new one. That was the last time I patronized that brand.
And I've gotta say, Patagonia does a pretty good job promoting another kind of longevity: That between the company and the customer. Whenever I need to buy garments that last or that will be fixed or replaced should they fail prematurely, I'll return.Expanding the Floor of the Cage
Noam Chomsky interviewed by David Barsamian
Z Magazine, April, 1997
I know you’ve just been on a month-long trip to Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay. I want to tell you about a little trip that I took with Howard Zinn to Florence.
Florence, Italy?
I wish. Florence, Colorado, the home of a new maximum security prison. It was about the same time that I read that classrooms in New York City schools are so overcrowded that students are meeting in cafeterias and gyms and locker rooms. I found that quite a juxtaposition, this building in Colorado, brand-new, high ceilings, glass everywhere, tile floors, and then what’s going on in the nation’s largest public school system.
There are several reasons for it. They’re certainly related. Both of those activities target the same population, a kind of superfluous population there’s no point in educating because there’s nothing to do with them. You put them in prison because we’re a civilized people and you don’t send death squads out to murder them. But it’s not in the rich, professional suburbs that kids are sitting on the streets. They have classrooms. They’re not going to prison, either, even if they commit plenty of crimes. For example, the prisons are being filled by mostly drug-related crimes, usually pretty trivial ones. But I haven’t seen any bankers in there, although probably more than half the narco-money passes through U.S. banks. I think they’re not only related, they’re the same phenomenon. They’re targeting the same population, which is useless from the point of view of short-term profit making. They’re treated differently in different societies.
There’s another factor, too. Prison construction is a state industry, and by now it’s a fairly substantial stimulus to the economy. It’s not on the scale of the Pentagon, but it’s growing. For some years now it’s been growing enough that the big financial institutions like Merrill Lynch are interested in floating bonds for prison construction, and even high-tech industries are interested. High-tech industry has for some years been turning to the idea of administering prisons with high-tech equipment, meaning supercomputers and (maybe some day) implanted electrodes and so on. I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if we find that prison incarceration levels off and that more people are imprisoned in their homes. Because if you think about the capacity of the new technology, it’s probably within reach to have surveillance devices which will control people wherever they are.
There’s a lot of attention to crime in the streets. The FBI estimates that it’s about $4 billion a year, a figure that’s been fairly stable in the last few years. Ralph Nader talks about “crime in the suites,” white-collar crime. Multinational Monitor estimates that it’s somewhere around $200 billion a year.
First of all, crime in the streets, you say there’s a lot of attention to it. That’s correct, but the question is whether crime in the streets is high. Fact is, it hasn’t changed much for a long time. Although it’s high by the standards of comparable societies, it’s not out of sight. There’s only one major domain in which the U.S. is off the map. That’s murders with guns. But that’s because of the gun culture. If you look at other crimes, the U.S. is sort of toward the high end of the industrial societies. That hasn’t changed much. So why the attention?
I think it’s not because of the problem of crime. It’s because of the problem of social control. There is a very committed effort to convert the U.S. into something which has the basic structure of a Third World society, meaning sectors of enormous wealth and a lot of people without security or benefits or jobs and a lot of superfluous people. And you have to do something with them. First of all, you have to make sure that they don’t notice that something is wrong and do something about it. The best way to do that, traditionally, is to get them to hate and fear one another. Every coercive society immediately hits on that idea. Crime is perfect for that. So, you get people to worry about crime, not the fact that their salaries are going down and that somebody else has got money coming out of their ears. You get them to focus on the fact that they don’t want to get robbed by the kid from the ghetto, or the welfare mother who is having too many children. That’s a technique of social control.
Another technique is needed for those that you don’t have any use for, whose jobs you can more easily send out to Mexico. That gives you a superfluous class, and they have to be controlled in another way, sometimes by social cleansing, sometimes by incarceration. So the attention on crime certainly serves a purpose. It’s striking that the U.S. is perhaps the only society in which crime is considered a political issue. Politicians have to take a stand on who’s tougher on crime. In most parts of the world it’s a social problem. It’s not something you fight about at elections.
Most of the incarceration by now is drug-related, certainly a very high percentage of it, targeting mostly small-timers. On the other hand, if you can believe the international estimates, like the OECD (Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development), more than half of the dirty money, the narco-money, goes through U.S. banks. The last estimate I saw was over a quarter of a trillion dollars a year. There’s something rather suggestive, at least, about the figures on foreign investment. The latest figures that I’ve seen from the Commerce Department for foreign direct investment in the Western Hemisphere, excluding Canada, which is part of Europe, but the rest of the Western Hemisphere, are for 1994—that was when there was all the excitement about emerging markets. It turns out that in 1994 about a quarter of the foreign direct investment went to Bermuda and another 15 percent or so went to the Cayman Islands and other tax havens, some more to Panama and the rest mostly short-term speculative money picking up assets in Brazil and so on. That means something close to half of what they call foreign direct investment is some sort of dirty money. They’re not building manufacturing plants in Bermuda. The most benign interpretation is it’s some form of tax evasion. A less benign interpretation is it has to do with handling the flow of narco-capital, which is conceivable.
Corporate crime, however, is not really considered crime. If you take, say, the S&Ls, is that crime? Only a very narrow part of it is considered crime. Most of it is just picked up by the taxpayer with bailouts. If we look at things that actually fall under the category of crime, they are mostly not investigated and not prosecuted. Is that surprising? Why should rich and powerful people allow themselves to be prosecuted?
You mentioned that the U.S. ranks very high in gun deaths, 24,000 a year. Russell Mokhiber of the Corporate Crime Reporter has written about this, contrasting these two statistics, 24,000 gun deaths a year, 56,000 Americans die from job-related accidents and induced diseases.
In the 1980s, the Reagan Administration essentially informed the business world that they were not going to prosecute them for violating the law. One of the things that happened is that OSHA, the Office of Safety and Health Administration, regulations were either not investigated or prosecuted. The number of industrial deaths and accidents went up rather high. That’s the state telling you, Look, commit any workplace crimes you like. We’re not going to bother with it. If it kills lots of people, fine.
The same is true of environmental issues. If you weaken the regulatory apparatus on, say, toxic waste disposal, sure, you’re killing people. On what scale? The effort to deregulate, decrease infrastructure spending harms people, a lot of them, to the point of killing them. It harms a lot of them in other ways. Is it criminal? Well, that’s a doctrinal judgment, not a legal judgment.
In the last few years you have taken some major international trips to Australia, India, and, recently, South America. How have these trips informed your understanding of what’s happening to the global economy?
It’s actually possible to sit in Boston and find out pretty much what’s going on.
But that’s statistics, right? You’re dealing with books and papers.
It’s one thing to read the figures about poverty in India and another thing to walk through the slums in Bombay and see people living in hideous, indescribable poverty.
If you walk through downtown Boston you also see appalling poverty. I’ve seen things in New York which are as horrifying as anything I’ve seen in the Third World.
Comparable to the favelas in Brazil?
It’s hard to say “comparable.” But conditions which are about as horrifying. Remember, how bad conditions are depends on what else is around. You could be a very happy Stone Age person and not have a computer or a television set. No doubt the people in the favelas live better than in the Stone Age, although probably not by nutritional or health measures. Even if you look at things like effects on health or life expectancy, the relative position that people have in a society plays a big role. So if you’re much poorer than other people, that harms your health. But I’d say that there are parts of New York or Boston which are not unlike what you find in the Third World. Black males in Harlem, it was discovered a couple of years ago, have roughly the mortality rate of Bangladesh. On the other hand, going back to your question, seeing things first hand you discover a lot of things that are never written about.
For example, there’s very little written about the way in which popular struggles are dealing with problems. You can only discover that by being there. And there’s plenty of it. I’ve seen things in India and South America that I wouldn’t have known about if I hadn’t been there.
In Brazil you met with the Workers Party.
I met with the Workers Party, but I also spent time in slums and meeting with people who are doing things directly. Meeting with the Workers Party was extremely interesting. Lula in particular is a very impressive person.
There are now formations in Brazil of landless peasants.
There’s a very big landless workers movement which probably has settled about 150,000 people or so on land takeovers. They happened to be having a conference, some of the activists in the landless workers movement near Sao Paulo when I was there. They’re a very important and substantial popular movement. They have close links to the favelas, because the people in the favelas are mostly driven off the land. Brazil has an enormous agrarian problem. It’s got a very high land concentration, an enormous amount of unused land, basically being held as a hedge against inflation or for investment purposes, but not really used. It’s got a very brutal army and military history, especially since the coup of 1964. There was a lot of violence against peasants. When I was there there were informal judicial proceedings taking place—because the judicial system didn’t work—involving the murder of a couple of dozen peasants in a land takeover operation this past April in one of the northern regions. There’s plenty of killing and violence. But there has also been very substantial organization. And there’s integration of some kind, I can’t say how much, between the landless workers and the groups working in the slums, the favelas, the shantytowns that are scattered all over the place. It’s linked in some fashion to the Workers Party, but I don’t think anybody can say exactly how. One thing that is agreed on is that most of the landless workers do vote for the Workers Party and support it, but organizationally they’re separate.
I should say that I was asked on a national television press conference why I thought that people voted against their class interests by not voting for the Workers Party. My feeling is that that’s not necessarily against their class interests. A vote for the Workers Party, given the social structure of Brazil, is a dangerous vote because one possible consequence is a huge capital flight from Brazil, which is devastating for the economy. Remember that these societies have a very serious problem: They don’t control their wealthy, and the wealthy have virtually no social obligations, from paying taxes to keeping their money in the country. That’s their core problem, the state is subordinated to the wealthy. If you look at the major problems they face, from what’s called debt to the agrarian problem to violence, it essentially goes back to that. Unless that problem is dealt with, you can understand why a poor person would vote for an oppressor. Because voting for someone who has your interests at heart may harm you, since that will bring on violence by the rich.
It’s exactly the same if you’re a poor person in Central America. If voting for your own interests will bring on you the terror organized and directed by the superpower of the hemisphere, that’s a good reason not to do it, in fact, a rational reason not to do it. There are Central America societies which are so weak that they can’t really solve their internal problems in the face of U.S. power. But in South America that’s not quite true. They have resources, potential, and probably could deal internally with some of their major problems. But they haven’t done it, for all kinds of reasons, historical, and so on.
Should one be careful to extend this analogy to U.S. workers, why they are voting against what seems to be class interest? If they’re voting at all.
I’m not sure that’s true. The vote is only between two class enemies. There’s no one who’s presenting themselves as representing their class interests. But if there were, you can imagine reasons for not doing it. Suppose there’s a candidate who represents my interests. I trust the person and think they would try to do exactly what I want. There would still be good reason not to vote for them if the consequences would be that people with real power would make my life much worse, for example, by disinvestment or by capital flight. Capital flight isn’t so much of a problem here. It’s a different sort of situation, but take, say, Brazil or Argentina or Mexico, anything south of the Rio Grande. All of these countries are supposed to have a debt problem. That’s what’s limiting social spending and equitable, sustainable development. Any decent project that might be carried out is instantly constrained by the need to pay off the debt. The argument is that’s why they have to obey the orders of the international financial institutions and impose neoliberal, free-market solutions of the kind that the rich never allow for themselves but are happy to impose on other people. That’s the argument. But why is there a debt problem?
First of all, is there a debt problem, say, in Brazil? Brazil is maybe the biggest debtor in the world, by official figures. Is that true? If I borrow money and I send it to a Swiss bank and then I can’t pay my creditors, is it your problem? Or is it my problem? Economists have no answer to that question. That’s a question of moral values and doctrinal judgment. The people in favelas didn’t borrow the money. The landless workers didn’t borrow the money. The money was borrowed by the generals and their friends and the super-rich, who sent most of it abroad as soon as interest rates went up, leaving a crushing debt that is being paid by the poor people.
It’s interesting that this issue isn’t raised much. But when the point is raised, they very quickly understand it. I don’t think that would be true here. I don’t think that in educated circles here you could even get the point across. That’s one of the striking differences you notice as soon as you get out of the First World into the Third World. Minds are much more open. We live in a highly indoctrinated society. That’s part of the prerogative of wealth and power. You really don’t have to think. You can be self-righteous. Even wealthy and powerful people in the Third World tend to have much more open minds.
Here’s a matter of breaking out of doctrinal shackles, which is not easy. As long as they accept the principle that Brazil has a debt and that the poor people who didn’t borrow the money have to pay it, it’s perfectly true that they can’t do anything to solve their own problems. If you look at the figures, capital flight from Latin America was not much below the debt. This is one of the interesting comparisons between Latin America and the Asian growth areas. They’re constantly comparing themselves to the
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